Chances are you have a bottle of paprika in your pantry. It’s one of those spices that spawn in the back of all our dried herbs and spices, but we never use it.
We’re not using paprika enough, and that’s a shame because the red, spicy powder is not only a flavor booster but great for your health. Here are 9 paprika benefits that will make you want to work the peppery spice into all your savory dishes, so let’s get started!
Stops premature aging
Paprika has large amounts of beta-carotene too, which becomes vitamin A in our bodies. This essential vitamin helps you maintain a smooth, wrinkle-free skin but also protects your overall tissue health. Vitamin A helps you have resistant skin, healthy bones, and it can even protect you at a cellular level against oxidation.
Everything from better blood circulation to skin elasticity to controlled melanin, paprika might substitute some of your beauty products someday.
Keeps your skin healthy
Paprika is not only great for spicing up your life; it can protect your skin from dark spots, sun freckles, and signs of premature aging. It turns out the hot spice prevents the excessive production of melanin, the compound responsible for producing color to our skin.
Spicy varieties of paprika can also improve your skin health as they promote blood irrigation to even the smallest skin vessels.
Improves your digestive health
Paprika is spicy, yes, and you would think it can upset your stomach because of it, but, in moderation, it can do the opposite. Paprika makes you salivate and produce digestive acids. This improves your digestion by allowing your body to breakdown your food better and absorb nutrients from it easier.
A proper digestive health and a fun, spicy meal. What more can you expect from the exciting spice?
Promotes healthy blood production
Paprika is more than a source of vitamin A; it also has adequate amounts of vitamin E and iron. These two bioactive compounds can promote efficient blood cell production in your body, as they’re functional elements in hemoglobin.
Iron deficiency causes several circulatory and blood-related maladies, but paprika can help. Is there anything it can’t do?
Promote eye health
Vitamin E is more than healthy blood; it promotes eye health too. Certain antioxidants in hot peppers, from which paprika is made from, including lutein and zeaxanthin, can protect your eyes from degeneration and keep them protected from oxidation while promoting cell regeneration.
Vitamin E is also fabulous for your skin. And keep on reading because there’s more. It’s not only skin and eye care, paprika can help your heart and even your sleep!
Promote circulatory health
Recent scientific studies suggest that eating paprika regularly can promote your circulatory health. Not only because it helps you have healthy blood, as stated before, but because it might increase your levels of good high-density cholesterol. This cholesterol reduces the levels of bad, low-density cholesterol that can block your arteries.
Cholesterol is responsible for most heart-related issues, and good levels of HDL cholesterol can undoubtedly help reduce the probability of suffering them.
Control blood sugar levels
Here are some recent discoveries about consuming hot peppers, also in the form of paprika. It might influence how we produce the enzymes that break down simple carbs and sugars in our bloodstream, improving our insulin sensitivity.
This is excellent news for people prone to diabetes, people with overweight or other sugar-related conditions. More research is needed, but the evidence keeps piling up in favor of paprika to aid against high blood sugar levels.
Anti-inflammation
Capsaicin, the compound responsible for giving paprika its spicy flavor, is a potent anti-inflammatory, amongst the most powerful in our diets. Inflammation is a natural response to injury, but chronic inflammation is behind most major health threats of modern society and should be avoided at all costs. Eating spicy food can help.
Everything from joint pain caused by arthritis to heart disease can be prevented if you keep inflammation in check.
It helps you sleep better
Last but not least, vitamin B in paprika is related to the sleep hormone called melatonin. This means that spicy food might help you establish a proper sleeping cycle and enjoy a consistent good night’s sleep.
All in moderation, people, too much paprika, might cause some digestive discomfort that could keep you up all night.
You’ll soon have to get yourself another bottle of paprika
We’re sure you’ll start using paprika more often than ever. Let’s bring back the spice to its former glory and make our food tastier in the process, you’ll feel better, too, so that’s a win-win combo right there.
