Why is spicy not a taste

You may notice, in fact, after you've eaten a lot of spicy food, that the burn won't affect you as much, as the receptors eventually stop responding so strongly to the compound. The phenomenon is called capsaicin desensitisation and has long fascinated scientists because it suggests that capsaicin is able to alleviate pain.

Capsaicin creams are now available for treating arthritis pain, for instance. But a drug that turns off the receptor in an attempt to treat pain was deep-sixed, because it made subjects feel unusually hot.

Ethanol can lower the temperature at which the capsaicin receptor is activated , which has been suggested to be the reason why a shot of alcohol burns. It may also be why spicy food can taste spicier if you're drinking warm booze, and why that chilled drink is so satisfying.

Ethanol has other peculiar properties: after ethanol has been applied to the tongue, your mouth hurts more easily , perhaps because of the connection between this receptor and pain perception.

And on the other side of the spectrum, the chill of menthol in peppermint also arises from an odd coincidence.

A receptor that triggers when the temperature in your mouth takes a dive is also set off when menthol is around. Of course, all this isn't limited to your mouth. The same receptors are present in your skin. If you were to bathe in Szechuan peppercorns, you'd get the same effect, and rubbing your eyes after chopping a hot pepper is an unforgettable experience. Those are called papillae say: puh-PILL-ee , and most of them contain taste buds.

Taste buds have very sensitive microscopic hairs called microvilli say: mye-kro-VILL-eye. The tongue is vital for chewing and swallowing food, as well as for speech. The four common tastes are sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. A fifth taste, called umami, results from tasting glutamate present in MSG. The tongue has many nerves that help detect and transmit taste signals to the brain.

Skip to content Lifehacks. On the other hand, if you find that spicy dishes you loved no longer have a kick, try taking a break from them for a couple weeks to resensitize yourself to capsaicin. Modern science has continued research on capsaicin as a painkiller. Though it holds medicinal properties, capsaicin is still most beloved for its kick.

One captivating mystery is how humans evolved a penchant for spicy food, when our reaction to it is a danger signal. One potential theory, he says, is that Indigenous cultures that cultivated chili peppers learned to integrate it into their diets, and so they were raising children to eat spicy food from a young age.

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Spicy isn't a taste , but a physical reaction sensed by nerve endings, not taste buds, on the tongue. Thomas M. Evans on Unsplash. Like science, tech, and DIY projects?