Greg Foster of Irvine, California, holds the Guiness World Record for Carolina Reaper eating. That is over 400 times spicier than jalapeño peppers, which average 3,500 to 8,000 on the Scoville scale, according to a 2013 study. The pepper measures roughly 1.5 million on the Scoville Heat Scale - a measurement of the pungency, or spiciness, of chili peppers - according to the company’s website. The Carolina Reaper was bred in 2013 by Ed Currie of the Puckerbutt Pepper Company. “Capsaicin, the key ingredient in the pepper, is a vasoactive substance, so it could potentially narrow the blood vessels to the most important organs like the heart and brain.” “This is the first time that pepper has been related to RCVS,” Gunasekaran said. The substance is known to cause constriction of blood vessels in some parts of the body and is even used at low concentrations in some topical medications.Ī 2012 study documented a 25-year-old man who had a heart attack and coronary vasospasms after taking cayenne pepper pills - which also contain large amounts of capsaicin - for weight loss.īut this would be the first documented case of hot peppers causing vasoconstriction in the brain, according to the report. Hot peppers have a high concentration of capsaicin, a chemical responsible for the spiciness of certain foods. “But most of them will do well with only recurrent headaches, and then they have a total recovery,” she added. “But the mortality is low, around 2% … and most patients who die from RCVS are young women and often in the postpartum state. “A proportion of patients will have a severe form with strokes, and they can get either an intracranial hemorrhage of an ischemic stroke,” Ducros said. Severe cases can even be life-threatening, according to Ducros. It is normally associated with certain medications, such as ergotamine or triptans, and illicit drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamines - not peppers. Anne Ducros, professor of neurology and head of the migraine and headache unit at the University of Montpellier, who was not involved in the report. RCVS is typically characterized by an intense “thunderclap” headache due to constriction of blood vessels in the brain and usually resolves within a few days or weeks, according to Dr. Gregory Cummings, the neurologist on the case, eventually diagnosed the man with reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome, or RCVS, probably caused by the hot peppers. “You could see the beaded appearance, and the yellow arrows point to the narrowing of the blood vessels.” “Then CT angiography was done, which showed narrowing of the blood vessels in the brain,” Gunasekaran said. CT imaging also ruled out a blood clot or bleeding in one of the large blood vessels supplying the brain.īut a CT angiogram of the brain’s blood vessels did reveal something unusual: a substantial narrowing of the left internal carotid artery and four other blood vessels supplying the brain. The man did not have any neurological deficits such as slurred speech, muscle weakness or vision loss that would have indicated a stroke. When the patient arrived at the hospital, physicians were not positive what had caused his symptoms. “Because he could not tolerate the headache, they sent him to the ER,” he added. Kulothungan Gunasekaran, an internal medicine physician at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and a lead author of the report, who was not involved in the patient’s care. “The patient ate the pepper and immediately starting having a severe headache that started in the back of the head and spread all over within two seconds,” said Dr. The man developed excruciating pain in his head and neck, prompting him to go to an emergency room, according to an article published Monday in the journal BMJ Case Reports. The 34-year-old man, who was not identified, experienced a series of intense headaches and dry heaving after eating a Carolina Reaper, reportedly the hottest pepper in the world, during the contest in New York. What happened to a contestant in a hot-pepper-eating contest may give spicy food aficionados one more reason to “fear the reaper,” according to a recent case report. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.
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