Current mood:	annoyed
Current music:	*cough*
Entry tags:	cayenne, cold, debunk, flu, health, medicine, pepper, quack, remedy, sore throat

Cayenne Pepper gargles will probably NOT cure your sore throat
Oh what a happy planet we'd live on if all the "herbal remedies", "grandma's cures", "miracle recipes" and generally "alternative" stuff, worked at least 10% of the time.

I've been having the flu this weekend and after rejecting patently useless advice ("take Vitamin C for 10 days") and following confirmed home remedies (yes, chicken soup appears to help with colds), I wanted to make my own contribution to the field... of Harwons' personal medicine (we're all unique, right? YMMV.)

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This post is mainly in reply to My Financial Journey - Frugal cure for a sore throat.

I have tried this quick quack remedy rigorously, following the scientific method and all that. The result: cayenne pepper gargles do not work as claimed.

Below is the detailed account of my experiment.

Condition before the cayenne pepper gargle:

• have had the flu for one day
• sore throat; subjective rating of throat pain: 70%
• could speak for an average of 12 seconds before starting to cough

I mixed the ingredients as directed:

1. heated up about 250mL of water for 99 seconds in a 1100-W microwave
2. added 1 teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper (bought from Safeway for about $5)
3. added some salt
4. stirred the liquid well so that the pepper particles would be in suspension

After 4 gargles:

• congested nose cleaned up almost completely, for 8 minutes (in subsequent experiments, the duration of the decongestion stayed below 10 minutes)
• I could speak for 30 seconds before coughing; after 30 minutes, I could only speak for ~20 seconds
• the hotness of the water+pepper now overwhelmed the pain caused by the sore throat. Couldn't assess subjective sore throat pain

Medium-term effects (over then next 2 days): none. My flu regressed as usual (I get the flu one a year and rid of it in 3-4 days).

Conclusion

All that cayenne pepper gargling really does is clear up your congested nostrils for about 10 minutes. (try something like Halls instead. It's more portable and your tongue won't burn afterward).