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!
Don't Miss These Tips:
Join Over 33602 Tipnut Subscribers and receive your daily fix of creative tips & ideas...
- Discover What's Neat On The Net With Featured Projects & How To's
- Get Crafty With The Latest Free Patterns & Tutorials
- Receive Tips For Homemaking, Cooking, Baking Plus Recipes Too!
Your privacy is respected (see No-Spam Policy)
You can unsubscribe at any time
You can also subscribe to TipNut by
RSS










Sugar will do the same thing. GREAT for those toddler “learning how to walk” injuries because it tastes good too!
I also read that cayenne pepper will do the same.
Black pepper, sugar, cayenne pepper oh my! I will have to try all of them out. Thanks
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!