So yesterday I was cutting some green jalapeño peppers for a corn chowder I was cooking. I did not put any gloves on — why bother, I though, as long as I don’t touch my face with unwashed hands. Oh boy — was I stupid or what? In about 20 minutes after this my hands started to burn like crazy — it literally felt like they were on fire! Nothing like this happened to me before, and I thought that this effect will not be long lasting. Well, after 3 hours of holding hands in iced water, which provides an instant relief by the way, they were still burning… Danya search online for some remedies –- and apparently, I am not the only genius who had this happened to her. So using online advise we tried rubbing my hands with alcohol, doing the same with baking soda, soaking them in milk, rubbing them with half a lemon and finally putting some toothpaste on them and letting it dry…
Nothing seemed to be working, so I went to bed with hands still burning and just hoped that the exhaustion will overcome the pain. Surprisingly, I fell asleep in like 2 minutes (getting so tired nowadays), and when I woke up in the middle of the night for the first bathroom trip, the pain was gone. So I am thinking that maybe some of the remedies worked after all. 
Bottom line — never ever cut hot peppers without protection!
Keep on cooking!!!
June 18, 2010 @ 09:35
Regular soap washes it away. Aloe vera with lidocaine will soothe the pain. You should keep a bottle of that in the house — it’s very helpful after sunburns. Interestingly enough, capsaicin (the stuff in hot peppers that makes them hot) itself is a pain reliever. Lemon and toothpaste sound like a very bad idea, and probably made it worse
June 18, 2010 @ 11:08
Soap was the first thing we did, obviously, and it did not help at all.
June 18, 2010 @ 11:41
Ох, сочувствую.
Лемон … как-то не очень идея, там же кислота, она тоже обжигает в итоге.
Вроде есть какие-то гели специальные, которые в том числе и обезбаливают (правда не знаю на счет безопасности во время беременности). Вот все тоже собираюсь купить в домашнюю аптечку, но пока руки не дошли.
June 18, 2010 @ 12:12
Alex, trust me — I washed my hands with soap a couple of times right after I cut the peppers. I did this in case I would touch my face or eyes accidentally. This, however, as Danya said, did nothing.
As for the lemon and the toothpaste — after suffering through a couple of hours of pain I was desperate to try anything. I don’t think they made the pain worse though.
Also, I think the pregnancy might have increased my sensitivity to this kind of stuff, because it never happened to me before (not to the hands), and this was not the first time I was working with hot peppers.
July 16, 2010 @ 15:42
Speaking of brilliant ideas, I was among those like you who thought its just a chili pepper. Boy was I wrong, the entire day my hand and under finger tips burned. I didn’t follow any remedies the burning sensation just went away the next day. I have worked with chilli peppers since but now make sure that I wear GLOVES
July 16, 2010 @ 16:47
He-he. Yeah, I would not have believed how painful it can get if I did not experience it myself. Gloves rule!
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