What happens if you eat pepper. Chili Peppers: A stinging cure for pain, infection, and heart disease. Dishes with hot chili peppers

Can you die from eating hot peppers? November 2nd, 2016

The most beautiful burning sensation after a delicious curry or salsa is a fiery grace that will make you sweat and blush. For many people, this is one of the greatest pleasures in life. And the search for the spiciest dish becomes not only a hobby, but an obsession. We even had a post about

Spicy lovers feel safe in the knowledge that even if capsaicin, the alkaloid found in hot peppers, irritates the pain neurons in the mouth, causing a burning sensation, it does no real harm. After a few minutes, the feeling that you set your mouth on fire will pass. It all looks more like simple fun, doesn't it?

At least until someone gets hurt.

Hot pepper eating competition in China. Reuters photo

Hot peppers are categorized according to their level of spiciness, measured in Scovilles. The degree of spiciness begins to be measured from bell pepper (0), to pepper with a rather frightening name - Carolina Reaper (2.2 million). And if everyday use of a small amount of pepper does no harm, then thrill-seekers have not had the most pleasant experience in this matter. In 2014, journalists from The Argus, a British newspaper, decided to taste burgers highly rated on TripAdviser. They both just took a bite out of a burger with a huge amount of hot sauce, made by the chef to score more on the Squaville scale than pepper spray.

"The pain was so unbearable that one of the reporters immediately drank a huge amount of milk in an attempt to numb it," the newspaper writes. The other began to experience severe pain in the abdomen, he stopped feeling his own hands and began to choke. His colleague, despite all his attempts, also did not escape a similar fate, and they were both hospitalized. One of them said, "I was in so much pain that I thought I was dying."

The most daring spicy lovers, who dared to eat the hottest types of pepper on camera, could not help vomiting. "A little YouTube video showing a hot pepper-eating contest is not a pleasant sight," writes Aaron Thier for Lucky Peach. He was watching a slow-motion footage of a Danish event where a thousand people were eating hot peppers.

Matt Gross writes on his Bon Appetit account: “It took me 21.85 seconds to eat 3 Carolina Reapers, the hottest pepper in the world. And then it took me 14 hours to recover from the effects” (Spoiler: the effects included symptoms of a heart attack).

What is really going on here? If the only thing pepper can do is make us feel a little fire in our mouth, then why does it cause such a reaction in our body?

Let's deal with the basic composition of capsacin. This alkaloid has evolved as an antifungal agent for the plants it contains. But when a person consumes this pepper, certain neurons responsible for the perception of pain are activated. These neurons send a message about the sensation of heat to the brain, regardless of whether the cause of the burning sensation is a real burn or a pepper. The task of neurons is not to find differences between these harmful phenomena, it is better to deal with this now than to suffer even more later.

The physical effects of eating pepper can be seen by our bodies as actual burns. Accordingly, sweating is an attempt by our body to cool itself. Certain neurons secrete substances that cause vasodilation, which leads to inflammation, which means that it is best to deliver blood to the damaged area, and the body thus provides first aid to itself.

When the Carolina Reaper strikes the gastrointestinal lining, you experience gagging as this is the response of the nerve endings in the stomach. The body seems to say: “I don’t care if it’s a burn or a pepper, I’m going to get rid of it.”
Thus, the body's reaction to capsaicin is similar to the reaction as if you swallowed a caustic substance. That is, the neurons in your mouth, in your stomach and other organs will be active, and it does not matter to them whether what you swallow is going to kill you or just cause discomfort.

But be that as it may, eating pepper will not bring long-term harm to your health. However, biologists conducted an experiment during which doses of capsaicin were administered to young mammals, which caused the death of neurons responsible for the perception of pain. Repeated stimulation of neurons wears them out, and they simply do not grow back.

Interestingly, there is even a theory that peppers release capsaicin to deter mammals from eating their seeds. And the birds that spread these seeds just don't have the receptors to feel the sting. But apparently, man is a mammal with an absolute lack of common sense.

Luckily for Pepper, humanity hasn't done much damage to his well-being.

Why do people love spicy food?

Indeed, when consuming spicy food, endorphins, hormones of joy, can be released, but their participation in the formation of a preference for spicy food is just an unconfirmed hypothesis. Much more important are social factors and the habit of spicy food. Compare the level of spiciness in Indian and Mexican cuisine to that of Italian cuisine, for example. Mexicans don't release more endorphins than Europeans, they're just accustomed to spicy food from childhood. If the mechanism were as simple as the release of "happiness hormones" we would all "sit" on chili peppers, like on cocaine.

