Does Spicy Food Burn Your Tastebuds?

Hot chili peppers can make you feel like your mouth is on fire, but are they actually doing any damage? Learn about the science of spice in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Volga bomb here. Spiciness is a very personal preference.
Some like their food hot, some like it even hotter,
and some won't even start to chow down until they've
slopped on the saracha, piled on the halapenos, and laid
on enough horseradish too literally bring tears to their eyes,

(00:24):
which practically begs the question, what's wrong with those people?
Do these folks actually enjoy watering eyes, as searing tongue
and a runny nose at the dinner table? But more alarmingly,
one might wonder are they setting themselves up for everything
else to taste extra bland? Can spicy food burn out
your taste buds? Robin Dando studies exactly these types of

(00:46):
questions and Assistant professor in the Department of Food Science
at Cornell, Dando has spent his albeit still young career
studying how our bodies interact with the food that we
consume and what comes to spicy foods in our bodies.
It's a tricky one when you put a spicy food
in your mouth, whether it's a halopeno or whatever is
in that five alarm chili you just ordered. You're often

(01:07):
ingesting a chemical compound found in peppers called cap sasin.
Kept saysin interacts with receptors in your mouth, which immediately
send a signal to your brain. The signal goes something
like this, fire, fire, hot, hot, hot fire. It's not
some joke that your mouth is playing on your brain,
or not quite. The receptors in your mouth react to

(01:28):
the cap says in the same way they would if
there were an actual fire on your tongue. That's why
the brain, which takes these things quite literally sets off
your body's sprinkler system. Your heart starts racing, firing up
that fight or flight mechanism. Your blood rushes to the
skin surface to cool things down. You start to salivate,
Your nose may start to run. For some people, this

(01:49):
is considered fun. It's a culinary experience. They can't get
enough of it. For those who prefer more subtle tastes
and dry eyes, the whole idea of two spicy foods
maybe difficult to comprehend, but too many spicy food lovers
it's the hotter the better. Although it may seem like
a fifty shades of red kind of thing. Dando says
that people who eat extremely spicy foods often do it

(02:12):
because they have to in order to get the experience.
That's because spicy food connosours probably build up a tolerance
to spiciness. Dando said, there's some pretty strong evidence that
suggests that you can, we would call it desensitization. Simply
being exposed to something constantly, you start to build up
a tolerance to it. Physically speaking, desensitization can act at

(02:35):
the nerve, at the receptor, or in the brain. Dando explains. Essentially,
if you're stimulating a nerve a lot, it can become
less responsive with kepsays, and in particular, one of the
neurotransmitters responsible for signaling pain to the brain can become
depleted easily. Likewise, a cell can reprogram to express fewer
of its receptors if they're frequently in use. And finally,

(02:58):
the brain can basically turn down the volume of a
signal in the short term. It's like how if you
get in cold water at the beach. It's intensely cold,
but in a minute or so it doesn't feel so frigid.
If you've ever been a spicy food fanatic, you may
have wondered what year after year of all of that
fiery goodness may be doing to your taste buds. For sure,
spicy foods can get to some people. They've been associated

(03:20):
with acid reflux and heartburn. But as far as your
mouth and those precious taste buds go, don't worry. Dando says.
People seem to talk about spicy food destroys your taste buds.
That's not really true. It's not physically damaging the tissues.
It's just kind of simulating the conditions where they would
get damaged. So spice it up, brave foodies, and keep
a glass of whole milk or a side of bread

(03:42):
or rice handy just in case. Today's episode was written
by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
on this and lots of other Red Hot topics, visit
our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com