Red Hot Chilli Pepper Can Reduce Your Chances of Dying
We all know how a very peppery soup could make us sweat, tear up and even regret having that meal. We have all have being in that situation at least once in our life when there was so much pepper you literally sweat through your tongue with tears streaming down our cheeks.
How "hot" a pepper is, is largely dependent on the Scoville Heat Scale.
Source
The Scoville Heat Scale
The name is simply the number that tells the ratio of pepper-to-sugar-water needed to nullify the spiciness of a pepper. It is measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU).
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The SHU is a function of the concentration of capsaicin concentration. This is one of the related active constituents of chilli peppers known collectively as capsaicinoids.
The SHU of the jalapeño pepper is between 2500 to 8000 SHU (from the mildest to the spiciest respectively) that means that you would need 2,500 teaspoons of sugar water for every teaspoon of jalapeño mash to override the heat of the mildest jalapeño pepper.
A Hot One
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It has a whooping SHU of 2.4 million units! That is a sure fiery pepper. It even defeated the Carolina Reaper Chilli Pepper that made it into the 2013 Guinness Book of Records as the hottest chilli pepper. The Carolina Reaper has "only" a 1.5 million SHU.
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This mouth bomb was the creation of hobby grower Mike Smith who working together with researchers at Nottingham Trent University made this "weapon grade" chilli pepper possible. You can consider the pepper a weapon considering the U.S. pepper sprays is about 2 million SHU.
The breeder of this pepper has this to say about the pepper.
No one has attempted to swallow the pepper yet, but someone took a bite without swallowing. Their mouth went numb for two days according to Smith. With a Scoville rating this high, it could cause a seriously upset stomach and make an alarming exit from your body. Though, Smith alleges the effects could be even worse than that. "We have had a caution from the University," Smith said. "It could cause anaphylactic shock in some people." Source
That means you won't be found sprinkling this on your pizza :)
But not to worry, there are other applications for this hot one.
Go Numb
The pepper was developed for medical application. Oh yeah, you read it right, not for your soups or kitchen but the hospital. It is to serve as an anaesthetic for those that are allergic to the traditional anaesthetic.
“This was developed because a lot of people are allergic to anaesthetic, and this can be applied to the skin because it is so strong it numbs it.” Source
The oil from the pepper was developed for use in developing countries as a cheap anaesthetics and also for people with allergies to anaesthetics.
Spicier is lovelier
Whether it is the one that gets you numb or just the one in your kitchen drawer, it is a fact we and pepper and other spicy are in a relationship, one in which the separation is something that is not on the table (pun intended).
Researchers from The Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine from The University of Vermont used data taken from 16,000 Americans over a 23 years period and discovered that those who dosed their food with spicy chillies enjoyed a 13% reduction in mortality rates from heart diseases and strokes. These findings were published in a journal titled the The Association of Hot Red Chili Pepper Consumption and Mortality: A Large Population-Based Cohort Study in the beginning of 2017.
Besides capsaicin, chillies contain antioxidants including vitamin C and carotenoids, which also help improve insulin regulation.
This revelation is old news to some historically, as people around the world already believed that spices contain some mystical healing properties. This is the first time it is being confirmed scientifically.
Add some chilli pepper to omelette or salad or whatever it is that deserves some spice. Spice up that meal.
"You do a little dance and then you drink a little water." - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Those guys knows how to rock :)
When i first came across Dragon Breath Pepper the Article i read it stated that .... Consuming just a little quantity of the pepper will cause the oesephagus to tear thereby causing a permanent damage.
The Dragon Breath Pepper wasn't developed for the Kitchen and people are warened stay away from it as possible as they can.
Thank God that this pepper is not in Nigeria , otherwise Yoruba women who has close affection for pepper and pepperish food would employed for services of spicing up the food.
I like my food spicy :)
I can't eat a not spiced food. I love my food peppery. Never knew peper has such significance to health though just found myself loving it naturally.
My aunt says peper is not good for the health because she does not like too much of the red gods in her food. Says it does not have any nutritional value and jumpy body like she calls it... lol. I guess it was her way of making me reduce my pepper love. Will sure spread the news but am sure it won't make her change her mind that much.
But people do have lots of problem with pepper like stomach upset and all, I guess not everyone can handle pepper.
That's living the spicy life. Great!
Yeeah👌
Though I am not a pepper fan, I love the hotness it gives to pepper soup. No matter how my nose runs, I just keep digging into it. My grandma ate it alot that she even had her separate pot of soup (dem no born you to chop her soup, person go just dance 'awillo' tire) and she lived to be a hundred years. Till she died, I never saw her sick one day. Thank you for sharing this information.
That was some serious hot chilli pepper she used. The older generation knows how to eat healthily. Over processed food is killing us.
Yes o. Honestly pepper must have medicinal properties because when a woman takes pepper after delivering a baby, all clotted blood inside her would come rushing out, cleaning her system. This generation is not eating right at all.
I think sometimes the ancestor's knows something that we don't, judging by the way they do most things.
i cant believe this is actually true, i always thought it to be a peppery stuff i wont want to take so it wont burn my mouth.. maybe ill give it a try... thanks for sharing this topic
Just don't take much to avoid a running stomach. :D
DAMN! ..and thats just for jalapeño pepper, I can't even imagine that of Dragon Breath Pepper. You'll never catch me spicing up my food crazy...I can't kill myself. Great post fam, very informative. I'm def going to give you a follow, your blog is bomb.
Thanks for the follow. Pepper is just too much to handle. The Dragon Breath pepper makes the famous pepper-soup in our country look like child's play. Lol
looool! Swear down
Lol. It looks like you've run into a bad case of highly peppered soup before.
Fam, my yoruba ppl are not kidding when it comes to pepper😭 unfortunately I’m not a fan
@trillex, now that you know it is good for the body, maybe you should reconsider your stance and be a fan :)
So pepper is also measured in units, that's very interesting and I won't doubt its efficacy in weight loss because of its serious sweating effect. Thanks for sharing.
So you can always check the SHU of that goat head peppersoup when next you take one :)
Hahaha......... I sure will my friend
In the back of my mind I always thought that spicy peppers were good for you. Glad to know that's definitively the case.
Now we are in the know :D
Was expecting some thing not less than this while reading because due to that amount of SHU , the essential oils/constituents will surely increase. And at such concentration, medical application is inevitable. There so many spices out there whose usefulness is not limited to the kitchen alone due to the presence of essential oil.
Nice post, great steemit scientist
Thanks for the compliment. You are right on it being developed for medical reasons. It's so hot it numbs :)
Pepper analysis...
I actually love the spicy taste in all my meals, maybe I'll start measuring it too
Get your measuring tools out then :)