Can Cayenne Pepper Help with a Cold?
Feeling stuffed up and a bit snotty from that winter cold? You might be wondering if cayenne pepper can help with your cold. Well, it certainly won’t get rid of that cold completely for you. Only time really does that, but cayenne pepper can help alleviate some of the discomfort caused by congestion and your stuffed up head. It’s also quite helpful with sore throats too.
The best way to use cayenne pepper during a cold is to have some in the food that you eat. One spicy dinner with some cayenne pepper should help you clear out those sinuses with a couple of good blows into some tissues. I like to add cayenne pepper to a bit of Spanish rice while I am cooking it.
Some folks also like to use cayenne pepper as a tea, especially as it makes for a great natural sore throat remedy. The capsaicin in the cayenne pepper acts as an analgesic (pain reliever) and soothes some of the inflammation.
For help with your sore throat, simply dissolve some cayenne pepper in boiling water and and once it cools off enough to drink, sip it slowly. It can help break up some of that chest congestion, just be careful not to overdo it. A teaspoon of cayenne in your tea is plenty. You can use even less than that if you aren’t used to that kind of spicy heat. 1/8th of a teaspoon may be plenty for most people. Just experiment with the amount to see what works best for you.
Instead of just drinking the cayenne pepper tea, you can also try using it as a gargle. Do not use boiling water. Just add some cayenne to warm water and then gargle with that a few times per day until your sore throat goes away.
Here’s another option. Try adding a little bit of cayenne pepper to your chicken noodle soup. It’s one of many people’s favorite comfort foods when they have a flu or a cold and adding a bit of cayenne to it can make that magical chicken noodle soup just a bit more effective. The cayenne can help relieve some of that mucus and help sooth a sore throat. Plus a bit of spice makes the soup even tastier too. Also, it needs to be said, cayenne pepper tastes delicious in hot cocoa.
In addition to its pain relieving and mucus-clearing properties, cayenne pepper also contains plenty of Vitamin C, which some health practitioners feel can help relieve cold symptoms sooner. Vitamin C is also a great immune-booster.