7 Spices to Add to Your Diet

Spices have an abundance of health benefits, from weight loss to muscle relaxants, they can even help skin problems! Here's some spices to add to every day

Cumin
It has a hole host of health benefits ideal for those on a fitness regime or interested in their body’s ability to stay at the top of its game. The spice raisesyour metabolic rate and makes it easier for the body to absorb nutrients. It is incredibly rich in iron, which helps to make the blood richer in hemoglobin, which is essential for muscle strength during exercise as it ferries oxygen to, and removes carbon dioxide from, your muscles. It also aids digestion, relieving flatulence and diarrhea. Finally, it improves mental alacrity and memory functions.

Capsaicin
Cooking with this spice packs a health punch as well as a heat kick, providing pain relief, relieving a blocked up nose and preventing painful sinusitis. It can aid weight loss as a "thermogenic agent," which means it raises metabolic activity in the body thus helping to burn calories and fat. Above all, it increases your libido by increasing your heart rate, stimulating nerve endings and releasing endorphins.

Black pepper
It's known as a carminative, a substance that helps prevent intestinal gas from forming. In fact, it’s great for the entire digestive process, it kick-starts the taste buds that, in turn, send a message to the stomach to increase acid production. The outer layer of peppercorns helps break down fat cells, thus, make sure you buy whole spices (a rule that should be followed when buying any spices as their flavor is much more potent when freshly ground).

Ginger
Medicinally, it is used to treat many intestinal disorders, nausea and motion sickness; in tests it was shown to be more potent than some over-the-counter remedies. Ginerol is shown to reduce growth in colorectal cancer cells as well as having strong anti-inflammatory properties. Sufferers of irritable bowel syndrome can find relief with ginger as it can help reduce and prevent spasms. After a large meal, try making ginger tea by adding slices to hot water to aid your digestion -- particularly with fatty foods and proteins. It can also help reduce low-density lipoprotein (bad) cholesterol because it helps lower the amount the body absorbs. Ginger also contains shogaols that are thought (no solid evidence yet) to have anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties.

Turmeric
Its luminous hue will stain anything it touches, so take care when handling this vivid spice. The list of benefits associated with turmeric is very, very long, but at top of that list must be its cancer-fighting properties. Paired up with veggies like cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage, there is solid evidence to suggest it is very useful in preventing prostate cancer. Most of us enjoy a drink and turmeric also strengthens the liver’s potential to purify toxins in the body, along with carcinogens found in the diet. Turmeric is also great at lowering cholesterol as it prevents the oxidization of cholesterol, which is what makes it harmful; this is all good for protecting your heart as it is the oxidized cholesterol that damages blood vessels. The yellow spice is also an anti-inflammatory.

Cinnamon
It contains cinnamaldehyde, which helps prevent the blood from clotting and, in turn, inflammation. It also slows the rate at which it exits the stomach (and, in turn, stops you from feeling hungry soon after eating, along with blood sugar spikes that cause mood swings). Bizarrely, you don’t even need to eat cinnamon to reap its health benefits; just smelling the spice can increase brain activity. Cinnamon also contains eugenol, a powerful anti-inflammatory also found in cloves. The spice contains the combination of calcium and fiber, which have a number of benefits including the removal of bile salts that can cause damage to the colon. This has a secondary benefit too, as when the body senses that bile has been removed it breaks down cholesterol to form more.

Vanilla
Clearly, it's all about the aphrodisiacs. The essential oil in vanilla stimulates the secretion of hormones like testosterone and estrogen, which increases the libido! Vanilla is a strong antioxidant and, in turn, anticarcinogenic, useful if you are a smoker. Vanilla’s active compound is vanillin, which is a strong antioxidant; it also contains vanillanoid, which functions in a similar way to capsaicin, the active compound in chilies, and lowers stress levels in the body. One of the recent discoveries with vanilla was its potential to fight sickle-cell disease; vanillin prevents cells forming the sickle shape, but unfortunately the active ingredient is destroyed by stomach acid -- scientists are currently working on a way around this problem.