I know it’s cool to try to eat the spiciest foods you can . . . but this would make the whole thing way, way LESS cool.
There’s a new report in “The BMJ” about a 34-year-old guy who recently participated in a chili pepper eating contest, where he ate a Carolina Reaper.
That’s the pepper that went into the “Guinness Book of World Records” in 2013 as the world’s hottest pepper. It has an average heat level of 1.57 million Scoville heat units . . . for comparison, Tabasco sauce is about 5,000, or about 0.3% as hot.
But right after he ate the pepper, he started dry heaving. Then he had neck pain, and then TERRIBLE bursts of pain in his head. Eventually it got so bad he went to the ER.
It turned out he’d gotten a condition called Reversible Cerebral Vasoconstriction Syndrome that messes with the blood vessels in your brain. It causes severe “thunderclap headaches” . . . and in the worst cases, it could lead to seizures.
Fortunately for this guy, it’s just temporary, so it went away in a few weeks and didn’t cause any permanent damage.
The doctors say most people who eat hot peppers, even INSANELY hot ones, won’t have those kinds of issues. But if you eat one and you DO feel those awful headaches, now you know why.
(Gizmodo)
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