![]() “I almost think I’d view it as narcissistic to enter contests without any feeling whatsoever,” he says, noting that he is just “relatively gifted that I don’t have major reactions.” He doesn’t, however, usually purge after competitions. I honestly couldn’t imagine caring at all about spicy food if I didn’t,” he wrote to me when I asked. I want the full experience.ĭustin, however, refutes the rumor. I guess I am as ready as I could possibly be.īut I did not bring beer or a milkshake or anything that might uncouple the capsaicin molecules from the receptors in my mouth. I’ve spoken with world-class hot pepper eaters, read stacks of scientific papers about capsaicin, know that dairy and alcohol can be used to soothe the pain that is coming. I’ve read countless essays about what it’s like to eat the hottest pepper in the world, watched a guy on YouTube smoke one in his bong, flipped through episodes of Hot Ones, where celebrities like Idris Elba and Paul Rudd choke down molten-hot chicken wings while being interviewed and weeping. I know that this pepper is hot: I know its Scoville heat unit score (2.2 million, or roughly 600 times hotter than a single jalapeño pepper), and I know what it is going to do to me (very bad things). I know who grew it: Greg Foster, who holds the world record for most Reaper peppers eaten in one minute (120 grams, which came out to sixteen peppers, if you want to give it a shot). I’m stalling even now, even writing this, somewhat reticent to fully revisit the sadistic contours of the Carolina Reaper pepper experience I was about to bite into. I’m stalling with repeated takes, chipperly talking to my phone over and over, wedging it this way and that in the steering wheel. This feels ominous, appropriate, given the journey I’m about to blast off on. (I’m scared.) The seats are deep and dark, and all the lights shining through the icons on the dash are red, making me feel like I am in a spaceship. I’m recording the preamble to my pepper-eating video over and over again, the insides of my lungs thrumming with excitement. There’s a cold bottle of water sweating in the cup holder, a one-use relic of end-stage capitalism that will outlast us all. Parked in the dusty lot of the county fairgrounds in Auburn, California, I’m in the driver’s seat of a rental car, hands imperceptibly trembling. ![]() Reprinted by permission of PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Over time, capsaicin kills pain receptors in the mouth, and, eventually, peppers that are excruciating to the uninitiated are simply a pleasant heat to others.From Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose by Leigh Cowart, copyright © 2021. So why do some people seem to handle the heat of ghost peppers better than others? It's a nurtured ability, scientists believe. The man spent 23 days in the hospital and was sent home with a gastric tube, according to a report in the Journal of Emergency Medicine. He was rushed to hospital where doctors found out his left lung collapsed. He vomited so much that he tore a hole in his esophagus. He drank six glasses of water to cool off, one of the worst things you can do when you've had too much pepper ( milk is a better choice). In 2016, a man taking part in an eating contest ate a ghost pepper and felt an intense burning in the mouth. In India, the ghost pepper's country of origin, the Defence Research and Development Organization once even made grenades with the powerful bhut jolokia (they had to give them up as the chili powder was susceptible to fungal rot). ![]() At 2 million Scoville heat units, pepper spray can stop an attacker in his or her tracks. Capsaicin is debilitating to the eyes and airways that's why pepper spray is an effective defense weapon. The pain and inflammation would be too much to bear. The good news for spice lovers is that your body would give up long before you reached a deadly level of capsaicin ingestion. They based their findings on results extrapolated from similar studies that measure capsaicin's toxic effects on animals. In fact, researchers have determined a 150-pound (68-kilogram) person would need to eat 3 pounds (1.3 kilograms) of dried and powdered capsaicin-rich peppers like the ghost pepper to die. ![]() Yes, you could die from ingesting ghost peppers. But to what extent? Could eating ghost peppers cause your demise? This causes a chain reaction in your body as the capsaicin in the ghost pepper initiates widespread tissue inflammation and begins to wreak havoc on your nerve endings, dilating blood vessels and making you feel hot all over. Your tongue's receptors register the intensity of the pepper and relay that information to your brain, which interprets the pepper as a burning, pain-inducing interloper. When you bite into a ghost pepper, your mouth feels heat in the most extreme way.
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