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