What could happen after eating world's hottest Chili peppers

Daredevils who enjoy torturing their mouths with spicy chili peppers can expect a number of unpleasant symptoms: burning mouth, running nose, teary eyes, coughing, stomach pain, vomiting, waves of excruciating, brain-crushing headaches.

A man who took part in a chili pepper eating contest ended up with more than he bargained for when he took on the hottest pepper in the world.

After eating a Carolina Reaper pepper, the 34-year-old started dry heaving before developing a pain in his neck that turned into a series of thunderclap headaches: sudden and severe episodes of excruciating pain that peak within a minute.

The Carolina Reaper, which can top 2.2m on the Scoville heat scale, was the world’s hottest pepper at the time of the incident in 2016 – although new breeds called Pepper X and Dragon’s Breath have since reportedly surpassed it.

The pain was so terrible the man had to go to a hospital emergency room.

“[A thunderclap headache] lasts for a few minutes and it might be associated with dry-heaving, nausea, vomiting – and then it gets better on its own. But it keeps coming back,” said Dr. Kulothungan , adding that thunderclap headaches can be caused by a number of problems including bleeding inside the brain or blood clots.

CT and MRI scans of the man’s brain were taken but showed nothing out of the ordinary. What’s more, the man did not report having any speech or vision problems.

But when the medical team tried another type of CT scan designed to look at the blood vessels in the brain, they had a surprise. A number of arteries in the brain had narrowed, and as a result the team decided it was a condition known as reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS), which probably caused the thunderclap headache. The diagnosis was backed up by a scan five weeks later showing the arteries had returned to normal. In rare cases, said Gunasekaran, RCVS can cause a stroke.