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For one brave man, eating one of the hottest peppers in the world came with an unexpected side effect: Days of splitting headaches that prompted a trip to the emergency room.
The unusual case, detailed in The BMJ on Monday, began immediately after the 34-year-old man took part in a chili pepper eating contest. He ate a Carolina Reaper, the pepper christened as the world's hottest by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2013 (though there have been several unofficial challengers to the title since).
Immediately after eating the pepper, he started dry heaving. Then he felt excruciating neck pain that soon radiated throughout his entire head. For the next several days, he would experience short but incredibly painful bursts of head pain known as thunderclap headaches. The episodes got so bad that he eventually visited the ER.
Thankfully, a brain scan didn't reveal any major neurological issues, such as a bulged blood vessel (aneurysm) or bleeding. But several of his arteries did appear to narrow significantly, a condition called reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS).
RCVS is known to cause thunderclap headaches, and can be brought on by reactions to drugs, including cocaine and certain antidepressants. No case of RCVS has ever been associated with pepper-eating, but the main ingredient that accounts for a pepper's spiciness—capsaicin—is known to interact with our blood vessels, either by constricting or dilating them, the doctors noted. And cayenne peppers have been rarely linked to heart attacks or suddenly constricted arteries near the heart.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/worlds-hottest-pepper-sends-man-to-the-er-with-thunderc-1825110311
The Carolina Reaper was the world's hottest pepper at the time of the incident, but two varieties have surpassed it unofficially: Dragon's Breath, developed by Neal Price, NPK Technology, and Nottingham Trent University for anesthetic research, and Pepper X, created by the breeder of the Carolina Reaper, Ed Currie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @12:50AM (1 child)
A friend gave me some fresh hot peppers from his garden. He suggested I dry them, then grind for spicing things. They shriveled up (dried) nicely in a warm dry spot and turned from bright red to a dull reddish brown. Now stored carefully in a ziploc bag.
When we need some hot pepper, one (about 2 inches / 5cm long) goes into a little coffee grinder (looks like a tiny blender), seeds and all, to be turned into powder. It does a good job of spicing a pot of chili (6-8 servings) to a comfortable "medium hot". We don't do this very often, don't have the tolerance for violently spicy-hot food.
The little coffee grinder is carefully cleaned afterwords...
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday April 12 2018, @12:21AM
He showed me when I was just six years old.
"I want to be like Dad when I grow up," I vowed to myself.
And in his eulogy, I nostalgically said "Dad taught me how to eat hot peppers."
And yes: I really _can_ gargle Tabasco.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]