Love to eat spicy food? Then you're going to love what you read next. A seven-year study has found that people who love all-things-hot may actually live longer. This is after they've sampled hundreds of thousands of people.

Published in the medical jorunal BMJ, it was conducted by researchers led by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

Researchers studied 500,000 men and women in China between 30 and 79 and recorded details about their health, physicality, alcohol consumption, and their eating habits.

After seven years, they found that over 4% of the subjects - 20,224 people had died, and they noticed that those who ate spicy foods at least once or twice a week had a 10% lower risk of death compared to those who avoided spicy foods.

The lower risk of death percentage was even higher at 14% for those who ate spicy food every day.

The main active component in spicy food is connected to "anti-obesity, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and anti-hypertensive effects,' The antimicrobial properties in chilli peppers may even have an important effect on the gut microbiota in humans.

So, time to pour on the chilli, folks.