Drinking water while eating a peppermint or mint gum makes your breath so cold when you inhale. Why is that?
In: Chemistry
You’ve got particular nerves that are meant to detect “cold”. Menthol (the “minty” chemical) chemically binds to these nerves and causes them to activate, making you feel cold. Capsaicin does the same thing for the nerves that feel “heat”, making you feel a burning sensation.
Water is just a solvent, it just dissolves the relevant chemicals and carries them around, increasing the exposure to your nerves.
Peppermint contains a molecule that, through a fun quirk of biology, happens to stimulate the nerves in your skin (including the “skin” on the inside of your mouth) that are meant to detect cold. Your brain cannot tell the difference: the cold nerves are being activated, therefore they must have detected cold.
If you then drink something, the liquid you drink is typically going to be colder than your body temperature. A drink of cool tap water, for instance, will feel a little cool in your mouth, normally. If you then *add* the cold sensation from the peppermint, suddenly you have cold + cold = very cold.
Same if you breathe in. The outside air is (typically) colder than your body, though you may not really notice unless it’s really quite cold. But add peppermint, and now this room-temperature air may feel like a crisp winter’s day instead.
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