How to get (and get rid of) chili burn:- Decide that your lunch looks rather plain, and actually it would be a lot more interesting if you added those super-hot chilis that you had in your dinner the other day and had to douse your mouth with milk after.
- Get the chili and feel really clever when you remember to take all the seeds out, that way you wont taste too much heat - what a clever girl you are!
- Chop it up (forgetting gloves, of course - who would be sooooo over-cautious?)
- Cook your food and think 'This smells really nice!'
- Just before you eat your super-hot stirfry get a bit on your finger and lick it off - holy christ! You remember now, these teeny chilis are stupidly hot. Like really super-power-hot.
- Eat the food quickly followed by about a litre of cool white milk. This was surely why milk was invented, for idiots who like to ruin their food by "experimenting" - I get this habit from my father...
- On the way to the post office to return that parcel, which is a crappy dress that could have been sewn by a 2 year old, that's what you get for ordering online. As you drive you notice that not only do your lips feel steamy, your nose feels like its been flushed with olbas oil vigourously and is strangely hot.
- On the way back from delivering the parcel notice that your fingers feel like they have each individually consumed a chili themselves. By magic.
- Get home and scrub your hands with soap and water - that ought to do it.
- After half an hour look up chili burn online to see if you made it up or if it actually exists.
- Find a million highly unusual tips and begin on the quest to find the cure.
- Begin with olive oil. Move on to lemon juice. Try both again. Notice that the burning is increasing.
- Text boyfriend feeling very disgruntled that he managed to chop the very same chilis just the other night without feeling a thing. He suggests milk.
- Look for kitchen roll to soak with milk. Soak loo roll with milk. Dab at hands impatiently, while wondering how on earth this can happen?!
- Read that using alcohol can help. Find bottle of vodka left from last party (make mental note to thank Becky for leaving it) and pour over hands in bathroom silently laughing at how weird this would look to anyone. Wash hands because they smell like an alcoholic's breath.
- Feel a bit stupid as you mix water with baking soda and cover your hands with it. Somehow unlock door with elbows(!) and go outside. Sit in the garden waiting for it to dry while wondering why the burning is actually INCREASING?
- Try the oil again. Refuse to pee on own hands as there seems to be a 50% customer satisfactoin with that one.
- Aha! A sudden flash of inspiration, sunburn cream WITH aloe vera! ... doesn't work.
- Read that you're not supposed to use anything cold as it makes the oil set in your pores. Curse a bit. Wash hands in warm water... curse a lot more - it hurts.
- Try the baking soda again, maybe it needed more time, everyone online is swearing by it. Attempt to turn on TV with powdery white fingers. LOL
- Take an anti-histamine because your dad swears by it.
- Put a deep pore cleansing mask on your fingers, and attempt to watch TV.
- Wash it off and realise hands are dyed green.
- Smother hands in sour cream and put them in sandwich bags. Take the bags off when they feel worse.
- Take some ibuprofen.
- Try the aloe vera cream again.
- Stick hands in a bowl of milk of magnesia - the pain seems to have lessened to a mild throbbing.
- Decide to write about it in your blog - and that honey will be your next choice if the burning returns.
And now I look up the chemistry behind it and find out - it's all in the mind. The chili oil doesn't even burn you at all!
The chemical responsible for it all is capsaicin:
It bonds to the receptor responsible for feeling pain (specifically burning and abrasion) and allows cations to pass through the cell membrane, which depolarizes the neuron, which subsequently alerts the brain. This makes us THINK we're being burned.Stupid brain, hurting my fingers all afternoon.
Ahh well, we all learn our lessons, that's probably the last time I'll touch a chili. Ever.
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