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Some varieties of hot peppers, such as jalapeno, cayenne, and habanero, are high in capsaicin, the main self-defense ingredient in pepper spray. Capsaicin can add flavor and spiciness to a dish, but it can also cause an extremely intense burning sensation that can last for minutes or even hours. Capsaicin is a natural oily substance found in all varieties of hot peppers, which we used to call simply “chili peppers”. Burning in the mouth or on the skin can be neutralized with various liquids such as milk or sweetened water.

Steps

Removing burning sensation in the mouth from hot peppers

Drink some cold milk. Instead of water, try drinking milk! The fat and butter found in dairy products will help reduce the burning sensation by dissolving the capsaicin.

Don't try to get rid of the hot pepper taste with drinking water. Believe it or not, the burning sensation will not go away if you only drink water. In fact, the water will only spread the capsaicin throughout the mouth and increase the burning sensation.

Sip some alcohol containing drink. Beer won't help since it's mostly water, but stronger liquor can relieve the burning sensation in your mouth.

Take a few sips of vodka. The vodka will not only relieve the burning sensation, but it will also invigorate you, as long as you don't drink too much!
Alcohol will "put out the fire" from hot peppers in your mouth. For these purposes, various types of alcohol are suitable.
Drink wisely. Don't drink too much, especially if you're underage, and generally don't drink it if you're driving.

Use oils to relieve the burning sensation. Apply olive or vegetable oil to your tongue to relieve the burning sensation.
- These oils, along with peanut butter, contain a lot of fat, so they are good folk remedies for burning.
- The fat in these oils helps relieve heat from hot peppers and relieves burning symptoms.
- It may seem strange, but you should use oils instead of water to deal with hot peppers, as they are much more effective in dealing with this problem.
Eat starch. Eat starch if your mouth is on fire from hot peppers. Starch will reduce the intensity of burning.
- While starchy foods, such as rice or bread, will not be as effective in dissolving capsaicin as fats, oils, or alcohol, they may be able to reduce the burning sensation slightly.
- There are reasons why in many cultures hot peppers are served with white rice or potatoes. Most often this is done in Asian and Indian cultures.
- Eating a spoonful of sugar will also help relieve burning symptoms. Mix a tablespoon of sugar with 260 ml. water and rinse your mouth with this composition. Alternatively, put a spoonful of honey on your tongue.
Try folk remedies. Many find that certain vegetables and other foods are excellent remedies for burning mouth.
- Eat cucumbers. In Thailand and Indonesia, people deal with the burning sensation in this way. Eat bananas, as they contain sugar, which will help neutralize the effects of peppers.
- Eat chocolate. The high fat content in most bars helps dissolve the capsaicin molecules in your mouth. Milk chocolate contains more fat and casein than dark chocolate, so it will help you deal with the situation much faster.
- Apply a soft corn tortilla to the affected area (lips, mouth). Just bite off a piece and it will help reduce the burning sensation.
- White toothpaste will greatly alleviate the burning sensation from the habanero. It will help relieve the burning sensation in the oral cavity from hot peppers. Eat a slice of lemon, drink juice, or all together (lemon with juice); acid will dissolve the oily substance.
Removing burning sensation from hot pepper on the skin
1. Wash your hands and other skin areas with liquid soap. You can also use a solid soap, but a liquid soap will dissolve the hot pepper oils more effectively. Many people experience a burning sensation on their skin if it comes into contact with hot pepper oil.
  - You can also periodically dip your fingers into a mixture of water and bleach (in a ratio of 5 to 1) while slicing hot peppers.
  - Bleach turns capsaicin into a water-soluble salt. In the future, you can simply rinse your hands with water.
  - Be careful not to let the bleach get on the peppers. Wash your hands with soap and water after cutting the peppers.
2. Use alcohol to reduce the burning sensation on the skin of the hands or other areas of the body. Hot pepper oil and capsaicin, which cause burning, dissolve in alcohol.
  
  Dip your hands into the bowl of milk. Take very cold milk. Try adding ice cubes to the bowl. Plain ice water will also help get rid of the burning sensation, but will not do it as effectively as milk.
  
  Apply the oil to your hands and other affected areas. Hot pepper oils will dissolve under the influence of other oils, which will help reduce burning sensation. You can also smear Vaseline on your hands.
  
