Researchers Say Spicy Foods Are A Boon During Indian Summers!

"Ek Chutki Mirch Ki Faayde Tum Kya Jaano Ramesh Babu"

When the sun starts to beat down on you, you shoot your hand out for anything cool to eat, sip or gulp.

But according to scientists, that's not really what you should be doing. You should be doing the opposite. I know it sounds crazy. Imagine eating a hot plate when your body can't stop breaking out into sweats. But that's the point! Sweat is the natural way of the body to release heat.

Yale professor Barry Green explained in Scientific American

Spicy foods excite the receptors in the skin that normally respond to heat...The central nervous system reacts to whatever the sensory system tells it is going on. Therefore, the pattern of activity from pain and warm nerve fibers triggers both the sensations and the physical reactions of heat, including vasodilation, sweating, and flushing.

The burn you feel will send a warm sensation coursing through your body, thus making you sweat.

According to food science writer Jeff Porter,

"The reaction to hot peppers is governed by a neurotransmitter called substance P (P is for pain; go figure). In one of nature's more subtle moves, substance P can be depleted slowly and takes times-many days, possibly weeks-to replenish, meaning that if you eat hot foods often, you literally build up a tolerance for hotter and hotter foods as your ability to detect their presence goes down"

Sweating or evaporative cooling is the best way to keep our bodies cool. In spicy foods it is capsaicin, the active ingredient which will make you feel cool in hot summers. However, unlike hot drinks in the stomach, this time it's in the mouth, and we perspire.

According to Dr. Ollie Jay, who heads up of the Thermal Ergonomics Laboratory at the University of Sydney, his research has shown that if you consume a hot drink the overall amount of heat stored in the body is less than if you have a cold one. The cooling effect of sweating outweighs the added heat.

So, if you are not a big fan of spicy food you can practice by consuming little portions of it every day.

Don't gulp down a hot bottle of sauce. You'll have a terrible bathroom experience. Go slow! Summer is yet to come, anyway.