You’ve likely known someone in your life that can tolerate spicy food to a degree that makes your eyes water just looking at it. As they sit there and dig into something that would give you stomach cramps with the first bite you can’t help but wonder why some folks can eat spicy food with impunity and others can’t. There’s no real scientific answer for this except to say that some people’s bodies can handle it while others simply cannot. That might sound overly simplistic but it’s the truth. The receptors that deal with such spicy foods, meaning the TRPV1 protein, activate differently in some people. What this means is that some people will have a greater tolerance to spice and substances like capsaicin that make your mouth simply burn upon ingestion. Some people’s receptors simply won’t acknowledge the spice and as a result they will be able to eat one spicy bite after another with no ill effects.
The other explanation is just as simple since it’s a matter of usage versus avoidance. If a person is raised in a culture, family, or home where spicy food is the norm, they will undoubtedly gain a bit of a resistance to the effects. Not all people who are raised with spicy food will come to like it as much, but many will actually grow used to the burn even if their receptors are fully functioning and register the spice without fail. Sometimes it’s just a matter of what you get used to through constant and continual exposure.
Spicy food tends to range in how hot it can actually get, with a jalapeno being on the low end depending on what scale you use. In fact some people have been actively trying to not discover the hottest pepper in the world but to MAKE one. Leave it to human beings to decide that nature is too tame and needs to be amped up in some way. Some of the hottest peppers in the world as of now are those that have been crossed with various other types of peppers and bred to create a hybrid pepper that is so hot that it sounds as though it could strip the skin from the inside of your mouth if you ate too many.
Isn’t there such a thing as TOO hot?
That question might get a good laugh from a real pepper enthusiast. But then these type of folks are those that seem to enjoy the burning sensation that likely won’t quit for hours on end after ingesting the type of peppers that seem as though they’d be capable of scorching a hole in your stomach if you swallowed them whole. This type of spicy food is taking it to a level that seems more than just crazy, but instead has jumped headfirst into intense masochism. There’s nothing benign about eating a pepper that’s a mixture of many different hot peppers combined. The Ghost Pepper is still a potent and extremely hot pepper but in terms of burn the roof of your mouth spicy it’s been passed by the Carolina Reaper.
Seriously, some people can eat these and make it look like a walk in the park.
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