why does wasabi heat affect our noses while chili pepper heat affect our tongues?
In: Biology
Chili pepper can cause pain to human skin, but wasabi doesn’t. Chili peppers have a chemical that heats up the nerve cells on your tongue, causing them to send a signal down nerves leading to your brain. Wasabi has no such chemical. As a result, you can eat chili peppers without causing pain, but not wasabi. The reason for this is because of the difference between human skin and tongues.
Chili peppers can heat up your tongue and make you feel pain. However, there is a nerve receptor in your skin that will also register the presence of chili pepper even when it’s mixed into a sauce. This receptor is called a TRPV1 receptor. It detects the chemical capsaicin, which causes pain and heat sensations in your skin.
In other words, capsaicin is a chemical that causes pain to human skin. This is how chili peppers cause pain.
You can eat chili peppers without feeling pain if you mix them into a sauce. This is because capsaicin is soluble in fat, which makes it more difficult for the TRPV1 receptor to detect it.
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