Chili Sauce Competition Saves Illinois Man From Brain Tumor

It started as a mere challenge to withstand the excruciating sting that one of the hottest chili sauce in the planet can do to one's mouth. However, Randy Schmitz, 30 and a resident from Orlando Park in Illinois considered the chili sauce "Flash Bang" in Pepper Palace a life-changing event.

According to a report from Youth Health Mag, Randy is spending a laidback weekend with his family in Myrtle Beach South Carolina when the Flash Bang challenge which consists of the hottest chili ingredients like habanero, jolokia, scorpion, and Carolina reaper, enticed him.

Randy is said to like challenges and thus signed up for the contest and subjected himself to being tested using a toothpick, a small amount of chili sauce was dropped on his tongue.

It only took him five minutes to feel sick after the chili sauce was applied to his tongue and his sister, present during that time, advised him to retreat from the competition.

Randy is said to have lose consciousness after that and did not what happened. Next thing he knew, he was in a hospital and had to undergo several MRI scans. The doctors then dropped the bombshell saying that he has malignant brain tumor.

"The next thing I knew I had woken up on a stretcher in a hospital room, covered in vomit. It turns out that I had the first) seizure of my life. ... After getting an MRI, it was found that I had a cancer brain tumor, and it is likely that this sauce activated it. I want to say "THANK YOU. I really believe this hot sauce giving me the seizure ended up saving my life!!!!!" Randy told Pepper Palace in a letter as cited in Orlando Park Patch.

Doctors said that the chili sauce could have triggered extreme reactions from the body that may lead to seizures.

"If you have a lot of hot sauce and you're sweating a lot, people can have dehydration and it can cause seizures. If you eat a habanero pepper, it's a big jolt to your system," Jeffrey Raizer, medical director of neuro-oncology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital said in a previous interview from Tribune.

Schmitz and his family then returned home after the discovery but went back to the Northwestern Memorial Hospital wherein doctors administered a surgery and radiation and chemotherapy afterwards. They have removed a 2.5-inch by 1.5-inch malignant tumor.

"If I hadn't tried that, I think something eventually would have triggered the seizure and I would have found out, but the cancer tumor would've grown in my head," Schmitz said as cited by Medical Daily.