7 Healthcast: Peppers & pain

General and local anesthesia play a big role when it comes to pain management during certain medical procedures, but in the future you might get pain relief with the help of hot peppers.

It turns out that an ingredient in hot peppers called capsaicin, which makes the pepper hot, can block pain.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital combined capsaicin and a derivative of a local anesthetic. Their findings:

"We figured out a way of selectively putting local anesthetics into pain sensing neurons and not other kinds of neurons by co-applying them with capsaicin which is an active ingredient in peppers," said Dr. Bruce Bean of Harvard Medical School.

First, the researchers did testing on neurons in a Petri dish and then tried out their scientific recipe on rats.

"They induced local anesthesia in rats using this method and blocked pain signals but allowed rats to keep using their muscles which is something local anesthesia won't allow," Dr. Bean said.

The hope is to eventually use this type of anesthetic combination in humans in areas where you want to eliminate pain but not muscle movement or non-painful sensations.

"I think the situation that comes to mind is child birth where you'd like to block the pain signals but not general numbness and not inhibit muscle movement and possibly dentistry too," Dr. Bean said.

The next step- researchers plan to meet with anesthesiologists and hope to start testing this on humans within a couple of years.

And the researchers also found that this ingredient in hot peppers can stop you from itching, which would help in treating certain skin conditions like poison ivy.

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