Okay, my wife is a lot smarter then me. I admit it. And I benefit greatly from her being smarter then me, the following case in point. She was reading an old edition of the New England Journal of Medicine and came across an article / letter regarding “Hunan Hand”
Apparently an afflicted young man had rushed to the hospital, moaning and waving his hands all about. The patient was experiencing dizziness, acute pain and his pulse was dropping. The young man had been sanding furniture and after a days work, had decided to prepare a traditional Chinese lunch with peppers and chicken. While washing the peppers, the pungent chemicals got to the pain receptors at the tips of his fingers, the largest concentration of pain receptors in the human body.
Talk about scary, I’ve experience chile pepper pain, but nothing this intense apparently. The young man was treated with lidocaine and released with not long lasting effects, except quite possibly a new found respect for chile peppers.
In response, yet another doctor wrote in and described very similar incidents, with all the cases he described coming from the Texas ~ New Mexico area. The treatment he recommended was vinegar. Apparently the vinegar neutralizes the pain.
I’m going to be sure to try this one out, or at least buy some vinegar for the next time I do something stupid. And believe me, I’ll do something stupid soon.
35 responses to “Hunan Hand”
Oprah did a show a few years ago about people doing unusual things. A man ate a whole bunch of hot peppers (not sure what kind, probably jalapeno) in a row.
Oprah seemed shocked, and asked him if his mouth was hot, or if it bothered his stomach. He answered non-chalently, acting cool…UNTIL he rubbed his eye.
He started spazzing all over the stage! I thought Oprah was going to spaz too; she seemed SO upset and asked her people to call an ambulance for him. I was howling with laughter by then LOL
I wear rubber gloves when I need to pick the peppers, and I’m NEVER in the kitchen while the peppers are cooking, my poor sensitive self can’t handle the fumes. One day, I was carrying a box of hot sauce out to the van, and there must have been some oil on the habanero box because by bedtime my hand was hurting so badly, I went to bed with it hanging in a bucket of ice-water.
And then there’s me, the freak, the one who, with peppers hot enough that people from the other room could feel the heat as I chopped ’em, never bothers to wear gloves or washes hands immediately after handling hot peppers because they’ve never bothered me. Ever.
But no, don’t try that at home, kiddies, or you could be in a world of pain.
Or, you know, so I’m told. :p
In the course of 15 years of processing chiles and manufacturing sauces, I’ve had chiles over every square inch of my body at one time or another. Yes- we’ll let the full impact of that statement settle in for a minute. Three instances come readily to mind. 1) I was using a bottler with a large 5 gl, ‘V’ shaped funnel as the holding tank. Being rather tired, I poured in the 185 F hab sauce *way* too fast. Like a tidal wave, it went down the funnel and up the other side to come cascading down over my head. In addition to being skin peeling hot, I stood there spitting hab mash out of my mouth, nose and eyes thinking “yup- this is gonna hurt REAL bad”. It did. 2) While dicing up several hundred pounds of Red Savina(R) habanero for a sauce *very* late I night, I found I’d been leaning up against the counter a little too much. That fact came to ‘light’ when I felt a large wet spot on the front of my blue jeans and noticed a slight warming sensation starting. Need I go furhter? 3) The last memorable lesson occured shortly after thoroughly shaking and mixing up a bucket of straight 2 million Scoville extract. I unscrewed the pour spout and set it down… a little too hard it seemed for it ‘burped’ while I was leaning over it and got about 2 ounces of extract straight between the eyes. Ouch. All part of the fun of owning your own business I guess 🙂
I have cleaned some habs before with no gloves and forgot to wash well before using the john, the rest is ancient “agony” history.
Yeah, I think we’ve all had our “Hab Moments”. There were a few times my wife would almost fall off the couch laughing at me. I think she may have sabotaged my gloves a few times. I guess it kinda serves me right…Bad weekend benders, BAD!
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I knew I really liked your wife!
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There is a ‘you know you’re a chilehead if’ list kept by =Mark from NJ. “You know you’re a chilehead if you wash your hands BEFORE you go to the bathroom” 😉
On more than one occasion I have eaten wings and forgotten to take out my contacts before eating them. A mistake I try not to keep making! My eyes burn!!! Don’t forget some killer crawfish that help you feel the burn in your eyes. I am getting better about it though 😀 Washing hands doesnt always help unfortunately!
I’ve learned that washing in cold water helps.
T
I have found that first rinsing hands in straight bleach and then scrubbing them with rubbing alcohol pretty much does the trick. The bleach will get the happy crystals to come to the surface, and the alcohol puts them into solution so they are easily removed.
I tend to prepare chillies with nitrile gloves on… (the latex ones make me itch… go figure), but even so, every once in a while I’ve ended up with that slow-building hot sensation that leads to watering eyes if I ever need to take a john break soon after, despite washing hands…
…As an extra safety precaution, I double glove when preparing habs… and am yet to puncture both sets… but now I’ve said that, I’ve jinxed myself!
