[CH] Chile Scan
George Nelson Jr (gdn957@sbcglobal.net)
Sat, 8 Dec 2007 21:06:50 -0800 (PST)
The following is a quote from Culinology "The Official
Magazine of the Research Chefs Association" Decenber
2007, page 11.
"Chef Heston Blumenthal was curious to know which
parts of the brain are affected by spicy foods. So,
the owner of The Fat Duck, Bray, England, sent his
head chef, Ashley Palmer-Watts, into an MRI scanner
and intravenously fed him chile oil - twice the dose,
in fact, that doctors had deemed safe. Palmer-Watts
survived the double shot, and Blumenthal watched and
learned the point at which the pain of ingesting chile
is overcome by pleasurable endorphins."
Would an intravenous injection of chile oil even be
detectable? If the needle cannula put the chile oil
below the area where the trigeminal receptors were,
there could not be any sensation, could there? The
receptors are not everywhere on the body, are they?
I suppose some of the oil would "bloom" up to the
underside of the receptors and trigger them. It might
also travel through the bloodstream and engage the
under side of the sensitive nerves.
If it works, mainlining chile oil is an extreme way to
be a chile-head. "Open Fields" sound like a better
way. It may even have been a better way to answer
Chef Blumenthal's question!