Hole in esophagus after eating super hot pepper

April 06, 2017

photo source: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

Spicy food can be pretty good, but there are limits. That experienced an American who participated in an eating contest, called chilli challenge. The 47-year-old man was eating a burger topped with a hot chili sauce. And the salsa was made from not just a pepper, but the Bhut Jolokia, the third-hottest pepper in the world, also known as ghost pepper. When he eat the hamburger, the man began to vomit, and do so severe that he had to be transported to the hospital. There doctors discovered that he had a 2.5 centimeter hole in his esophagus. Then the man urgently needed surgery and was 23 days in the hospital.

By consuming the hot burger he received the so-called syndrome of Boerhaave. The symptoms: severe vomiting and spontaneous perforation of the esophagus. The rare condition can be fatal. How hot is a pepper?

Ghost peppers are measured 'heat' of more than one million units in the so-called Scoville Scale. Then you can read how hot a pepper is. A value between 500 and 1000 people experience a dish as sharp. Jalapeno scores between 2500 and 8000 units of the scale. The Carolina Reaper scored more than 2.2 million units on the Scoville Scale. This makes it the hottest pepper in the world. On place two, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, on three Jolokia.