In his classic column “Will a squirt of WD-40 cure your creaking joints?” ( http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_129.html ) Cecil mentions the home remedy of putting pepper into your shoes to keep your feet warm. He seems very surprised that there is a cream that contains capsaicin (the ‘hot’ substance in pepper).
Here in Germany, a product named “ABC-Pflaster” has been on the market for, I think, decades. It is a large plaster that you stick on your skin for the occasional back pain (also works for arms, shoulders etc.). It also contains capsaicin, and it works beautifully. (Of course, it can’t cure any underlying illness.) It actually warms your skin, presumably through increased blood circulation. There’s a capsaicin-free variant of the product for sensitive skin that doesn’t work nearly as well, so that’s a clear statement for the effectiveness of capsaicin that Cecil seems to ridicule. I’m sure you could use it to warm your feet, but it does irritate your skin.
There has to be a similar product in the U.S. – I’m surprised Cecil missed this.
There IS a product like that in the US (at least in Seattle). It’s called Zostrix and it’s hot as HELL. I use it on my knees occasionally and I have to be very sure that my hands are clean before doing anything. The first time I used it, I didn’t feel very much heat after about a half hour, so I applied more. Yep, it started to get warm and I went to bed. Then I woke up feeling like someone had put hot embers on my legs. That said, even in small doses it can be almost too hot.
Engineerboy
As a young boy in the 50s I recall my grandmother employing a poultice which she would use on strained muscles and arthritic joints. It consisted of grease rendered from goose fat combined with a jigger or two of Tabasco sauce.
She swore by it.
Now, as I move into the autumn of my years, I’ve had occasion to modify her recipe to soothe the strains brought on by too much pickup basketball. Instead of goose grease, I use good, old standard-issue petroleum jelly mixed with 2 tablespoons of Melinda’s XXX Habanero Pepper Sauce.
It’s worked wonders. And it’s a terrific way to put more life into those store-bought salsas.
Actually, I find their texture and consistency of store-bought salsa to be adequate, so I generally refrain from adding petroleum jelly. (Adding the hot sauce, by itself, is OK.)
DON’T attempt to put it or take out contact lenses after your finger to apply one of these creams until you have washed your hands MANY times. Thus speaks the voice of experience. That said, I find they work quite well on sore muscles.
Just a note: Wash your hands many times, as noted above, but in cold water. Hot water sets the capsaicin into your skin, where it keeps oozing out for days.
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”
Take it from one who has gotten pepper spray on my leg and also in the eye by inadventantly touching one to another. It does burn. Pepper spray is made from cyanne peppers, the same stuff as in Red Hot, and i think also Tabasco.
Now this gives me the opportunity to tell my story. I was working in a colorfull neigoborhood in the Bronx and brought the pepper spray along as a procaution. After work I drove directly to a friends house to go skiing the next day, which he lives about 1.5 hrs closer to the ski area then I do. I uaslly keep my keys and pepper spray together when I use them. When I arived at the ski area I put my keys and the PS in my pocket. Twards the end of the day he goes to the bar and watches the Knick’s game, after the lifts close I go in and watch the end of the game, then I feel some liquid on my leg, I thought it was melted snow, I know what you think it was but won’t go there, I put my hand there and it was damp and has a slight red tinge, I thought the red was some dye from the clothes, maby from a red napkin piece. I put a napkin in my pocket to absorb some of it, then I touched my eye and lights out, I was tearing and could not see, my friend ran to get more napkins and a glass of water. The amount I actually got in my eye was very small and it lasted about 2 minites. The keys had somehow presses the trigger in my pocket, the red tinge was a marker dye (incase anyone was wondering). Then after I cleaned as much as I could off my leg, it started to get warm, tehn very warm, then started to burn, I washed it w/ saline soloution from the ski patorle. it was burning for about 3 hrs and warm troughtout the night.
Some years ago, in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine, a doctor cautioned against a condition he called “Hunan Finger.” He described a case in which a man had rushed to a hospital emergency room complaining of severe burning in fingers.
The problem?
He had been cutting up the dried hot peppers used in many incendiary Chinese dishes with fingers that had been abraded, allowing the capsaicin-laden oil to work its fiery magic.
Bah, cayenne is for wussies. I once rubbed my eye after slicing habañeros, which are about eighty times as hot. My eyeball immediately felt like it was on fire. Then the tears started to flow, my nose and throat began to burn, and my lower eyelid started to turn red and swollen. The pain didn’t last more than a half hour or so, but it took almost a full day for my eye to look normal again.
Now whenever I cut habañeros, I wear latex gloves, and dispose of them immediately afterward.
A friend of mine has his own cautionary tale, which goes like this: “If you’ve been cutting peppers, wash your hands before going to the bathroom.”
Apart from its use as a pain reliever, capsaicin is being employed in a variety of products (lumber, cable covering) to ward off pests with a penchant for chewing.
I read, I think in a Science News, about how Capsaicin works. It turns out that it stimulates the heat detecting nerves directly. Sort of a fake heat. Maybe it causes an incresase in blood flow to move the (relatively) cool blood to the (seamingly) hot area.
I’ve tried this stuff, and it works great…I do wear gloves when applying, though. I have a terrible habit of touching my face (rubbing eyes, chewing nails) so I figured it’s only smart. There is also a CVS brand that comes in a large patch or plaster form. FYI
Some mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. Zettecity
I just have to agree. Capsaicin in the eye is a bad thing. Being from Southwest Missouri, I am not accustom to having to share restaurants with smokers. On vacation in Virginia I was eating Buffulo wings and a group came in and sat at a table next to us and lit up. I immediately rubbed my eyes without thinking. I really wished I hadn’t done that. The smoke would have been less irritating.
As for the ointments, my mother and other relatives her age swear by it for their aches and pains.
[Bah, cayenne is for wussies. I once rubbed my eye after slicing habañeros, ]
nice n you got there, and in there natural state habaneros are hotter then cayenne but some cayenne sauce’s are hotter still (and IMHO taste better, and still hotter is pepper spray made from extract of cayenne) so who’s a wuss???
Why don’t they make habanero spray in it is indeed 8x hotter? (probally because the avrage Joe cant find that funny symbol over the n)
sorry i see that you said that habañeros are 80x as hot not 8.
8x I found hard to believe but let that slide by, but 80x- I can’t see it, I have eaten both and can’t accept that. Where did you get that from?
According to http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~gcaselton/chile/faq.html , cayenne peppers are about as hot as jalapenos, 2500-5000 Scoville units. Habaneros are 300,000 Scovilles and up from there. There’s 100 times as hot.
I saw a research talk recently that mentioned the use of capsaicin in pain relief. It heavily _over_stimulates the pain nerves, so that after a (relatively) short burst of pain , the nerves are dead for weeks. It’s one of the few treatments for the “waistband” pain that some people suffer from after a bout with shingles; many have it to manage it for life. Now, if they could only devise something similar for migraines…