took a nice wiff of some hot sauce and thought about this today.
Long story but I managed to get moruga scorpion peppers that were spoiled and mushy/watery all over my hands.
Yes those demonic things right there.
Over the next thirty minutes it felt like my hands were chemically burned, I used milk, isopropyl alcohol, soap, vinegar, baking soda. Everything made it worse it seemed, except for seemingly rubbing it in and spreading it up my arms.:eek:
The only relief was putting my hands in ice water.
The pain kept building and lasted for hours, it was horrible, it felt less like hot pepper and more like chemical burn.
And no permanent nerve damage that I noticed. So I’ll say no.
Considering that pepper spray exists and doesn’t cause lasting damage, I’d say doesn’t look likely unless you include nasty chemicals as a ‘spice’.
I regularly put acid on my chips.
nb. “Chips” in the UK are similar to fries in the USA.
Although capsaicin can be toxic in high doses, it does not cause tissue damage. Just the sensation of it.
Microdots of vinegar?
We were dining at a local place in St Martin’s French Quarter (Yvette’s). For locals they set the table with a dish of local hot pepper mix; they remove this when seating tourists.
An American woman seated near us asked for the pepper mix, insisting she liked spicy food. I thought she was going to need an ambulance. Coughing, gagging, choking, turning blue, etc. Her distress was lingering when we left, maybe a half hour later.
It’s when your ears start hurting that you know you’ve reached your limit…
Note that birds don’t have the same receptors as mammals do, and can eat nearly pure capsaicin with no ill effects whatsoever.
That said, the sensation of burning can cause local inflammation, and in extreme enough cases, the inflammation itself can cause some damage.
Not peppers, but once my grandmother as a joke had me sniff some extremely strong horseradish. She’d been doing this and most people took a very small sniff and backed away. However, I had a cold and couldn’t smell anything, so I took a deep breath and got it into my lungs.
It was several weeks before I wasn’t coughing all the time.
So even a drop of 100 percent pure capsaicin placed on the tongue wouldn’t do permanent damage?
Oh, probably not permanently. But I’ve had so much sour stuff in one day (candy or some such) that I couldn’t taste anything proper for a few days after.
I strongly feel that those who overseason as a matter of course (spicy, or even salt) ruin their palates for the long term.
I related the story in another thread, but I grew those things, and, out of excitement, ate one on an empty stomach. I was vomiting and in very bad spirits about 45 minutes later, feeling like a fire ant colony had established residence in my stomach. (And, yes, I’m used to the 100K+ Scoville peppers.) I’ve since used them much more sensibly without any lingering effects, but, damn, those things can make you wish you were dead. (I seriously briefly considered a trip to the ER, but I didn’t think there was any possible way I could drive myself there.) My cousin had three of them on a hamburger once, not knowing what they were, after asking the chef to make something extra extra spicy. He had a much worse reaction, vomiting throughout the night and having to take the next day of work off. At any rate, it did not seem to cause permanent damage of any sort.
Nearly everyday I walk by Charlotte Street in Port Of Spain Trinidad where you can observe street veggie vendors selling those peppers with buckets full, pounds and pounds of them. I sometimes wonder how many people you could incapacitate with a pound.
I’ve observed the use of these in local cooking, a single pepper is put in a pot whole and uncut. It is left in while cooking with care taken not to break or disturb it, and then when cooking is finished it is fished out still whole and discarded. What it was cooked in it still spicy as hell!
Oh yea I ordered some chicken geera(chicken necks) and I mean damn this was borderline inedible. I like me some spicy food, but food with more capsacin than self defense mace spray? No… no sorry.
Blotter vinegar. Don’t eat the brown vinegar!
Your taste (gustation) and olfactory receptors are constantly being regenerated. While capsaicin may limit your ability to taste much for awhile, it doesn’t seem to cause permanent damage. It is debatable whether it is bad for your stomach.
If you ever grind your own hot peppers, and take the lid off and lean in too soon, your lungs will let you know how unhappy they are for a long time. The possibility of any permanent damage I have no idea of.
The reining heat champion is the Carolina Reaper. Appropriately, the guy who bred the thing owns the PuckerButt Pepper Company. :eek:
I can take (and enjoy) really spicy foods, at least the eating part.
the worst part is a day later, when it leaves.
A WND — a weapon of no destruction! A gas attack using it puts the enemy out of action with no injuries and with no ugly green clouds. The enemy is down long enough looking for ice cream to be overrun and lose the war.