There was a sad story in the Albuquerque Journal last week about a young man from the Boston area who had died from ingesting too much capsicum in chile extract from participating in a “One Chip Challenge” that was circulating on social media.
The story noted that the young man had a congenital heart defect which made it more difficult for his body to process the intense hot flavor of the chile extract.
Reading the story made me think back to our daughter’s science fair project during middle school involving the effects of hot chile on humans. (I’m proud to say that both of our kids made it to the state science fair at New Mexico Tech with their projects. They didn’t get top state honors since those usually went to the sons or daughters of rocket scientists whose projects were so sophisticated and esoteric that it made my brain hurt when I tried to understand them.)
My son’s winning project involved predicting the time frame for deterioration of adobe bricks exposed to the outdoors. He had another project in which he tried to determine whether Seasonal Affective Disorder affected the behavior of mice kept in a dark closest. (I’ll save that story for a later time.)
Our daughter first tried an experiment to determine how quickly different colors or hot air balloon fabric deteriorated when exposed to constant sunlight and UV rays. She got an honorable mention at the local fair but did not advance to the state event . But her real “contribution to science” was an 8th grade project entitled “Chile Heat.”
In the project, she asked almost 50 neighbors, work associates and other individuals to taste some really hot green chile and determine whether it might instantly raise their body temperature. Her thought was that a dose of hot chile or its extract might help raise a person’s body temperature if they had been exposed to extreme cold.
The results were pretty impressive. Almost 84% of the participants showed an immediate increase in body temperature of about 1 degree after eating the hot green chile. Many of the participants (including me) had intensely watery eyes, red faces and at least a couple experienced severe hiccups.
I know from experience that you can get a pretty severe reaction to hot chile. I once ate a raw chile pepper that was so hot I thought I was going to choke and pass out. Another time, my wife and I peeled so much hot green chile that our hands began to burn. The pain was so intense that we called the state poison control center for help. Their only advice was to stick our hands in ice water for as long as we could stand it to numb the pain. I wore contact lenses at the time and I couldn’t insert them in my eyes for a week afterwards because of the continued burning sensation transferred from my fingers to the contacts and my eyes.
Chile does have its beneficial effects on humans. According to an article in “MedicalNewsToday,” capsicum, including capsaicin, “may help reduce pain and lower the risk of metabolic syndrome and cancer. Research also implies it may reduce the risk of death, as well as fight bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotics.”
But as much as most New Mexicans love their chile, we have to realize there may be a limit to how much we can tolerate the really hot stuff.
One thing I think New Mexican can ever get enough of is the aroma of roasting green chile. After all, the New Mexico Legislature in 2023 declared it as “the official state scent.” I think that’s a lot more appealing than the smell of crude oil in Texas or feedlots in Nebraska.
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