Capsaicin
Capsaicin is the active ingredient in hot peppers. What I know about it seems to have little in common with, say, the Wikipedia article.
In my world, capsaicin has two uses:
It sort of chemically fools the body into feeling too hot and then the body opens a cell channel that flushes fluid from the cell. Among other things, you can end up sweating.
Like a lot of people with CF, I have chronic edema. It is less bad than it used to be and hot peppers are a factor in that.
I began by adding an entire habanero pepper to the carb portion of my evening meal at home and then I added less and less as I quickly could not tolerate that much. I did this either every day for two weeks or maybe every day for five days out of the week for two weeks.
This served as a form of loading dose to get a bunch into my system at one time and then I continued eating milder things. Like I would ask for sliced red pepper on my sandwich at lunch, I kept medium heat salsa in the house and I routinely had pepper jack cheese as part of a sandwich or with potato chips.
A few months later, I repeated the temporary daily consumption of habanero pepper to get the amount in my body back up.
I found that eating hot peppers and then walking afterwards dramatically increased how effective this was at treating my edema. I would eat hot peppers and go for a long walk and I would pee a river and shrink.
This was so effective that I lost several dress sizes in a few months and total strangers began stopping me on the street or in the grocery store or at my place of employment and saying "I see you walking all the time. Wow, you've really lost a LOT of weight." and ask for diet tips.
I would make polite noises about walking and trying to eat right and not get into the fact that "I have a genetic disorder and I've essentially discovered a kind of biohack for my condition."
Watermelon was also helpful for supporting this process. Watermelon is excellent kidney support and can help flush edema from the system and can help repair damaged kidneys. I consumed watermelon like six days a week for something like two years to help repair my kidneys and get my edema down.
These days, I consume hot peppers as a routine part of my diet probably at least several days a week, often via simple methods like using the packet of hot peppers included with pizza or ordering spicy Asian dishes or similar.
I up my intake if I have been exposed to something and need to help my body combat infection. I also have sort of half-formed plans to someday make a concerted effort to do the hot peppers, watermelon and walking combo that caused me to so dramatically lose multiple dress sizes in short order because I would like to try to resolve my remaining belly bloat.
In my experience, how much hot peppers burn is partly a function of how infected I am. If I'm sick and the capsaicin is killing stuff, I get much more of a burning sensation in my mouth than if I'm not currently infected with something.
In my world, capsaicin has two uses:
- Broad spectrum antimicrobial that kills "everything" -- viruses, bacteria and fungal stuff.
- Treatment for edema.
It sort of chemically fools the body into feeling too hot and then the body opens a cell channel that flushes fluid from the cell. Among other things, you can end up sweating.
Like a lot of people with CF, I have chronic edema. It is less bad than it used to be and hot peppers are a factor in that.
I began by adding an entire habanero pepper to the carb portion of my evening meal at home and then I added less and less as I quickly could not tolerate that much. I did this either every day for two weeks or maybe every day for five days out of the week for two weeks.
This served as a form of loading dose to get a bunch into my system at one time and then I continued eating milder things. Like I would ask for sliced red pepper on my sandwich at lunch, I kept medium heat salsa in the house and I routinely had pepper jack cheese as part of a sandwich or with potato chips.
A few months later, I repeated the temporary daily consumption of habanero pepper to get the amount in my body back up.
I found that eating hot peppers and then walking afterwards dramatically increased how effective this was at treating my edema. I would eat hot peppers and go for a long walk and I would pee a river and shrink.
This was so effective that I lost several dress sizes in a few months and total strangers began stopping me on the street or in the grocery store or at my place of employment and saying "I see you walking all the time. Wow, you've really lost a LOT of weight." and ask for diet tips.
I would make polite noises about walking and trying to eat right and not get into the fact that "I have a genetic disorder and I've essentially discovered a kind of biohack for my condition."
Watermelon was also helpful for supporting this process. Watermelon is excellent kidney support and can help flush edema from the system and can help repair damaged kidneys. I consumed watermelon like six days a week for something like two years to help repair my kidneys and get my edema down.
These days, I consume hot peppers as a routine part of my diet probably at least several days a week, often via simple methods like using the packet of hot peppers included with pizza or ordering spicy Asian dishes or similar.
I up my intake if I have been exposed to something and need to help my body combat infection. I also have sort of half-formed plans to someday make a concerted effort to do the hot peppers, watermelon and walking combo that caused me to so dramatically lose multiple dress sizes in short order because I would like to try to resolve my remaining belly bloat.
In my experience, how much hot peppers burn is partly a function of how infected I am. If I'm sick and the capsaicin is killing stuff, I get much more of a burning sensation in my mouth than if I'm not currently infected with something.
