Can spicy food do permanent damage?

[Swoop]

If one eats a lot of spicy food over a long period of time, can the tastebuds be damaged at all? Will sense of taste be diminished?
what about hot food (hot as in temperature)?

[Philster]

Spicy food doesn’t ‘damage’ anything, and some peppers have been shown to have good effects on digestion. Spicy food might irritate an existing condition, such as an ulcer…but it won’t ‘damage’ you if you are healthy. (will try to cite)

Hot food: I would guess that if the temp is such that cells are not being destroyed, then there would be no long term problems. At what temp are cells damaged?

[Master_Wang-Ka]

Precisely what spices are we talking about? There are “spices” which are in fact corrosive or toxic.

To my knowledge, though, none of these condiments are served on anything you’d buy at Taco Bell. Chili powder, black pepper, and jalapenos are, for the most part, harmless, unless you have an ulcer or are particularly sensitive to spicy food for one reason or another.

As to “damage”… well, yeah. Eating a really potent jalapeno will kill thousands of cells and damage zillions of taste buds, all over your mouth. We’re talking holocaust in the middle of your face, here.

…and your face will grow new replacements, same as it does every day. You and I both lose a zillion cells a day, and while I can’t speak for you, I replace mine. Every day.

Yes, hot food will damage your tongue and mouth. Is there anyone here who hasn’t, at one time or another, gotten a little overeager and burned his mouth trying to eat something that’s too hot? This is cell damage, and results in dead cells and taste buds (if the tongue is among the burned areas, which it usually is).

Short of a third-degree-burn, though, the cells and buds will grow back… and short of trying to eat live coals, you’re not likely to get a third-degree burn from any kind of dining experience.

I’d make sure to have the waiter extinguish the flaming Crepes Suzette before eating, though. Just in case.

[jjimm]

Capsaicin, the hot ingredient of the chilli experience, can harm you, but not much:

Humans have also acted as guinea pigs with oleoresin capsicum. It is an ingredient in super-hot sauces with words in the name like insanity, death, and suicide. These sauces are tasted at food shows by people who have no idea of how hot they are. Some people, with few tastebuds in the mouths, are not bothered by the extreme heat. But most people react very negatively to the super-hot sauces, experiencing severe burning and sometimes blistering of the mouth and tongue. Other immediate responses have included shortness of breath, fainting, nausea, and spontaneous vomiting. People should be very careful of commercial hot sauces that list oleoresin capsicum as an ingredient.

Aside from the above adverse effects, the super-hot sauce will not hurt you. “Comprehensive nutritional studies have not shown any adverse effects of chile or capsaicinoids even at ten times the maximum use levels,” wrote the one world’s experts on capsaicin, V.S. Govindarajan, author of the mammoth study, Capsicum–Production, Technology, Chemistry and Quality. But even if you do overindulge in capsaicinoids, do not worry, for they are quickly metabolized in the liver and excreted in urine within a few hours.

[Bibliovore]

Well after eating a pizza with extra Jalapenos last night, it sure felt like I’d damaged something as I was straining on the can this morning!

Serliously though, I’ve always enjoyed spicy food and can’t say that I’ve ever suffered any ill-effects other than the aforementioned ring sting. Blitzing your tast-buds with super-hot sauces kind of defeats the purpose of a meal, if you ask me, but there’s nothing finer than a decent fire in the mouth that gets the sweat pricking on your brow and brings a tear to your eye. Ahhhh…that’s the stuff!! (sniff, sniff!)

[AHunter3]

Really hot pepper-laden food can certainly do permanent damage.

You bite into your first buffalo wing that you’ve doused in sauce mistakenly made with a cup of Blair’s MegaDeath hot sauce, having absent-mindedly picked it up instead of the Tabasco while cooking.

Because of the tears streaming from your eyes, your vision is impaired so that when you stand up panting and waving your arms and saying things like “Woo! Woo!” you stumble against the ottoman, barking your shins, which leads you to hoist your leg in the air, grasping the affronted shinbone and hoppping on the other leg, which is an inherently precarious as well as ridiculous posture, so when you come down on the kitty cat’s tail while hopping around like that and the cat shrieks rrrowwrw! and sinks claws into the hopping leg you’re going to fall backwards with arms pinwheeling and catch your head against the edge of the table and the next thing you know you’re flat on your back with a concussion and the cat is licking all the skin off your nose.

[Chefguy]

The problem I’ve had is not the result of ingesting the spices, but from accidently inhaling them. I was adding piri-piri powder directly from a spice jar to some fajitas when a large load of the stuff plopped into the pan and went airborn. It went into my eyes and I inhaled it and the effect was like a chemical attack. I started sneezing, my eyes and mucous membranes went into full meltdown, and my respiratory system had a panic attack. I recovered from that, but to this day have to turn on exhaust fans when using chili powders, or I start having respiratory problems.