Post by faskew on Nov 14, 2018 10:31:23 GMT -5
This Chemical Is So Hot It Destroys Nerve Endings—in a Good Way
www.wired.com/story/resiniferatoxin/
Temporarily messes with nerve endings to stop pain. Treatment has to be repeated every so often. Being tested on terminal cancer patients and such, who can be pain-free and drug-free for their last days. Sounds like a lot of possible uses, in the future. Except eating. 8->
Quote from the article:
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"In Morocco there grows a cactus-like plant that’s so hot, I have to insist that the next few sentences aren’t hyperbole. On the Scoville Scale of hotness, its active ingredient, resiniferatoxin, clocks in at 16 billion units. That’s 10,000 times hotter than the Carolina reaper, the world’s hottest pepper, and 45,000 times hotter than the hottest of habaneros, and 4.5 million times hotter than a piddling little jalapeno. Euphorbia resinifera, aka the resin spurge, is not to be eaten. Just to be safe, you probably shouldn’t even look at it.
"But while that toxicity will lay up any mammal dumb enough to chew on the resin spurge, resiniferatoxin has also emerged as a promising painkiller. Inject RTX, as it’s known, into an aching joint, and it’ll actually destroy the nerve endings that signal pain. Which means medicine could soon get a new tool to help free us from the grasp of opioids."
www.wired.com/story/resiniferatoxin/
Temporarily messes with nerve endings to stop pain. Treatment has to be repeated every so often. Being tested on terminal cancer patients and such, who can be pain-free and drug-free for their last days. Sounds like a lot of possible uses, in the future. Except eating. 8->
Quote from the article:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In Morocco there grows a cactus-like plant that’s so hot, I have to insist that the next few sentences aren’t hyperbole. On the Scoville Scale of hotness, its active ingredient, resiniferatoxin, clocks in at 16 billion units. That’s 10,000 times hotter than the Carolina reaper, the world’s hottest pepper, and 45,000 times hotter than the hottest of habaneros, and 4.5 million times hotter than a piddling little jalapeno. Euphorbia resinifera, aka the resin spurge, is not to be eaten. Just to be safe, you probably shouldn’t even look at it.
"But while that toxicity will lay up any mammal dumb enough to chew on the resin spurge, resiniferatoxin has also emerged as a promising painkiller. Inject RTX, as it’s known, into an aching joint, and it’ll actually destroy the nerve endings that signal pain. Which means medicine could soon get a new tool to help free us from the grasp of opioids."