  Relieve the burning sensation in the eyes from hot peppers. Sometimes people make a huge mistake by rubbing their eyes while slicing hot peppers. This can cause an unbearable burning sensation.

At the University of Grenoble, researchers compared the levels of male hormones in 114 volunteers and the amount of hot pepper sauce that the subjects seasoned mashed potatoes during the experiment;
It turned out that the more testosterone a man has in the body, the more chili he tends to add to food;
The relationship between dietary pungency and sex hormone levels has also been observed in laboratory rats;
The behavior of people willing to eat a lot of spicy on a bet can also be dictated by high testosterone, which leads to risk-taking.

Restaurants (“curry houses”) specializing in spicy food from India and other hot regions of civilization can now be found in every country. Visitors and staff of such establishments sometimes become witnesses of battles between gentlemen who are trying to prove their masculinity by tasting the most fiery curry that is on the menu.

Scientists who study the physiological effects of hot food explain such competitions among pepper drinkers as a natural ritual. Physiologists from the University of Grenoble write that men who love extremely spicy food are also distinguished by a high level of masculinity - there is more than enough testosterone in their bodies.

This hormone makes males adventurous, aggressive and sexually active. In groups of males, the one who has more testosterone usually strives for power and becomes the so-called alpha male.

On the one hand, fearlessness when eating extreme food causes honor and respect. On the other hand, experiments on rats have shown what happens in the very process of eating food richly seasoned with chili peppers.

The experiment, which took place under the supervision of Professor Laurent Beguy, involved the French aged 18 to 44 years. For the sake of the purity of experience, they were told that testing was commissioned by the company that produces the products. The men were given boiled potatoes, not seasoned with anything. As well as salt and Tabasco chili sauce - to add to the puree to taste, from the heart. The amount of condiments consumed by each eater was measured. Testosterone levels were determined by analyzing the saliva of the tasting participants.

After processing the results, it turned out that an excess of the hormone not only makes eaters avid for culinary adventures, but also affects the intensity of their sensation of spicy food.

According to Prof. Begi, this study and its results will shed new light on many questions about the biology of food preferences, as well as improve understanding of the relationship between hormonal processes in the body and food consumption.

The chemical that gives chili its heat is called capsaicin. This alkaloid binds to pain nerve endings, causing a characteristic burning sensation. Capsaicin has a variety of effects on the human body: stimulates appetite, increases heart rate, increases sweating, and also affects the release of endorphins and adrenaline. Very good, they say.

Apparently, no one has seriously studied the relationship between the love for acute and the hormonal state of men, which affects their behavior, before. Although a lot seemed obvious from the appearance of some chili varieties.

The Hottest Curries on Earth for High Testosterone Lovers

According to media reports, there are several restaurants in the world that pride themselves on serving what is supposedly the hottest curry on the planet. Only real connoisseurs of capsaicin have the right to determine which of the restaurateurs is the “best”, who are no longer “taken” by traditional dishes of Indian or Mexican cuisine.

So, in the British Lincolnshire there is an institution "Bindi", where the dish of the same name is prepared. A serving of bindi includes 20 pods of Infinity pepper, the second hottest in the world. This variety of chili was bred by the British in 2011, its hotness is 1067286 SHU, which is closer to pepper spray than, say, Tabasco sauce.

The kitchen fumes at Bindi are so caustic that the chefs are forced to work in gas masks if someone brave orders the main dish. To eat a portion of bindi from the Infiniti to the bottom is, they say, harder than conquering a mountain.

Another English Indian restaurant, Dilshad, near Birmingham, serves the Inferno Crocodile delicacy. It includes the Trinidadian Batch T pepper (aka "scorpion pepper"), which is considered by the Guinness Book of Records to be the most pungent variety in existence. In addition to the "scorpion", the chef adds chili brand "Ghost" to the infernal food, as well as the most odorous of the "thermonuclear" peppers - "Carolina Reaper".

The Inferno Crocodile Curry, which hotheads charge £15 a serving, is said to be so harsh it causes hallucinations. Unprepared people are enough for two forks.

A similar restaurant with food 200 times more spicy than the notorious Tabasco can be visited in New York. Or search the vast expanses of Hindustan. While visitors to such taverns compete in the tinning of the esophagus, scientists continue to uncover numerous seasonings containing it.

Can you die from spicy food?

