Has anyone heard of an allergy where cayenne pepper makes your nose itch?

some acupuncturists claim they can cure allergies...

Usually hot spices and peppers make nose run and will help sinuses drain. I never heard of itchy nose.

Hi gailcalled, it's different than just a reaction to the spicyness...if I have jalapeno peppers my nose might run, but it's nothing like this itchy sensation (on the outside of my nose!). this is definitely a different kind of allergic reaction...I can't figure it out!

If it's an allergy, sad to say, you have to give up the spice, whatever it is. Skip them both, see if nose stops itching, then introduce one at a time. Very odd. IANAD, of course.

Make sure you do not touch the outside of your nose during the preparation, consumption or after eating the dish. If there is no direct contact between the itching area and the food, then your reaction is more likely to be an allergy or biochemical reaction to ingesting the food rather than a chemical reaction between your skin and the capsicum in the pepper. You could also try chewing bread or rice, or drinking/eating wine, vinegar or another acidic substance to cleanse the irritating oils of the pepper from your mucous membranes to diminish the effects of the pepper.

occ, this sounds like allergy to me. i have beaten my cat allergy by forced exposure, but i wouldn't screw around with a food allergy because they can worse unexpectedly. i agree with gail... give up the spices, then re-introduce them to your diet very very slowly, one at a time. this will help you zero in on what exactly you're allergic to.

How cool. Did anything else itch? Capsaicin is a nifty alkaloid that can have all sorts of different effects when it's ingested and/or when it's applied topically. Like, it's used in pepper spray as a topical irritant right? But it's also topically applied as a neural analgesic for intractable pain. (in both cases it hyper-excites the nerves, but has opposite effects.) Capsaicin can affect the trigeminal nerve that runs through the nose and have a seriously different presentation than, say, histamines do. Some people think that capsaicin affects a different sub-population of nerves in the nose than histamines (which can cause sneezing/runny nose, etc.). It may also be that the inflammatory mediators that capsaicin and histamines provoke to calm the trigeminal nerve are different. In any case, I think you should experiment and report back. (Just kidding... sort of).

I get the same itch when I eat chilis or chili powder—salsa, italian (like you said), chipotle chili powder, etc. I think it is an allergy and I HAVE IT TOO! Argh! I just found out that it was chilis and not tomatoes because I have only itched after eating stuff with tomatoes in it but I just ate a brownie with chipotle chili in it and my nose started itching about 10 minutes after. It was a debate between tomatoes, onions, garlic, and chilis/chili powder.