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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