I love hot peppers. Why can some people gobble down HOT peppers, while others find even medium peppers too painful?
The capsaicin in hot peppers stimulates the pain and heat receptor nerves in your mouth, causing the burning sensation. Capsaicin can also desensitize or damage the nerves. This is not permanent, but can last for days or weeks. Someone that consistently eats hot peppers is reducing their ability to "feel the heat", so a pepper that will reduce a novice to tears will barely break a sweat on a seasoned veteran chili chomper. It is not that one is tougher than the other, just less sensitive.
Interestingly, if that seasoned veteran goes on a bland diet for a couple of months, their nerves regain their sensitivity, and the burn comes back.
One advantage of the decreased heat is that it lets you taste flavors that most people miss. That is why hot sauce gourmets are so picky about the sauces that just taste like acid to folks that don't eat much spicy food.
Neutralizing the Burn
Eat milk or ice cream when one dares you to munch on a hot one. The casein in milk (a fat loving substance) surrounds and washes away the fatty capsaicin molecules that cause the fire on your tongue.
input/output
Very interesting. Why doesn't the desensitization work on the other end of the alimentary canal? I enjoy eating hot peppers, but I always pay for it the next day. Ouch!
peppers
i know why because people grow up eating them. & their parents ate them & their family eats them.
Cathryne
Painful Peppers
Dear Mr. Krampf,
I found out that when you taste spicy you are actually feeling pain, so if you can withstand this pain you can eat the peppers, but if not, then it's hard to eat them.
From
Isaac
hot peppers
Our class thinks:
1. that people may have different taste buds that may not be as sensitive to hot.(3rd grade idea)
2.maybe people are out in the cold so when they taste something hot, it feels just right (1st grade idea)
3. people might not be used to the hotness of some peppers, so they stick with the food they are used to.(3rd grade)
4. people have different feelings (2nd grade)
5. maybe they are afraid of hot stuff (1st grade)
6. most peppers are different with different hotness, but you can't tell just by looking. (1st grade)
7. maybe some people like hot stuff and don't like not-hot stuff (2nd grade)
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