I never really understood how people built up a tolerance to nicotine or spicy food. Maybe something to do with nerves?
In: Biology
I’m gonna take a bit of a guess at this one as it’s a great question I’ve often wondered, and I honestly don’t think we truly know the answer, at least for spicy food (but I’d be interested to hear people claim otherwise). I have read people talk about spicy food tolerance building up because sensory receptors are deactivated or desensitized. I don’t think this is satisfactory or proven. There is the sensor organ (your tongue), but there is also the processor of that signal (your brain). I believe there is evidence that it is in fact you’re brain / processor that is “desensitized” – or at least, it pays less attention to the signals over time. Reduced attention is to pain signals is known to reduce pain (recent innovations include conducting painful physio rehabilitation when people are playing computer games). Whether this is the same mechanism or similar for drugs I don’t know probably not – I expect much more is known about drugs as it will have been studied much more
Spicy food contain capsaicine which binds to a receptor called TRPV1 presents on the nociceptive neurons, aka neurons that detect that something wrong is going on in your body that thus in the lead to the pain sensation.
Capsaicine desensitize TRPV1 after a while and thus the nociceptive neurons get less activated. Thus you will lose the sensibility to capsaicine for a while.
Nicotine kinda do the same but on other receptors in the brain. The cholinergic receptors get desensitized and thus you start to need more and more nicotine to activate them.
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