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Spicy Sauce a Hot New Surgery Idea
How much would it hurt if you poured hot sauce on a scraped knee? Probably a whole lot! Even so, doctors are putting the same stuff that singes your tongue to a cool new use. They're taking a purer form capsaicin, the ingredient that puts the sizzle in hot sauce, and pouring it into open wounds during surgery. Ouch!
It's not as crazy as it sounds. When you taste hot sauce, you feel a burning sensation at first. But then your tongue gets numb and you don't feel anything for awhile. The surgery patients are still under anesthesia when the capsaicin is put in their wounds, so they can't feel any pain. By the time they wake up, the capsaicin has numbed the wound, As a result, they feel less pain than they would have without the treatment.
If this new treatment works, then patients won't feel as much pain after a surgery, and they won't have to take as many pain medications. In tests so far, the experiment seems to be working. People who had knee replacement surgery with the new hot stuff felt less pain in the weeks afterward than the people who didn't have the treatment. Who knows? Maybe hot sauce is good for more than burritos?
I'm Adelbert and that's what happened in Science this week!
Want to learn more? Let's play just the facts.
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