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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Volga bomb here. Spiciness is a very personal preference.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: and 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 Dando studies exactly these types of

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Speaker 1: questions and Assistant professor in the Department of Food Science

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Speaker 1: at Cornell, Dando has spent his albeit still young career

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Speaker 1: studying how our bodies interact with the food that we

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Speaker 1: consume and what comes to spicy foods in our bodies.

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Speaker 1: It's a tricky one when you put a spicy food

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Speaker 1: in your mouth, whether it's a halopeno or whatever is

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Speaker 1: in that five alarm chili you just ordered. You're often

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Speaker 1: ingesting a chemical compound found in peppers called cap sasin.

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Speaker 1: Kept saysin interacts with receptors in your mouth, which immediately

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Speaker 1: send a signal to your brain. The signal goes something

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Speaker 1: like this, fire, fire, hot, hot, hot fire. It's not

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Speaker 1: some joke that your mouth is playing on your brain,

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Speaker 1: or not quite. The receptors in your mouth react to

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Speaker 1: the cap says in the same way they would if

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Speaker 1: there were an actual fire on your tongue. That's why

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Speaker 1: the brain, which takes these things quite literally sets off

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Speaker 1: your body's sprinkler system. Your heart starts racing, firing up

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Speaker 1: that fight or flight mechanism. Your blood rushes to the

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

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Speaker 1: Your nose may start to run. For some people, this

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

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

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Speaker 1: and dry eyes, the whole idea of two spicy foods

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Speaker 1: maybe difficult to comprehend, but too many spicy food lovers

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Speaker 1: it's the hotter the better. Although it may seem like

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Speaker 1: a fifty shades of red kind of thing. Dando says

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Speaker 1: that people who eat extremely spicy foods often do it

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Speaker 1: because they have to in order to get the experience.

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Speaker 1: That's because spicy food connosours probably build up a tolerance

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Speaker 1: to spiciness. Dando said, there's some pretty strong evidence that

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: if you're stimulating a nerve a lot, it can become

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Speaker 1: less responsive with kepsays, and in particular, one of the

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Speaker 1: neurotransmitters responsible for signaling pain to the brain can become

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Speaker 1: depleted easily. Likewise, a cell can reprogram to express fewer

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Speaker 1: of its receptors if they're frequently in use. And finally,

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Speaker 1: the brain can basically turn down the volume of a

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Speaker 1: signal in the short term. It's like how if you

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Speaker 1: get in cold water at the beach. It's intensely cold,

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Speaker 1: but in a minute or so it doesn't feel so frigid.

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Speaker 1: If you've ever been a spicy food fanatic, you may

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Speaker 1: have wondered what year after year of all of that

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Speaker 1: fiery goodness may be doing to your taste buds. For sure,

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Speaker 1: spicy foods can get to some people. They've been associated

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

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

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Speaker 1: People seem to talk about spicy food destroys your taste buds.

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Speaker 1: That's not really true. It's not physically damaging the tissues.

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Speaker 1: It's just kind of simulating the conditions where they would

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Speaker 1: get damaged. So spice it up, brave foodies, and keep

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Speaker 1: a glass of whole milk or a side of bread

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Speaker 1: or rice handy just in case. Today's episode was written

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Speaker 1: by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For more

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Speaker 1: on this and lots of other Red Hot topics, visit

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Speaker 1: our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com