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Capsaicin Tested On Surgical Wounds
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Bite a hot pepper, and after the burn your tongue goes numb. The Baltimore Sun reports that Capsaicin, the chemical that gives chili peppers their fire, is being dripped directly into open wounds during highly painful operations, bathing surgically exposed nerves in a high enough dose to numb them for weeks. As a result patients suffer less pain and require fewer narcotic painkillers as they heal. 'We wanted to exploit this numbness,' says Dr. Eske Aasvang, a pain specialist who is testing the substance. Capsaicin works by binding to C fibers called TRPV1, the nerve endings responsible for long-lasting aching and throbbing pain. Experiments are under way involving several hundred patients undergoing various surgeries, including knee and hip replacements using an ultra-purified version of Capsaicin to avoid infection. Volunteers are under anesthesia so they don't feel the initial burn."
they use a mix of anesthetic and the capsaicin so that you'r not in horrible pain. The nerves are over-stimulated in a way, this leads to them being numbed [like after eating too many spicy peppers] and it has already been used as a topical treatment for pain, I think there's even one pain treatment available to the public already based on this.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The hottest pepper record has been broken.
In the Scoville Organoleptic Test, the Bhut Jolokia pepper scores over 1,000,000
For several years Capsaicin has been used to treat a type of male incontinence. Squirting a bit of it up a catheter apparently is enough to force some of the nerves in the bladder into the right state to stop the muscles being over-relaxed.
"LIFE'S LITTLE QUESTIONS"
SHOW 904
http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript904.htm
I've found that this :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper
works well as an anesthetic. It's commonly use in Gong Bao Ji Ding (US:Kung Pao Chicken) in China, and, along with ginger, makes it way more tasty than the poor imitation available in the west.
Max.
cheers.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
Nope, you haven't seen it before. That non-dupe is about a completely different anesthesia-related use of capsaicin. The purpose there is to enable the distribution of an anesthetic that only works from the inside into the cells.
The purpose here is to give the nerve endings such an intense blast of pain that they go numb for days or weeks. This would be horrendously agonizing to the patient, but they're already under anesthetic and so don't notice it. Then, those nerve endings being numb for a few weeks reduces the need for post-surgery narcotics.
Same drug, same general area of research (anesthetics), completely different usage.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Except if they're using medical-grade extract of capsaicin, you're talking a Scoville Rating of 100K-300K for a Habanero pepper. Nordihydrocapsaicin is 9.1 million Scovilles, and pure capsaicin is at least 15 million.
In short, I think the doctors and chemists know more than you do.
I had a mild case of Poison Oak this past summer. I wasn't getting any relief from the normal treatments, so I poured some Cayenne pepper powder on the rash. It almost immediately relieved the itching and the area felt cool. I think it also sped up the healing. The powder was too messy so I got some capsaicin cream that was intended for arthritis. It worked almost as well.
If a Jalapeno hurts you then you better not eat a 'hot' pepper. On the Scoville scale a Jalapeno is only about 5000 scoville units. A Cayenne is about 30,000. A Habanero is rougly 350,000. And the new record holder is the Naga Jookla at around 1,000,000. Go eat a Naga and see how you feel afterwards, wimp. :)
Naga Jolokia pepper
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There's a lot of posters writing about their experiences after eating habaneros and the like, either out of curiosity or on a dare.
Well, here's a great tip next time you're on a dare, or in a thai or mexican restaurant: Keep a piece of candy nearby. If the burning sensation becomes too much to bear, unwrap the candy and pop it in your mouth, the sudden sugar coating on the tongue will overwhelm the taste buds with a near-opposite sensation, canceling most of the pain.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I've been taking morphine everyday for about 6 years. People all think you get a buzz from it, but you don't. They have controlled release stuff nowadays too. I think I had a slight buzz once (maybe twice) during the first day I took it. And I'm not on low doses (hell, I already OD'ed on it, and I wasn't buzzed at all, I just struggled to keep breathing).
It just makes you not wanna kill yourself so the pain ends (chronic pain is like being tortured 24/7 with no relief, you eventually want it to stop, no matter what it takes). That's pretty much it.
Actually, it is the membranes that hold the seeds that contain most of the "heat".
"Capsaicin (pronounced cap-SAY-iss-in) is a powerful chemical present in hot peppers that irritates certain nerves in the human nose and mouth. It is most highly concentrated in a hot pepper's central membrane, which holds the seeds."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE3DD1E39F93BA35752C1A96F948260
"The hotter the pepper, the more capsaicin it contains, most of it concentrated in the membrane or rib. Removing both this membrane and the seeds can significantly reduce the overall heat level"
http://www.sallys-place.com/food/columns/ferray_fiszer/peppers.htm
"But this one goes to 11!"