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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bolga bomb here with a classic Brainstuff episode

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Speaker 1: from the archives. This one concerns the thrilling sensation of

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Speaker 1: eating spicy food. How does that work? And can it

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Speaker 1: really burn out your taste buds? Hey brain Stuff, Lauren

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Speaker 1: Bugle bomb here. Spiciness is a very personal preference. Some

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Speaker 1: like their food hot, some like it even hotter, and

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Speaker 1: some won't even start to chow down until they've slopped

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Speaker 1: on the saracha, piled on the halapenos, and laid on

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Speaker 1: enough horseradish too literally bring tears to their eyes, which

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Speaker 1: practically begs the question, what's wrong with those people? Do

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Speaker 1: these folks actually enjoy watering eyes, as searing tongue and

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Speaker 1: a runny nose at the dinner table? But more alarmingly,

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Speaker 1: one might wonder are they setting themselves up for everything

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Speaker 1: else to taste extra bland? Can spicy food burn out

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Speaker 1: your taste buds? Robin Dandoz studies exactly these types of questions,

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Speaker 1: and assistant professor in the Department of Food Science at Cornell,

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Speaker 1: Dando has spent his albeit still young career studying how

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Speaker 1: our bodies interact with the food that we consume and

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Speaker 1: what comes to spicy foods in our bodies. It's a

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Speaker 1: tricky one. When you put a spicy food in your mouth,

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Speaker 1: whether it's a halopeno or whatever is in that five

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Speaker 1: alarm chili you just ordered, you're often ingesting a chemical

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Speaker 1: compound found in peppers called kept saysin. Kept says in

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Speaker 1: interacts with receptors in your mouth, which immediately send a

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Speaker 1: signal to your brain. The signal goes something like this, fire, fire, hot, hot,

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Speaker 1: hot fire. It's not some joke that your mouth is

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Speaker 1: playing on your brain, or not quite. The receptors in

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Speaker 1: your mouth react, the cap says, in the same way

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Speaker 1: they would if there were an actual fire on your tongue.

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Speaker 1: That's why the brain, which takes these things quite literally

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Speaker 1: sets off your body's sprinkler system. Your heart starts racing,

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Speaker 1: firing up that fight or flight mechanism. Your blood rushes

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Speaker 1: to the skin surface to cool things down. You start

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Speaker 1: to salivate, your nose may start to run. For some people,

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Speaker 1: this is considered fun. It's a culinary experience. They can't

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Speaker 1: get enough of it. For those who prefer more subtle

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Speaker 1: tastes and dry eyes. The whole idea of too spicy

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Speaker 1: foods may be difficult to comprehend, but too many spicy

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Speaker 1: food lovers it's the hotter the better. Although it may

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Speaker 1: seem like a fifty shades of Red kind of thing,

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Speaker 1: Dando says that people who eat extremely spicy foods often

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Speaker 1: do it because they have to in order to get

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Speaker 1: the experience. That's because spicy food connosours probably build up

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Speaker 1: a tolerance to spiciness. Dando said, there's some pretty strong

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Speaker 1: evidence that suggests that you can, we would call it desensitization,

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Speaker 1: simply being exposed to something constantly, you start to build

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Speaker 1: up a tolerance to it. Physically speaking, desensitization can act

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Speaker 1: at the nerve, at the receptor, or in the brain.

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Speaker 1: Dando explains. Essentially, if you're stimulating a nerve a lot,

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Speaker 1: it can become less responsive with kepsays, and in particular,

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Speaker 1: one of the neurotransmitters responsible for signaling pain to the

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Speaker 1: brain can become depleted easily. Likewise, a cell can reprogram

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Speaker 1: to express fewer of its receptors if they're frequently in use.

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Speaker 1: And finally, the brain can basically turn down the volume

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Speaker 1: of a signal in the short term. It's like how

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Speaker 1: if you get in cold water at the beach. It's

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Speaker 1: intensely cold, but in a minute or so it doesn't

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Speaker 1: feel so frigid. If you've ever been a spicy food fanatic,

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Speaker 1: you may have wondered what year after year of all

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Speaker 1: of that fiery goodness may be doing to your taste buds.

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Speaker 1: For sure, spicy foods can get to some people. They've

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Speaker 1: been associated with acid reflux and heartburn. But as far

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Speaker 1: as your mouth and those precious taste buds go, don't worry.

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Speaker 1: Dando says. People seem to talk about spicy food destroys

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Speaker 1: your taste buds. That's not really true. It's not physically

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Speaker 1: damaging the tissues. It's just kind of simulating the conditions

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Speaker 1: where they would get damaged. So spice it up, brave foodies,

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Speaker 1: and keep a glass of whole milk or a side

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Speaker 1: of bread or rice handy just in case. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: is based on the article can spicy food really burnout

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Speaker 1: taste buds? On how stuff works dot Com? Written by

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Speaker 1: John Donovan. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it's

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Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio.

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