subject: The pepper experiment [print this page] One especially knows peppers for their spicy hot flavor, however did you know that in some countries of Asia they use it to relieve rheumatic pain?
More and more used to relieve the back pain, a team of researchers bent on the question and decided that they needed an answer.
The study carried itself on 320 patients who endured back pain. These 320 patients were divided in two groups. The first group received a plaster containing capsaicin, the active substance in hot peppers. The second group received a placebo, which is a plaster without any effect. None of the patients nor the doctors participating in the study knew which ones were the plasters containing capsaicin. Beforehand, the back pains of each of the patients have been measured thanks to scientifically validated scales.
After three weeks of treatment, the patients of the group who used the plasters containing capsaicin saw their pains to cut down by 42% against 31% for the other group. With 74% of efficiency, the physicians speculated that the plasters containing capsaicin were excellent, compared to 36% for the placebo. Among the patients, the satisfaction was a lot more tangible, because 82% of the patients interrogated reported that they no longer endured back pain or saw their situations improved significantly compared to only 50% for the placebo. As for the secondary effects, they were limited to localized cutaneous reactions (12 patients against 5 for the placebo).
Finally, the researchers admitted that the plasters containing capsaicin was a very efficient remedy against the back pain.
A great trick from a recipe book on http://top-chef-master-chef.blogspot.com/ is to relieve back pain temporally in case of an emergency, take a little bit of harissa or tabasco and add a little oil in order to make the dough humid. Put everything in a compress and apply it to the painful area. As soon as you feel that the heat is becoming too strong, remove the compress. Restart the process if necessary but do not use the same compress twice!
