Why are peppers spicy, hot and can use chili to relieve pain?

Chili is a fruit used as a spice to prepare dishes in many parts of the world. With unique hot spicy properties, chili is often used to stimulate taste to make dishes more delicious and attractive. And recently, researchers have discovered an interesting feature of chili: helping to reduce it . This article will explain the cause of hot chili effect, chili applications and from there, explain what mechanism makes chili help to reduce pain for people?

In a recent clinical trial, researchers used a super-hot patch containing the main ingredient extracted from chili paste on a patient's foot. The results show that not only does this therapy cause pain, but it can also help the patient's feet to relieve pain quickly. So what helped chili work like that?

How is chilliness level measured?

Wilbur Lincoln Scoville (1865-1942) who studied and introduced a system to assess the spicy intensity of chili

In a study in the 1910s to understand the extremely diverse and abundant properties of chili, Wilbur American pharmacist Lincoln Scoville sought to systematize and measure the spicy level of many different peppers. This system was built with the goal of universally measuring the hotness of each type of chili instead of using only the sensory assessment that was still used before. Finally in 1912, Scoville devised a system for measuring the spicy intensity of chili .

Until now, people still use Scoville's system to evaluate and classify different varieties of peppers based on spicy intensity. According to Scoville spicy scales , peppers or peppermint peppers. The peppers of Jalapeños are spicy in the range of 2500 to 8000 SHU (Scoville spicy units) while the Scotch Bonnet peppers have a spicy content of about 100,000 up to 350,000 SHU.

The world's most spicy Carolina Reaper with 1.5 million SHU spicy

One of the most spicy peppers is bhut jolokia , also known as chili peppers with a spicy temperature of about 900,000 SHU. This is the type of chili used by the Indian army to make a spicy grenade to help disperse the crowd. However, the most spicy record is the Carolina Reaper chili with a spicy 1.5 million SHU. This number is really a challenge for spicy eaters in many parts of the world.

What made the hot spicy feeling when eating chili?

In fact, what regulates the spicy characteristics in each of the peppers is a colorless and odorless chemical called capsaicin . It is the concentration of capsaicin in each type of chili that corresponds to the different spicy intensity of each type of chili. At the purity level, capsaicin is a toxin, corresponding to a spicy 15 million SHU and can kill anyone who swallowed.

In fact, capsaicin can dissolve in alcohol and fat but cannot dissolve in water, so drinking milk when eating spicy peppers is a better solution than drinking water many times. In addition, when eating chili the human body will secrete Endorphine which works almost like opium. This explains why some people always have chili in their meals to satisfy their appetite.

In nature, only birds can detect and eat peppers. This is a characteristic that helps chili disperse seeds away. In contrast, the hot feeling that peppers cause helps to limit mammals from eating because strong teeth can crush chilli seeds. For mammals including humans, capsaicin acts as an "illusion" . It's a chemical trick to fool the brain to create a hot and spicy feeling.

Mechanism of action of capsaicin

Mechanism of action of capsaicin and TRPV1

This happens when capsaicin is involved in the activity of a special protein channel (a bio-gate type of cell) on the surface of nerve cells that regulates pain and heat. Typically, these proteins are called TRPV1 receptors and are in rest state except to be awakened by temperatures above 42 degrees C. When stimulated, these cells will signal heat and pain. . This is a form of warning to help the brain reflect reflexes away from heat sources that can be dangerous to health. Structure of TRPV1 in different birds and mammals. In birds, capsaicin has absolutely no ability to penetrate and activate this protein to function.

On the human body, the upper receptor protein is present everywhere in the entire nervous system , including neurons in the skin as well as in the digestive system. That means chili will have an impact on the human body both internally and externally. This explains why when eating chili, the human body often activates cooling mechanisms such as sweating or even urination to cool the body.

Use chili to relieve pain outside the skin

An analgesic gel derived from chili

When chili is in direct contact with the skin, it causes a burning sensation like a burn caused by capsaicin which activates TRPV1 in active skin nerves. However, if exposure takes place long enough, nerve cells send pain signals to the brain will be "exhausted" and the chemical system inside the cell is depleted. At that time, nerve cells were no longer able to cope with capsaicin. Not only capsaicin but also cells are no longer able to receive other pain.

This is why long-term exposure to capsaicin in chili can act as an analgesic. With this treatment, the patient will try to endure the heat left by the chillies on the skin and wait until the cells are "tired" , then the patient will no longer feel pain. In the actual test, the researchers used pieces corresponding to the heat of the 10 million SHU chili.