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toddunderscore previously said:
I'm going to ask the question everyone wants to, but is afraid to admit it's a problem.
How come when people eat blazin' hot wings, their anus burns the next morning?
I'd love to hear any ER stories associated with that question.
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Quote:
mlovett previously said:
I'm going to take a wild guess that it's the capsaicin. That is some nasty stuff. Some dingbat in my old lab weighed some out, not in the fume hood, and about killed every frigging person that walked down the hospital hall. DOH!
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I've been unavailable for a few days because my young cousin was in town to shadow me in the hospital and talk about his pre-med aspirations. We had a blast. I even took him night 4-wheeling!! We did Box Canyon. I didn't want to do anything severe since we were a solo vehicle.
mlovett is dead-on with the ring-of-fire answer. The pain comes from unaltered capsaicin which makes it to the south exit.
Capsaicin is an organic molecule (but not a protein) which is manufactured by hot peppers and plays NO KNOWN ROLE in their cellular metabolism. It interacts directly with pain nerve endings when brought against mucosal surfaces. It dissolves well in oils and in organic solvents. It dissolves decently in ethyl aclohol, and poorly in water. Capsaicin is not rapidly degraded by enteric enzymes and it is not readily absorbed either. It tends to pass through the system unscathed.
There are a number of interesting things to think about in regard to capsaicin.
First off, it's a fantastic example of how fascinating plants are. Most people don't realize how profoundly different plants are from animal life forms. Where animals evolve to adapt by their forms and behaviors, plants evolve to adapt chemically. Animal cells typically do not manufacture one single molecule that isn't goal directed at some selfish purpose. Plants make molecules that have no use to the plant at all, in any direct way. Instead, these molecules are the way that the plant interacts with other life forms.
For example, animals learn to scurry into holes as a defense mechanism. Plants, however, evolve distasteful molecules that defend the plant from ingestion, or that encourage ingestion, as the case may be. Many of the molecules that are made, require multiple synthetic steps and cost a significant amount of energy. Some of these molecules - like capsaicin, for example, or like the tetrahydrocannabinol in marijuana or the opium in poppies, play absolutely no physiologic role in the plant, yet they are custom-fit to interact with specific types of chemical receptors in other organisms like ourselves.
Personally, I find this phenomenon mind boggling. The incredible chemical diversity that exists in plants, and the fact that there are plant chemicals being made "just in case" they might be of some selection benefit in the evolution of the plant form... is eerie.
Another thing that is interesting about capsaicin is a historical tid-bit.
Around the turn of the 20th century, there was a physician named Wilbur Scoville who had interest in the possibility of medicinal value in hot peppers.
The trick was to do this with the best possible scientific basis and it was complicated by the fact that different kinds of peppers clearly had different amounts of "heat", which was referred to at the time as "pungency". Dr. Scoville wanted to be able to prescribe a certain amount of pungency rather than a certain amount of peppers by dry weight, since batch to batch variation made this unscientific.
Dr. Scoville came up with a BRILLIANT way to standardize hot peppers. He took a measured weight of dried pepper and soaked it in a measured volume of alcohol. This brought the capsacin into solution, and the plant matter was discarded. The pepper solution was then diluted with sugar water, first 10:1, then 100:1, then 1000:1 and so on. A panel of 5 tasters were given small sips of the (possibly peppered) sugar water and they were asked to report if they could detect pepper pungency in the taste. If the 1000:1 had detectable pepper in it, but the 10,000:1 did not, they would make a 2000:1 and a 3000:1, etc. The final serial dilution where pepper was detectable represented that pepper's "Scoville Heat Unit" value.
A jalapeno, for example, has a heat value of about 5000. A cayenne might have 50,000, and habanero has been measured at over 500,000. Pepperocini comes in at about 100...
This scale can still be found in use today. I've seen it referenced in cook books.
It seems that Dr. Scoville's research wasn't the only thing in his life that was hot. His daughter was apparently a looker too. She was being courted by a rich man's son that Dr. Scoville didn't apparently have a high opinion of, but the young man wanted to make an earnest effort at winning the father's approval. He developed a drink that was being served in the now prospering soda-pop business, and in honor of the father of his intended bride, he named it based on Scoville's well-earned nickname.
Dr. Pepper.
This is a true story.
My understanding is that it worked. They were married and lived happily ever after.
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