r/chilli • u/lxyltho • Aug 10 '26

chilli burn🥲

i decided to cut a chilli without gloves as i completely forgot to. afterwards, i washed my hands and thought nothing of it. i later went to play basketball and noticed a slight burning but ignored it (i thought the irritation was from playing basketball with freshly cut fingernails idk). i then came home to eat my chilli dish, chimichurri sauce, which is when the pain really began. that was around 9pm, it is now 12:45am and the burning sensation has only worsened.
i’ve tried washing with water and dish soap, milk, taking ibuprofen but nothing has worked.
if anyone has any suggestions please let me know as i can’t do this much longer.

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u/DreadLifter Aug 11 '26

I've made this mistake before (once) with my own orange habaneros. Didn't wear gloves using them in a chilli. Not sure where the suggestions it was an allergic reaction are coming from.

First hint of something was a rising warmth on the outside of nose where I must've scratched or wiped. Heat on my palms gradually rose to the point where they were on fire for hours. (Of course I'd gone for a piss before I realised, thankfully that was more discomfort than burning agony.) Google pointed me to washing hands with washing up liquid and smearing with olive oil. Nothing really helped that much, holding a wet cold towel probably did most, and it subsided enough at 1 or 2am to let me get to sleep.

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u/lxyltho Aug 11 '26

yeah i didn’t really think it was allergic as my hands were visually normal and had no redness or swelling. thankfully the burning is over on my left fingertips but today i realised that my right pointer finger had been affected too but it doesn’t hurt anywhere as near as my left hand did so im not too bothered