你知道世界上最辣的辣椒是哪个？吃了会怎么样呢？

If you eat a really hot pepper, you expect pain. A lot of pain.If you eat a really hot pepper, you expect pain. A lot of pain.

如果吃一个很辣的辣椒，你知道会产生痛感。很痛。

In addition to the feeling that you have just put a live coal in your mouth, you may weep, vomit¹ and wonder where in your life you took a wrong turn.

除了感觉仿佛往嘴里放了一块烧红的煤炭，你还可能会流泪、会呕吐，会想你这辈子到底做错了什么。

You don’t expect a headache so intense and immediate² that it sends you to the emergency room. But that’s what happened to a 34-year-old man who turned up at Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, N.Y., with what clinicians call a thunderclap headache.

你想不到，吃辣椒还有可能很快产生剧烈的头痛，能把人送进急诊室。但这就是一名来到纽约库珀斯敦巴塞特医疗中心(Bassett Medical Center)求医的34岁男子的遭遇，临床医生称之为雷击头痛。

His problems began when he ate a whole Carolina Reaper³ — the hottest pepper in the world, according to Guinness World Records — while participating in a hot-pepper-eating competition.

他在参加一个吃辣椒比赛时，吃下了一整只“卡罗来纳死神”(Carolina Reaper)——根据吉尼斯世界纪录(Guinness World Records)，这是世界上最辣的辣椒——之后，麻烦就开始了。

He immediately started experiencing dry heaves — not unknown in the hot-pepper-eating world. But then a pain in his neck and head came on like … a thunderclap.

他马上开始干呕——这对吃辣椒的人来说并不陌生。但他后来在脖子和头部感受到一阵疼痛，就仿佛……雷击。

It passed, but over the next few days he experienced more thunderclap headaches — that’s the clinical term — so he sought medical attention.

疼痛过去了，但在接下来的几天里，他又感受到好几次这种雷击头痛——这是个临床术语——于是他寻求医疗。

Scans of his head and neck showed the kind of constriction⁴ in some arteries⁵ that can cause intense headaches, doctors reported on Monday in BMJ Case Reports. The scientific term for this temporary narrowing of arteries is reversible cerebral⁶ vasoconstriction syndrome⁷.

周一，医生在《英国医学期刊病例报告》(BMJ Case Reports)上称，对他头部和颈部的扫描显示出某些动脉出现了会引发剧烈头痛的紧缩。动脉的这种暂时性收缩在科学术语中称为可逆性脑血管收缩综合征。

Dr. Kulothungan Gunasekaran, one of the report’s authors, now at the Henry Ford⁸ Hospital in Detroit, said that for some reason the man must have been particularly sensitive to capsaicin. The Carolina Reaper is a popular pepper, and many people eat them and experience nothing worse than the desire to cut out their own tongues.

该报告的作者之一库洛桑格.古南西卡兰博士(Dr. Kulothungan Gunasekaran)现在底特律的亨利.福特医院(Henry Ford Hospital)工作，他表示，出于某种原因，这个男子肯定是对辣椒素尤其敏感。卡罗来纳死神是一种很受欢迎的辣椒，有许多人在吃，感觉至多就是想要割掉自己的舌头。

“I was discussing the case with a nurse who had eaten three Carolina Reapers⁹,” Dr. Gunasekaran recalled.

“我与一个吃过三颗卡罗来纳死神的护士讨论了这个病例，”古南西卡兰回忆。

The Reaper has been measured at more than two million Scoville heat units, the accepted scale for how hot peppers are. Measurements vary, but a really hot habanero might come in at 500,000 Scoville units.

死神椒的测量辣度高达200万斯科维尔(Scoville)辣度单位，这是公认的辣椒辣度等级。虽然测量结果各异，但一颗非常辣的哈瓦那辣椒可以达到50万斯科维尔辣度单位。

The patient was fine, with no lingering damage, but thunderclap headaches are not to be dismissed. For one thing, there’s the pain, which seems to surpass even the normal effect of the peppers.