The hotness of red peppers is usually rated on the Scoville scale (SHU). The values of this scale determine how much the extract of a particular chili variety must be diluted with a sugar solution so that its sharpness is no longer felt on the tongue of a professional taster. Thus, pure capsaicin requires dilution by 16 million times to neutralize the taste. And a police spray can contains between 500,000 and 5 million SHU.

Pepper-record holder, whose pungency is estimated at 2.2 million Scoville points, is able to knock out a careless taster from the everyday rut for 12-14 hours. Participants in "testosterone battles" who consume super-spicy curries at speed sometimes suffer from nosebleeds, vomiting, and interrupt the tasting due to a sharp decline in energy.

The average lethal oral dose of capsaicin in humans is 97 mg/kg. However, already at a concentration of 0.004 mg / l, this substance becomes unbearable. And in 1980, it was found that one and a half kilograms of dried and ground Bhut Jolokia pepper, taken internally, although they can kill a man weighing 75 kg, it is very difficult to imagine the circumstances of such a death.

It's no secret that cooking today is simply fashionable. This is facilitated by TV programs with the participation of stars, which literally fill up with a variety of seductive recipes. So lovers of Mexican or other cuisine, whose dishes contain hot peppers (chili or other varieties), also prefer to cook their favorite dishes themselves. But it is unlikely that a person who does not have a special cooking education can imagine that you can get a serious burn when cutting hot peppers.

Usually, we do not think about safety in the kitchen when we cut hot peppers, and we neglect the elementary protection of the skin of the hands, for example. Moreover, pepper burn on the oral mucosa is not uncommon if you are not careful when using hot peppers. You need to be careful not only during the preparation of food and in the process of eating, but also during the harvest of this spicy vegetable. Also, a burn can be obtained if the pepper patch is used incorrectly, as well as if locally irritating masks are applied incorrectly in cosmetology.

Why hot peppers burn or how capsaicin works

Meanwhile, such an injury as a burn with red pepper, as well as green, is quite understandable. The fact is that the composition of chili peppers includes an active substance that gives it a burning sensation. It is called capsaicin or 8-methyl 6-nonenoic acid vanillamide, which is a fairly stable chemical compound. This fatty acid, which is part of hot pepper, does not have a pronounced color and is pungent in taste. It should be noted that capsaicin does not dissolve in alkaline water-based solutions. That is, if you, in search of a remedy for a pepper burn, come across a recommendation to treat it with soda dissolved in water, then you are unlikely to succeed. On the other hand, the active substance of chili pepper can be easily dissolved in organic solvents, fats or ethyl alcohol.

How to avoid

The well-known proverb “God saves the safe” perfectly reflects the essence of prevention against pepper burns. When using pepper in cooking, latex gloves must be used to avoid injury. The same should be done when harvesting all hot and bitter types of peppers.

If you are preparing a spicy dish with special gloves, then you should not rub your nose or eyes with your hands in seals, and even touch other exposed skin areas. And in order to protect the mucous membrane and prevent burns, you do not need to use this seasoning in large quantities.

But what to do with a skin burn with an active substance contained in hot, bitter and hot peppers? This question torments several million people who have already fallen into a similar mess. First of all, remembering the nature of capsaicin (organic fatty acid), the burn site should be smeared with salt slightly moistened with water, which after a while will need to be washed off with milk. In this case, for a burn, we use salt as an alkali and milk as a fat, which also dissolves capsaicin well.

If you were lucky enough to eat a large, hot slice of Mexican Paulista Cake, then given the good solubility of the active substance of red pepper in alcohol, you can drink some alcohol. Also, in order to reduce the burning sensation, you can take a sip of vegetable oil or other fatty drink, such as yogurt, milk or cream. From the consequences of swallowing an excessive amount of hot pepper, they say, the eaten cucumber, a spoonful of honey, a pinch of salt, a slice of bread or a glass of creamy ice cream helps.

But, despite the variety of popular advice, doctors recommend treating the pepper burn with a spray containing lidocaine. This should be done only if there are no contraindications. Very rarely, pepper burns can cause complications such as nausea, corneal damage, or breathing problems. You may also experience: dermatitis, epistaxis, or even neuralgic disorders. Therefore, immediately after you have relieved the pain with a spray, you should definitely go to the doctor.

In order to avoid pepper burns on hands , the collection and processing of peppers must be approached with caution, while wearing latex gloves. And in order to avoid the need to treat the mucosa with painkillers, spicy dishes containing hot peppers are best eaten carefully, washed down with small amounts of alcohol, for example. And if you have a sensitive mucous membrane, then it is better to refrain from such food altogether.