Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bolga bomb here with a classic Brainstuff episode
Speaker 1: from the archives. This one concerns the thrilling sensation of
Speaker 1: eating spicy food. How does that work? And can it
Speaker 1: really burn out your taste buds? Hey brain Stuff, Lauren
Speaker 1: Bugle bomb here. Spiciness is a very personal preference. Some
Speaker 1: like their food hot, some like it even hotter, and
Speaker 1: some won't even start to chow down until they've slopped
Speaker 1: on the saracha, piled on the halapenos, and laid on
Speaker 1: enough horseradish too literally bring tears to their eyes, which
Speaker 1: practically begs the question, what's wrong with those people? Do
Speaker 1: these folks actually enjoy watering eyes, as searing tongue and
Speaker 1: a runny nose at the dinner table? But more alarmingly,
Speaker 1: one might wonder are they setting themselves up for everything
Speaker 1: else to taste extra bland? Can spicy food burn out
Speaker 1: your taste buds? Robin Dandoz studies exactly these types of questions,
Speaker 1: and assistant professor in the Department of Food Science at Cornell,
Speaker 1: Dando has spent his albeit still young career studying how
Speaker 1: our bodies interact with the food that we consume and
Speaker 1: what comes to spicy foods in our bodies. It's a
Speaker 1: tricky one. When you put a spicy food in your mouth,
Speaker 1: whether it's a halopeno or whatever is in that five
Speaker 1: alarm chili you just ordered, you're often ingesting a chemical
Speaker 1: compound found in peppers called kept saysin. Kept says in
Speaker 1: interacts with receptors in your mouth, which immediately send a
Speaker 1: signal to your brain. The signal goes something like this, fire, fire, hot, hot,
Speaker 1: hot fire. It's not some joke that your mouth is
Speaker 1: playing on your brain, or not quite. The receptors in
Speaker 1: your mouth react, the cap says, in the same way
Speaker 1: they would if there were an actual fire on your tongue.
Speaker 1: That's why the brain, which takes these things quite literally
Speaker 1: sets off your body's sprinkler system. Your heart starts racing,
Speaker 1: firing up that fight or flight mechanism. Your blood rushes
Speaker 1: to the skin surface to cool things down. You start
Speaker 1: to salivate, your nose may start to run. For some people,
Speaker 1: this is considered fun. It's a culinary experience. They can't
Speaker 1: get enough of it. For those who prefer more subtle
Speaker 1: tastes and dry eyes. The whole idea of too spicy
Speaker 1: foods may be difficult to comprehend, but too many spicy
Speaker 1: food lovers it's the hotter the better. Although it may
Speaker 1: seem like a fifty shades of Red kind of thing,
Speaker 1: Dando says that people who eat extremely spicy foods often
Speaker 1: do it because they have to in order to get
Speaker 1: the experience. That's because spicy food connosours probably build up
Speaker 1: a tolerance to spiciness. Dando said, there's some pretty strong
Speaker 1: evidence that suggests that you can, we would call it desensitization,
Speaker 1: simply being exposed to something constantly, you start to build
Speaker 1: up a tolerance to it. Physically speaking, desensitization can act
Speaker 1: at the nerve, at the receptor, or in the brain.
Speaker 1: Dando explains. Essentially, if you're stimulating a nerve a lot,
Speaker 1: it can become less responsive with kepsays, and in particular,
Speaker 1: one of the neurotransmitters responsible for signaling pain to the
Speaker 1: brain can become depleted easily. Likewise, a cell can reprogram
Speaker 1: to express fewer of its receptors if they're frequently in use.
Speaker 1: And finally, the brain can basically turn down the volume
Speaker 1: of a signal in the short term. It's like how
Speaker 1: if you get in cold water at the beach. It's
Speaker 1: intensely cold, but in a minute or so it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel so frigid. If you've ever been a spicy food fanatic,
Speaker 1: you may have wondered what year after year of all
Speaker 1: of that fiery goodness may be doing to your taste buds.
Speaker 1: For sure, spicy foods can get to some people. They've
Speaker 1: been associated with acid reflux and heartburn. But as far
Speaker 1: as your mouth and those precious taste buds go, don't worry.
Speaker 1: Dando says. People seem to talk about spicy food destroys
Speaker 1: your taste buds. That's not really true. It's not physically
Speaker 1: damaging the tissues. It's just kind of simulating the conditions
Speaker 1: where they would get damaged. So spice it up, brave foodies,
Speaker 1: and keep a glass of whole milk or a side
Speaker 1: of bread or rice handy just in case. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article can spicy food really burnout
Speaker 1: taste buds? On how stuff works dot Com? Written by
Speaker 1: John Donovan. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it's
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio.
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