A man who took part in a chili pepper eating contest ended up with more than he bargained for when he took on the hottest pepper in the world.
After eating a Carolina Reaper pepper, the 34-year-old started dry heaving before developing a pain in his neck that turned into a series of thunderclap headaches: sudden and severe episodes of excruciating pain that peak within a minute.
The Carolina Reaper, which can top 2.2 million on the Scoville heat scale, was the world’s hottest pepper at the time of the incident in 2016 — although new breeds called Pepper X and Dragon’s Breath have since reportedly surpassed it.
The details, published in the journal BMJ Case Reports, said the pain was so terrible the man went to the emergency room at Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, a village in New York State.
“[A thunderclap headache] lasts for a few minutes and it might be associated with dry-heaving, nausea, vomiting — and then it gets better on its own. But it keeps coming back,” said Kulothungan Gunasekaran of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, a co-author of the report.
Thunderclap headaches can be caused by a number of problems, including bleeding inside the brain or blood clots, Gunasekaran added.
Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging scans of the man’s brain were taken, but showed nothing out of the ordinary. What is more, the man did not report having any speech or vision problems.
However, when the medical team tried another type of CT scan designed to look at the blood vessels in the brain, they had a surprise.
A number of arteries in the brain had narrowed and, as a result, the team decided it was a condition known as reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS), which probably caused the thunderclap headache.
The diagnosis was backed up by a scan five weeks later showing the arteries had returned to normal.
In rare cases, RCVS can cause a stroke, Gunasekaran said.
While such narrowing of the blood vessels can be triggered by certain medications or drugs, the team found nothing of the sort when they screened the man’s urine. Instead, they said that it was likely the Carolina Reaper was to blame.
It was not the first time chili peppers have triggered serious repercussions.
“Actually, when we were looking at the literature we found a couple of cases similar to our case,” Gunasekaran said.
Weight-loss pills made from another type of chilli pepper are believed to have caused a heart attack in a 25-year-old man by triggering a sudden narrowing of the coronary artery, and a 33-year-old man died from a heart attack after eating a super-hot sauce he had cooked up from homegrown chilis.
In 2016, a 47-year-old man had a brush with death after he tore his esophagus by retching and straining after eating pureed ghost pepper.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the