Stop Bleeding With Ground Black Pepper
Here’s a neat tip I found in my notes (loose tip page from an old community cookbook):
When accidentally cutting your finger or your hand, cover with a generous amount of black pepper. Contrary to ones thinking this will not burn, instead the pepper stops the bleeding, is most healing, takes out the soreness also forms a crust over the cut to keep out infection.
Who knew! I did try this on a new little cut I have just to see if the pepper would sting and found that it didn’t at all. The cut is a bit deep, wasn’t bleeding, but it is a day old so the healing process already started before I applied the pepper.
You will want to rinse a cut first to clean it before applying the pepper, and this would be for minor cuts and scrapes that won’t stop bleeding.
I did look around a bit online to see if I could find any info on why ground black pepper stops bleeding and although there was some information that pepper can be used for this, I didn’t find any solid answers explaining why it works. However I did find this on a discussion page in Wikipedia:
In a discussion with a friend working in catering I was told that black pepper was used in kitchen as a way to stop the bleeding of light cuts ? Any idea why ?
Pepper has some antibacterial properties; the small bits may provide places for platelets to glom onto and quickly begin coagulation, and lastly, probably because it’s easily available in a big kitchen. I used to use salt for the same purpose, for the same reason. (For small surface scratches / very shallow cuts, nothing deep. Stings a bit but not intolerably.)
Tip: Collect those little pepper packets you get with take-out and stash a few in your wallet, car and first aid kit so you’ll always have some pepper within reach–just in case!
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15 Jul 2008 at 11:44 am
Sugar will do the same thing. GREAT for those toddler “learning how to walk” injuries because it tastes good too!
15 Jul 2008 at 3:10 pm
I also read that cayenne pepper will do the same.
15 Jul 2008 at 6:28 pm
Black pepper, sugar, cayenne pepper oh my! I will have to try all of them out. Thanks
20 Sep 2008 at 3:20 pm
My husband just cut a huge flap of skin on the top of his finger and we tried this pepper trick! Bleeding stopped in 5 minutes!
Thanks so much!