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Fish Poison Makes Hot Feel Cold and Vice Versa
SoyChemist writes "Ciguatoxin causes bizarre neurological symptoms including temperature reversal, a burning sensation, and an imaginary feeling of loose teeth. It is produced by algae and accumulates in the fatty flesh of tropical fish. While traveling to the tropics, a man from England ate some bad seafood that contained the unusual poison. His story, and the tale of some unfortunate sailors of an earlier age who suffered the same affliction, appeared in the current issue of Practical Neurology and was summarized on the Wired Science Blog. Both the Wired blog and the peer-reviewed journal neglected to mention that the potent neurotoxin has been made from scratch by organic chemists."
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C'mon, this is common knowledge among people who hang around the pacific. If you catch a large fish, don't eat the whole thing... eat some, and share around to dilute the risk. People have known this for over 30 years. Large fish have higher risk just because they are older.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera
With the pleasant trade-off of causing death by hypothermia instead...
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As a matter of fact, that's what methanol does. One of it's characteristics is to selectively stimulate the cool-feeling receptors of your skin while leaving practically everything else alone. And on the other hand, there's capsasin, everyone's favorite ingredient in salsa.
The only consistency in life is the lack thereof
urgh... meant to say menthol, not methanol. Bah, guess that's what happens when you skip a night of sleep.
The only consistency in life is the lack thereof
Ethanol is commonly known to give feelings of warmth
Except, it doesn't just make you feel warm - It reduces your body's natural tendancy to hoarde blood in your core when the outside temperature drops, thus actually warming your skin and periphery.
Of course, on the down side, with warmer skin you lose heat faster, and when your core temperature drops a few degrees, you go into hypothermia (and to make matters worse, with a few drinks in you, you might not notice until too late).