Why do my hands feel hot after cutting chili peppers

I believe that everyone has cut peppers in their lives, especially those that are hotter. In the process of cutting the peppers, not only will your eyes feel stinging, but your hands will also feel a burning pain afterwards. If you feel discomfort in your eyes and rub your eyes, that feeling must be unforgettable. Therefore, you must wash your hands carefully after cutting peppers. So why do your hands feel so hot after cutting peppers?

After cutting the peppers, my hands felt like they were burned by fire and were burning hot. At this time, some people will rinse with cold water, but this can only slightly relieve the pain and cannot completely solve the problem. In fact, you can remove the spiciness by applying alcohol, vinegar, washing your hands with hot water, etc.

The substance that produces the spicy taste in chili peppers is a type of capsaicin, which is collectively called capsaicin. When cutting peppers, capsaicin sticks to the skin, causing the capillaries to dilate, resulting in redness and heat of the skin, and accelerating the local metabolic rate. At the same time, it will stimulate the pain nerves, which is why we usually feel burning hands. It is generally believed that this is caused by capsaicin causing chemical changes in the nerve endings of the skin.

Capsaicin is soluble in ethanol and alkaline aqueous solutions, but insoluble in cold water. In industry, capsaicin is extracted from chili peppers using edible alcohol as an extractant. Therefore, based on this principle, in life, you can apply alcohol to dissolve the capsaicin on your hands. After cutting peppers, you can wipe your hands in one direction with an alcohol cotton ball, then wash your hands with clean water, and then dry them. Do this three times until the symptoms are relieved.

In addition, you can also wash your hands with a small amount of vinegar. This is because vinegar is acidic and can neutralize capsaicin. If there is no medical alcohol or vinegar, washing your hands with hot water is also a good idea, because capsaicin will produce irritating evaporation under high temperature. Although it is not as effective as alcohol and vinegar, it is worse than cold water.

In fact, when cutting peppers, you can press the peppers with the pads of your fingers instead of pinching them with your fingernails, so that your hands are not easily burned.