Why Do People Sweat When They Eat Spicy Foods

men eating Spicy Foods

Most of the people start sweating when they eat highly spicy food. This is because the temperature of the body rises while eating anything spicy like chilies. The rise in body temperature happens due to a spicy reaction that occurs on your tongue because of a chemical known as capsaicin. This chemical is present in spicy food items and can cause the generation of heat. Thus, your tongue faces that sensation of that heat. The heating up of any body part makes the sweat glands release sweat.

Sweat glands usually react to heat in order to maintain homeostasis, which is the balancing of body temperature by cooling it down. Even though spicy food is not always hot, it is still hot in the sense that it triggers the chemical reaction that makes your brain think that the food is hot. The body’s chemical receptors get activated by capsaicin in order to cool it down. The same receptors on your tongue make it sensitive to heat, as they send pain-related signals to your brain and spinal cord. The brain further triggers sweat reactions in your body.

The part of the brain that controls sweat glands is hypothalamus. Thus, the ingestion of capsaicin triggers hypothalamus that further causes sweating to occur by triggering millions of sweat glands. The triggered evaporation reaction makes you feel cool. Some people especially like spicy food because of this property of such food to cool down the body a little. This helps them to fight against the hot weather at their location. Thus, spicy food can also be advantageous to you even though it causes sweating in response to the pain and heat in your mouth. However, you may decide the percentage of spice in your food items according to the amount that suits your taste and receptors.