How to keep peppers fresh

If you don't pay attention to the preservation and storage of peppers, many problems will arise, such as deterioration and withering. This will make the peppers have no moisture when you eat them, and may even produce other flavors. The most important thing is to prevent the loss of the nutrients contained in them, so they must be placed in the refrigerator for preservation and storage to ensure that the peppers are absolutely fresh.

Function and indications

1. "Compendium of Materia Medica": Solanum capsicum is hot and dispersing in nature, and can also remove dampness. There was a little boy who drank cold water and slept in the shade in the summer. In the autumn, he suffered from malaria. No medicine worked. It lasted until early winter. He occasionally ate hot sauce, which was quite palatable. He ate it with every meal and also used it to make porridge. Soon, the malaria healed. This is because water accumulates in the chest and diaphragm, turning into cold phlegm, which can be dispersed by spicy medicine, just like pouring soup over snow ear.

2. Yao Kecheng's "Food Materia Medica": It can eliminate food stagnation, relieve gas, stimulate appetite, ward off evil, and kill all kinds of fishy smells and poisons.

3. "Baicao Mirror": wash frostbite, bathe for cold scabies, and purge cold habits in the large intestine meridian.

4. "Medicinal Properties": warms the middle and dispels cold, eliminates wind and induces sweating, removes cold habits, and removes phlegm and dampness.

5. "Food Do's and Don'ts": warms the middle and lowers the Qi, dispels cold and dampness, relieves depression and eliminates phlegm, helps digestion, kills insects and detoxifies. Treat vomiting, treat indigestion, stop diarrhea, and eliminate athlete's foot.

6. "Drug Inspection": It can dispel wind and promote blood circulation, dispel cold and relieve depression, guide stagnation, stop diarrhea, and cure tinea. [2]

Pharmacological Action

①Effects on the digestive system

Capsaicin tincture or capsaicin can be taken internally as a stomachic, which has the effect of promoting appetite and improving digestion. Animal experiments (Basov gastric paralysis dogs) have shown that chili water stimulates the oral mucosa and reflexively enhances gastric motility. Condiments made from various peppers can increase saliva secretion and amylase activity after oral administration. Large doses taken orally can cause gastritis, enteritis, diarrhea, vomiting, etc. It has been shown that chili peppers have inhibitory and antispasmodic effects on the isolated intestines of animals.

② Antibacterial and insecticidal effects

Capsaicin has a significant inhibitory effect on Bacillus cereus and Bacillus subtilis, but is ineffective against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. Its branches and leaves have no antibacterial effect and only have a slight inhibitory effect on Mycobacterium tuberculosis. 10-20% chili pepper fried in water has the effect of killing bed bugs.

③Redness effect

When used externally as an ointment, it has a stimulating effect on the skin, causing local blood vessels in the skin to reflexively dilate and promote local blood circulation. Tinctures can be used for frostbite; but some people believe that chili peppers only strongly stimulate the sensory nerve endings, causing a feeling of warmth, but have little effect on blood vessels, and do not cause foaming even at high concentrations, so they cannot be considered an erythema-causing agent.

④Effects on the circulatory system

Spicy substances (ginger, pepper, and especially chili pepper) can stimulate the taste receptors on the human tongue, reflexively causing an increase in blood pressure (especially diastolic pressure) without a significant effect on the pulse. Intravenous injection of capsaicin or chili preparations into anesthetized cats and dogs can cause a transient drop in blood pressure, a slow heartbeat, and difficulty breathing, which is caused by stimulation of chemoreceptors or stretch receptors in the lungs and coronary arteries. It has a direct excitatory effect on the isolated guinea pig atrium and a constrictive effect on the blood vessels of the hind limbs of rats.