Feel the burn! Or maybe not...

At the mention of chili peppers, several images/fragmented thoughts flash into my mind.

I see red.
I see a group of long haired guys with guitars singing “Hey Oh” They want me to listen to what they say oh.
I see little dancing peppers with faces singing about baby back ribs…and barbeque sauce (In my mind, this last line is sung in deep bass)
I see flames erupting from my mouth. Water makes it worse. Must eat bread.
I see doctors and nurses in a hospital about to perform knee replacement surgery.

OK, so I lied about that last image. I’ve never associated chili peppers with hospitals, unless maybe I’m there to treat third-degree burns on my tongue. But according to an AP article, doctors are experimenting with these spicy specimens as possible painkillers in agonizing surgeries like knee replacements. Doctors drip the fiery chemical in chili peppers, called capsaicin, directly into a patient’s open wound. What do I say-oh to that? Ouch.

If salt in an open wound is cliché for intensifying pain, instincts tell me that chili-pepper juice on broken flesh is cruel and unusual. Disclaimer for reader at home wanting to test this theory—don’t. Doctors use an ultra-purified form of capsaicin in their experiments. In a controlled environment, doctors suggest that drenching exposed nerves with chili-pepper serum provides a numbing effect similar to the sensation in your mouth after the initial burning of biting a chili pepper wears off. The benefit of this alternative pain reliever—patients would need less of the effective yet dangerously addictive narcotic painkillers.

Despite my hesitations to treating wounds with the same vegetable that cooks are advised to handle with gloves, early studies suggest that these doctors are on to something. In a study of people undergoing knee replacement surgery, the half treated with capsaicin used less morphine in the 48 hours after surgery and experienced less pain for two weeks after the surgery. Chili peppers the new Valium? Wouldn’t be the first time my instincts lost to a PhD.