It’s kinda an undeniable fact of the human digestive system. The way I’ve put it is “this is ‘put the toilet paper in the freezer the night before’ strength curry”
I’ve never had it anything near that bad – just a little toastiness. It’s never been what I’d consider painful. (Now my mouth – yeah, I’ve had some painful experiences there.) It clearly affects some people much more than others. I seem to be lucky in that regard.
I have been eating lots of hot to very hot food for years now. Put me in the camp of “almost always only one burn, but occasionally two.”
So it is a known phrase and not just an old roomate-ism.
As old as the hills, I’m sure. That thread was from 2001 but I was certainly aware of the term in the previous century. The call of the Wolf Ass afflicted: Awooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
Maybe TMI but I had a Chinese dish that was loaded with hot pepper. Yuumy. Also made the oil very, very red.
When I went to the bathroom I thought I was hemorrhaging (the red oil passed through). Kinda scary. I was 100% fine, no problem at all but that legit shocked me.
Only one burn in my experience, but I don’t eat super spicy food anymore.
However,
I’m sort of glad I’m not alone in this.
It happened to me once about 25 years ago. I had sliced a few stripes of… something which looked very similar to a Habanero or a Scotch Bonnet, then decided to take off my contacts.
I spent half an hour bent over the sink with my eyes under the running water, and had red panda eyes for the rest of the day.
Same. It wasn’t a result from cutting up my own peppers, though. I took one of my hot sauce bottles out of the cupboard, and noticed it felt a little sticky to the touch. But I failed to consider what that actually meant.
One absent rub of the eye later, and I was rolling around on the floor of my office in groaning agony.
I love chillies. So I am an internet expert. I don’t really experience “bum burn”, but the mouth burn and adrenaline rush is fun.
I have a recipe for chillies. Its pretty simple. Get a 2 litre jar (1/2 gallons) and fill it with fresh habaneros. Then pour honey until the jar is full. Leave it with your ex-wife’s sister for two years.
They become like raisens as the water in them through omosis moves into the honey.
Eat with bread, strong cheese and the knowledge you are no longer married.
(Gratuitous bitterness might be included in this advice)
I think you’re on to something here.
I eat lots of seriously hot peppers and only occasionally suffer detectable “lower afterburn”. And never to the point of pain; just hot.
Unrelated to that, in recent months I’ve taken to drinking too much coffee with too much cream in my mornings. With a resultant late morning bowel urgency that’s often pretty loose.
With that background …
A couple days ago I had scotch bonnet shrimp at a local Jamaican place. Multiple halved scotch bonnets, some plantain chunks and a bunch of shrimp sauteed in butter / oil & served with bread to soak up the piquant liquid. I thought it was tres yummy but the old black lady running the joint had warned me it was gonna be a bit much for most generic USA white guys. Which it probably would be.
Anyhow, next day I OD’d on coffee and cream with the usual results. And had some pretty strong “lower afterburn”. I hadn’t eaten anything else spicy in the last several days, so the scotch bonnet shrimp had to be the cause.
My bottom line being: Spicy food eaten 2-3 days ago can’t / won’t cause afterburn. Spicy food eaten 12 hours ago just might, with greater spiciness increasing the odds. Wetter stools spreads more of the active ingredient on more of your skin and further amplifies the effect.
I guess that depends… there are people with notoriously slow (regular) bowel movements … I guess when you have hot peppers in your IG and they get hammered for 24-48 hours by all kinds of acids, peptides and enzymes, they will not come out “red-hot”.
I belonge(d) to this group and I never had a secondary burn, and I am was way into superhots, way back when the Trinidad Scorpion was the baddest kid on the block…
I now mostly stay on the safe side (Habaneros, Rocottos, Aji de Arbol, Cayenne, Thai’s, pinche de mono… … in short, peppers that you can actually eat, instead of peppers that you have to dillute or it will melt your face off.
… but again, no afterburn - my WAG (ha!) … slow/long digestion, high dehydration … most of the capsaicine gets metabolized in the IG where you don’t have any heat-sensors.
Factors that increases your risk for experiencing the “Ring of Fire” after ingesting capsaicin
1: Having an acute anal fissure at BM time
2. Having proctitis at BM time
3. Stool is more liquid at BM time
Anal fissures can be pretty small and even essentially symptomless unless irritated by capsaicin. Ditto low grade proctitis
Love spicy food, and experience the “ring of fire” on a fairly regular basis. Usually dabbing the area with a small wad of we toilet paper soothes things down.