this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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My mouth doesn't have the receptors to detect capsacin, the chemical that makes spicy food burn/hot. I can eat the spiciest food imaginable and it will not burn my mouth at all.
That said, those receptors exist in other parts of my body. Very often while I'm sitting on the toilet I'll realize my dinner the previous night was particularly spicy.
Also, after more than 1/3 of a century of eating spicy food indiscriminately, my stomach lining has taken quite the beating.
Unless you have a beak instead of a mouth, yes, your mouth does have "the receptors", like all mammalian tissues. They're just desensitised. Which is why if you happen to laugh/cough while eating spicy food that you can't even notice the spiciness of in your mouth, and get some almost going in the nose...
That feel like getting fking maced. I've pretty much maxed out tolerances in my mouth as well and quite literally most things which are supposed to be spicy as fuck I don't even notice and my own food I use so much other people find it hard to eat them.
Also capsaicin doesn't actually burn, it doesn't "burn a hole in your stomach" or anything.
But yeah same here buddy
Well, whatever it is, when I was a toddler my parents mentioned to my pediatrician that I loved eating hot peppers (apparently I would just grab them off the shelf in the grocery store and chow down. It was a bit of a problem for my mom because I wouldn't wait for her to pay, or so goes the story she likes to tell). The doctor told my parents that I don't have receptors to detect capsacin. I haven't had it independently checked as an adult. Maybe they were mistaken or my parents mis-remembered what they were told.
Regardless, I don't think I've ever experienced what you refer to as feeling like getting maced while sneezing or laughing. I haven't been directly maced before, but I have been in a crowd that got pepper sprayed. It burned the fuck out of my eyes and lungs, but I didn't notice it anywhere else.
You probably kept grabbing them because they gave a funny sensation.
Why else would you have had a fascination to eat them?
Personal tolerances vary, and build really fast. I'm exaggerating when I say "maced", but I like to make food hot enough to make my nipples feel it. My digestive tract is completely used to it and I barely feel it, which is why I have to keep making it hotter and hotter. As in my fingers will burn for a day after I've cooked just from having to touch the chilis a little bit and I add a little bit of super hot sauces depending on the food, and a few times I've had a cough or something and the difference in the tolerance is noticeable.
I don't fall down on the floor grabbing my face, it's just noticeable.
(And I've been exposed to actual tear gas, it's very different sensation than mace btw on a tangent.)
You may have less sensitivity naturally, and then build tolerance on top of that, would be my guess.
But for you to completely lack the receptors would be a medical miracle.
So your mouth probably didn't burn. Mike wouldn't either. When we were in the army some of the MP's used their maces to spice the food. It's literally just a capsaicin spray most of the time. (There are other irritants as well but most times...)
Can you taste vanilla?