My first husband was making nachos with jalapeños while still healing from a vasectomy and then went to the bathroom…..well you get the picture
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It doesn’t usually bug Curt at all
But me -I wear a mask over my mouth and nose and still end up leaving every few minutes to have a coughing fit when we cook. And I always wear double gloves when we process and still have that fun little tingle in my hands by the end of the day
But I can eat hotter sauce them him – so I have the better end of the deal
I once took a shot of near-boiling habanero hot sauce right to the eye and my contacts saved me! I quickly popped it out and my eye was fine. Apparantly the contact shielded my eye from the sauce.
I also got sick of washing my eyes 3 or 4 times just to still have removing them at night burn, so now I just use the gloves to remove contacts after cooking sauce.
I can relate to the shot to the face. We are in the beginning stages of the Batch #3. I went to smell the boiling liquid (orang habs and an ancient Chinese secret) when the pot decided to unleash Krakatoa on me. Took a direct shot to the face, thank God for goggles! I got first degree burns on the lower part of my face, and lovely burns on the inside of my nose, NICE! Thank God St. Barnabas Burn Unit is around the corner. After 2 weeks now, they state there won’t be any permanent scars. As my wife, in her endless quest for compassionate empathy stated, “You live ny the sword, you die by the sword”. Well, at least the “Creator-Wear” has some nice little battle scars now.
Wow, at least mine wasn’t that hot. I hope it heals nicely.
ouch!
Speaking of painful moments anybody buy gas lately. Yikes!!! I just got back from filling up my tank – $67. That hurt.
Hmmmm, perhaps there is a way to convert Habaneros into gasoline. What a concept, everyone behind you will be blinded by the fumes…
Taste great and good milage too!
Another cure for the hand- at least for the pain, if not for the contamination- is to keep some Bactine or Solarcaine nearby. As both are topical anesthetics, they help.
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I bet it is still only half the price it is here 😀
$2.40 regular here. And people laugh at NJ for having all the chemical plants They forget we have the refineries too. Bwaaahaaaaahaaa. 🙂
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Just paid $3.15
Ha, you think that’s pricy? I just got a quote for $105 USD for a pound of chocolate habaneros.
Beat that!
John… We’re glad you’re ok… maybe time to break out the industrial goalie mask?
T
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Ouch! What do they normally cost?
BTW gas here is 2.72
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Based on the quote I just got, $105 USD. I can get Orange habs for a couple of bucks a lb, so this struck me as insane!
I know I can get the peppers (in mash) cheaper than that. That’s simply a quote that I got for the fresh peppers. I was floored.
(Gas here is just over $1.10 CAD a litre… I don’t know how to translate that into American).
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Hmmm, The Creator Goalie Mask, now THAT would be interesting, especially during the many tailgates before a hockey game. Now, to figure out how to mount the filters on the cage…
Go Devils!
I guess we all had our Hunan anything moment. Me too when I cleaned some Madame Jeanettes (Habanero like chile). The juice got under my fingernails and burnt for 4 solid days and no way to get rid of it than taking the heat literally. No pain, no gain?
No pain no gain indeed, couple days ago I deseeded about 500 grams of madame jeanettes and aji umba’s without gloves or anything, and later that day in the shower my whole head burned. Only thing is, it doesn’t bother me anymore as I got used to it! Today I cut up a chocolate habanero, wich was WAY hotter than any other madame jeanette or aji umba or any pepper I ever tasterd for that matter. And I just scratched my back wich is burning now, and I somewhat later I touched my ear and my eyes. Everything has a burning sensation to it now. But all I can say, you get used to it. Or at least I did
here’s a laugh, the local shop had some”Hot” peppers i go Jalapeno’s coool ,got 10 went and deseeded, no gloves. then kept the cases to put in dinner, I sweated heaps during dinner, so i rubbed the sweat away, Errrrrrrrrrrrr.
Burning Face,a tip Dont Jump in the Shower that increases the burning and it Stings,, 3 hrs later and im typing this, my fingers are burning now.
I Love chilli’s………….. lol
“Burning Face,a tip Dont Jump in the Shower that increases the burning and it Stings”
I am usually already in the shower, and when I soap my face, thats usually when the burning begins. But it doesn’t bother my anymore. Just another day eating peppers:)
THANK YOU!
I read the word ‘vionegar’, sprinted to the kitchen and poured an ample amount over my hand. I am now dunking my afflicted hand in a bowl of the lovely (stink) stuff every few minutes as the pain becomes unbearable (again)
Here we Go,, Yay…. hope this helps …
touching chilies and dealing with the aftermath:
When treating so-called “Hunan hand” in the emergency room, the treatment of choice is a weak bleach solution (approx. 1 tablespoon to a liter of water). Soak your hands in it briefly. The chlorine in the bleach breaks the capsaicin molecule and renders it non-hot. The pain stops immediately.
For those who get the stuff in their eyes (or for gentlemen, somewhere else they, uh, shouldn’t have touched before soaking their hands in bleach…), the specific treatment is contact lens wetting solution. This also breaks the molecule.