这位病人没有大碍，没有后遗症，但雷击头痛不应被置之不理。重要的是，这种痛似乎超过了吃辣椒可能引起的正常效果。

Dr. Lawrence C. Newman, a neurologist and director of the headache division at NYU Langone Health, said, “On a one to ten scale, it’s off the charts.” And it can indicate the kind of stroke that results from bleeding in the brain.

纽约大学朗格尼医学中心(NYU Langone Health)头痛部主任、神经学家劳伦斯.C.纽曼博士(Dr. Lawrence C. Newman)表示，“按一到十的等级，它爆表了”。它有可能预示由大脑出血而导致的中风。

It happens instantaneously. If that kind of headache hits you, it makes sense to seek medical attention “whether you’ve bitten into a pepper or not,” Dr. Newman said.

它是瞬间发生的。如果你出现了这样的头痛，“不论是否吃了辣椒”都应当求医，纽曼说。

The new study does suggest that capsaicin, being investigated for its role in alleviating¹⁰ pain and lowering blood pressure, can have unexpected effects on certain people.

目前有人在研究辣椒素对减轻疼痛、降低血压的作用；然而这项新的研究确实表明，它也可以对一些人产生难以预计的效果。

Cayenne pepper pills and a capsaicin patch, sold in China and Turkey, have been blamed in medical reports for two nonfatal heart attacks in young men, the result of spasms¹¹ in arteries.

医学报告曾把两名年轻男子因动脉痉挛导致的非致命心脏病发作，归咎于中国和土耳其有售的卡宴辣椒药片和辣椒素贴片。

But “we are not advising anything against the Carolina Reaper,” Dr. Gunasekaran said.

但是，“我们不是在劝大家别吃卡罗来纳死神，”古南西卡兰说。

The Reaper was bred to reach record levels of heat. Reached by phone at the PuckerButt Pepper Company in Fort Mill, S.C., the Reaper’s creator, Ed Currie, offered mixed advice on pepper consumption.

卡罗来纳死神是为了达到辣度最高记录而培育出来的。时报通过电话联系到了位于南卡罗来纳州米尔堡PuckerButt辣椒公司的死神椒培育者艾德.柯里(Ed Currie)，他提供了有关使用辣椒的不同建议。

On the one hand, he said, “People who eat whole Reapers are just being stupid.” But Smokin’ Ed, as he calls himself, also gave the impression that wasn’t such a bad thing. “We eat them all the time,” he said, with no ill consequences beyond pain.

一方面，他说，“一口气吃完一整个死神椒的人是在犯傻，”但自称“热辣艾德”的他也让人感觉，这并不是什么坏事。“我们经常吃死神椒，”他说，除了疼痛没有别的不良后果。

Mr. Currie indulges in other competitions of suffering. For instance, he said, he had recently taken the Death Nut Challenge, which involves eating insanely hot peanuts. He has a partnership¹² with a company that produces them.

柯里也醉心于其他疼痛比赛。比如，他说，他最近参加了死亡坚果比赛，要求吃下无比火辣的花生。他与生产这些花生的厂家有合作关系。

“I knew beforehand I shouldn’t do it,” Mr. Currie said. “I was in pain for two hours.”

“我早就知道我不该参加，”柯里说。“我疼了两个小时。”

For the average person interested in spice, not suffering, he advised using small amounts of any really hot pepper in food preparation, as they were intended.

对于喜欢辣味，而不是喜欢痛苦的普通人，他建议在准备食物的过程中少量使用任意一种真正的辣椒即可，辣椒也本该这么用。

So if you happen to go beyond your limits — having, say, entered a hot-pepper-eating competition?

那么，要是你不巧超过了自己的极限该怎么办——比如说参加了一个吃辣椒比赛？

“Citric acid seems to work the best to alleviate¹³ the pain,” he said. “Don’t chug milk because you’ll just throw it up.”

“柠檬酸似乎对减缓疼痛最为有效，”他说。“别大口地灌牛奶，因为这样你只会吐出来。”