My wife can swear that her mouth is on fire after eating certain foods, but when I try the same exact food I often barely detect the heat she’s talking about.
I wasn’t always like this, it was an acquired taste. Sweet chilli used to be hot to me, now I dabble with habanero, naga, etc so I know something has changed physiologically…what was it?
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Spicy foods act off a chemical called capsaicin. Don’t need to know what it is, just that it is a natural chemical peppers have developed to creat an irritant to prevent animals from nibbling.
This irritant isn’t actually harmful, it absorbs into mucus membranes, mouth, nose, eyes, throat, to enflame and send messages of heat and burning to the brain. Through will power you can power through spicy foods. The pain again is just the brain freaking out to the precieved threat.
Over time, your knee jerk reaction to spicy foods becomes dulled. The brain recognizes that the spice isn’t actually poison or some other threat and turns down the alarms.
This Is also why different foods like hot peppers register spice differently than horseradish/ Wasabi/ ginger. While the brain gets use to capsaicin, the triggering chemical found in ground mustards, Wasabi, horseradish, and ginger hits differently and but is still precived as spicy
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