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Page 33
| How hot is hot? For many years the capsaicin content of peppers has been measured on a scale of 0 for sweet bell peppers to 350,000 for habañero or Scotch bonnet peppers. Ten thousand heat units is mildly spicy and 50,000 units tastes hot to most American palates. Anything over 100,000 is seriously hot. |
| Only recently have scientists discovered how healing peppers are. Taken internally, they improve digestion, increase circulation and enhance memory. Applied externally, they speed healing, though the initial application may sting. Cayenne peppers contain more vitamin C than any fruit, and they practically define Mexican cooking. |
| Cayenne has received much publicity in recent years through the efforts of Dick Quinn, author of the book Left for Dead. After experiencing a heart attack, unsuccessful bypass surgery, debilitating side effects, fatigue and depression, Quinn was walking by a lake when he met the mother of a friend. She noticed he was exhausted after his short trip from the car and told him to begin taking cayenne red pepper right away. |
| "It seemed preposterous to recommend red pepper after what I'd been through," he wrote. "This was too serious for such nonsense." The woman had seen Dr. John Christopher, whose School of Natural Healing is a classic American herbal, at a seminar during which a man had a heart attack in the hotel lobby. In one of the most widely reported and dramatic demonstrations of herbal healing, Christopher sent a hotel employee to the kitchen for cayenne pepper and a glass of water, which he mixed and gave to the man. Within minutes, the heart attack victim was up and walking. |
| Dick Quinn didn't believe her. He knew that the man had something else wrong with him. Heart attacks don't disappear just because someone swallows hot peppers. He was lying on the sand trying to make sense of her ridiculous story when she said again, "You look terrible. You |
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