One writer for Bon Appetit ate three Carolina Reapers in 21.85 seconds and spent the next 14 hours in agony as his digestive system enacted its vengence. Many other people have reported a wide range of deeply unpleasant symptoms following pepper consumption, none of which seem worth it just to say you’ve eaten a super-hot pepper. A hot pepper is truly with you until the bitter end. Alas, the anus contains capsaicin receptors as well. That sometimes involves painful cramps and increased mucosal production (i.e. Your small intestine-which also has the sensors to pick up on capsaicin’s presence-rightfully thinks that this bomb of spice is dangerous, and so it tries to move it along as quickly as possible. This is why you sweat if you eat a lot of spicy food: your body thinks it’s hot, so it starts trying to cool you down.Ĭapsaicin can also make you vomit or have diarrhea, depending on how far the pepper gets in your digestive tract. Your body doesn’t differentiate between stupidly putting your hand in a hot place and stupidly putting a deliriously hot pepper into your face-it’s exactly the same sensation. These are the same neurons that register physical heat they’d prompt you to feel pain if you did something dumb like sticking your hand in a fire. Capsaicin binds to receptors called TRPV1 on some of your sensory neurons. The compound called capsaicin in peppers-the substance that makes them taste hot-works by, well, convincing your body that it’s hot. This is not to say that it’s totally wild for a chili pepper to cause such extreme symptoms. But no one had ever managed to reproduce the effect by participating in a pepper eating contest-until now. Most people get RCVS from certain prescription meds, but they sometimes stem from illicit drug use (since many of them cause changes to the blood vessels), and the syndrome can occasionally occur during pregnancy. It turns out the pain likely came from intense constriction of the blood vessels in his brain, a condition called reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome. The physicians writing in BMJ Case Reports note that they had to rule out an aneurysm before making the spicy diagnosis. His headaches were so agonizing that he went to the emergency room-and honestly, wouldn’t we all? This is the kind of pain that actually could be a sign of a serious problem with your brain. They basically make you feel like you’re dying, and sometimes they’re an indicator that you are. He experienced a bout of what doctors call thunderclap headaches they come on suddenly, causing excruciating pain that peaks within a minute or so. That’s all probably to be expected when you enter a pepper-eating contest, but what’s unexpected is for that pain to come on suddenly several times in the next few days. This man apparently ate a Carolina Reaper-the hottest chili in the world at 2.2 million Scoville units-then developed intense pain in his neck, at the back of his head, and behind the eyes. The case study is possibly the first ever to link the oh-lord-is-my-head-going-to-explode kind of pain known as a thunderclap headache to eating a pepper. Or, if you’re the unnamed 34-year-old man in the latest issue of BMJ Case Reports, you get so-called thunderclap headaches and dry heaving. It’s trying to save you, so you throw up and sweat and your vision goes blurry. You know the feeling: You’re just trying to compete in a pepper-eating contest and your poor stomach thinks you’ve maybe swallowed a whole fire.
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