How can hot sauce hurt you

Capsaicin is a tricky one. A bit of a con artist, if you will. It "tickles" nerve endings that send pain signals to your brain. As capsaicin irritates the small intestine, the body responds by pushing the spicy irritant to the large intestine more quickly than usual.

There, according to a March study in Protein and Cell, capsaicin activates nerves called VR1 receptors, which make your brain believe the colon is inflamed. This can result in diarrhea. It's good to know your body is acting in its own defense by quickly getting rid of the offending spice — it just might not feel that way when you're running to the bathroom.

If you're a fan of hot sauce, you may have thought about taking your love of spicy food to the next level by trying an extremely spicy pepper like a Carolina reaper. But chowing down on the world's hottest pepper is not advisable for your health. These nerve endings can give off chemicals and substances which could give a reaction very similar to an anaphylactic reaction in susceptible individuals.

The only surefire way to avoid stomach problems from eating hot sauce is to not eat it at all. Like many things you eat, hot sauce can have a big impact on your body and your health, both immediately after you take a bite and over the long-run. Between digestive effects, energy boosts, and increased longevity, there are a whole lot of things that can happen to your body when you eat hot sauce.

If you've ever taken a bite of a very spicy chili pepper — or swirled a tad too much hot sauce into your dinner — you know that your tongue can take the brunt of some major temporary pain.

According to the BBC , however, that spicy food won't actually inflict any serious damage on the soft tissues in your mouth, meaning you don't have to worry about that burn when contemplating if you should eat another helping. That characteristic hot sauce burn comes from capsaicin, which is that spice-inducing molecule naturally found in chili peppers and the like.

Capsaicin binds to the receptors on your tongue that detect temperature and indicate pain. That's why your mouth gets hot and feels like you're in some big-time pain whenever you take a bite too inundated with hot sauce — even though you're really just fine.

Whenever you take a bite of something spicy, such as hot sauce, your body undergoes thermogenesis, which is the process by which your internal core temperature rises, according to Thrillist. It makes you sweat, your nose gets runny, and your face and sometimes other parts of your body as well gets red because the tiniest blood vessels in your body — called capillaries — dilate as blood rushes around.

It's benign, don't worry. Soon after your tongue starts to feel the burn, your nervous system, responding to the cry for help it's getting from the rest of your body, releases endorphins, which, as every Legally Blonde watcher knows, makes you happy. According to NPR's The Salt , these endorphins, released to help you cope with the pain, do just that by making the nerves on your tongue more tolerant of the pain.

Eat spicy food, feel pain, then happiness. It all makes sense. If you've ever eaten a bite of hot sauce and felt like your heart was pounding a little faster than it had been before, you weren't just imagining it. According to Thrillist , because hot sauce increases the amount of blood flowing towards the stomach after you eat it, it causes your heart rate to increase as well, which revs up the circulation of blood all throughout your body.

It's all in response to the heat you just ingested. Your mouth and nose often gets a little mucous-y after you eat some hot sauce. While you've likely battled the runny nose during or immediately after eating hot sauce, you might not be quite as familiar with the watery mouth that can accompany that. According to Slate , what happens is that your salivary glands kick into overdrive in an effort to produce enough saliva to clear out any capsaicin still present in your mouth. And for more on the latest food news, sign up for our newsletter.

Capsaicin, the naturally occurring component in chili peppers, may help people burn an extra 50 calories a day, a meta-analysis containing 90 studies suggests. Just remember not to overdo it on the hot stuff to avoid consuming too much salt for the day.

And because hot sauce can make you thirsty, be sure to check out the 7 Side Effects of Not Drinking Enough Water so you know what signs to look out for when your body is dehydrated.

A registered dietitian explains all of the effects the spicy condiment can have on your body. By Cheyenne Buckingham. Read more.