I can build up a tolerance to Jalapeño peppers such that they no longer seem very hot at all after eating quite a lot of them over a period of time. But not with Listerine. I use Listerine every night for 30 seconds but some nights I just don’t have the energy to stand up to the pain. It feels like the first time every single time.
Of course there are different chemicals involved. With Listerine, Ethanol (mostly) and with Jalapeños, Capsaicin. My biological psychology professor tells a tale of drinking 198 proof (minus 2 because of air) and experiencing an extremely painful burning sensation, which I expect is Listerine amplified. Can you never tolerate this?
When you experience the spicy hot of Capsaicin, are you experiencing pain? Because if you are, and you can build up a tolerance to it, you are somehow inhibiting the neurotransmitter [Substance P](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance P). But if it’s not “pain” per se, what is it? And if it is pain, why do I not build up a tolerance to each of them?
In the Princess Bride, a tolerance is built up to the fictional Iocane Powder. Is it true that you can slowly build up a tolerance to poisons?
What other things “physical” can you build up a tolerance to? What sorts of things cant you build up a tolerance to? What are the overall mechanisms that determine these cases?
Can’t really give an answear beyond the fact that yes, chili burn is pain. That’s why it’s not a flavor like sweet, sour, salty, bitter and that MSG one.
I’ve heard of some chili peppers so hot it actually burns the skin to handle them.
Along the same lines, I want to know if I can build up a tolerance to whatever causes the tears to fall when I’m cooking with onions. Hard to imagine this happening regularly to professional chefs…
The best bet for the onion question is sharp knives, and cut them quickly, to get it over with.
For hot peppers, capsaicin is an irritant, you feel pain due to cells being damaged. CAUTION, USE GLOVES WHEN CUTTING, AND NEVER EVER EVER EVER TOUCH YOUR WIFE’S “bits” (or your own) AFTER HANDLING HOT PEPPERS.
As for building tolerance to other things, I’d imagine that anything that doesn’t cause “real” harm in smaller doses, and is counteracted by a substance produced by the body (enzyme, antibody, etc), or causes a substance to be released (e.g. dopamine) would allow you to build a tolerance. Tolerance in this case being different from addiction. IANAD, and this is a complete WAG.
There seems to me to be an ability to gain tolerance of pain itself. Not just the fact that a pain receptor neuron will react weaker after time if constantly fireing, but also an ability to ignore pain more easily can be learnt. Through both martial arts training where I learn’t to deal with the pain of joint locks and nerve strikes, and through suffering many Gall Stone attacks, I learnt how to ignore pain more efficiently, but I think I also learnt an ammount of tollerance for pain as well.
You most definitely don’t build up a resistance to poison ivy. I do some volunteer work in a field (no pun intended) that occasionally puts us into risk of PI exposure. People that formerly got a little itch now run around like headless chickens, “the ivy, the ivy.”
You can build up a resistance to cocaine and other drugs, variants of which are used as pain killers. One of the chief issues with cocaine addiction is that it takes progressively more cocaine to produce the same level of effect, which leads users to either consume more cocaine or to consume it via methods that are more efficient in delivering the drug into their system (i.e. freebasing). The more cocaine you’re introducing into your system, the more troublesome the side-effects.
I have heard an anecdotal account from a friend who used more than his fair share of cocaine that his dentist was disturbed by the fact that it took a lot more novacaine to properly anesthetize him. The dentist knew exactly why he was so novacaine-resistant and told him to lay off the blow.
Other drugs, such as LSD, don’t have a similar mechanic, and are not “addictive” drugs - at least not in the same sense. You can become accustomed to the effects, but you cannot build up a tolerance in any real sense.
I am told that MDMA (Ecstacy) has a “tolerance” built into its mode of operation. Since it stimulates the production of certain neurotransmitters and your body can only make a finite supply of them at one time, you can exhaust that supply temporarily if you take a lot of Ex and more Ex won’t make any difference. Again, though, that’s not really building up a tolerance to the drug. It’s more like a side effect of abusing it.
Alcoholics can build up a tolerance to levels of ethanol that would kill most of us. Not sure what the adaptation is.
It’s possible to build up tolerances to cold, heat, and altitude. The journals from Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic note that one day when the temperature almost exceeded freezing, the expedition members felt uncomfortably warm.
When I was a kid, we visited the Miami Serpentarium, and we watched Dr. William Haas “charm” a King Cobra (right on the lawn in front of us, with no protective wall in between. Try doing that in today’s litigious atmosphere) and “milk” the venom into a flask. Haas used to inject himself with cobra venom, and apparently built up an immunity to it (and other venoms he injected). his blood was in demand for treatment of severe snakebite (presumably by people with compatible blood types).
Here’s an entry with a bit on him:
One part of the tolerance to alcohol is the production of alcohol dehydrogenase, an enzyme produced and used by the liver. It is present in small background amounts, but it is an induced enzyme. The more you expose your liver to alcohol, the more (and the quicker) your liver produces it.
Yeah, but it’s more than that too. Their CNS has to somehow adapt as well. Although the ADH helps to consume the ETOH, not only can they consume a lot more booze in a week, they are more stable and less intoxicated at a certain BAC. Here in Boulder and surrounding areas, around a .38 has led to several deaths. At the ER, I’ve seen people with BAC’s of around .32 that weren’t even obviously intoxicated and .38 that were still talking and capable of standing.
Are you saying you’ve never experienced this yourself? Your location says around Boston, so you have dealt with cold New England winters I assume. Haven’t yuou ever gone outside on a random January or February day and have it be almsot 50? It feels like summer! I want to go around in shorts! I don’twear a jacket on those days, and I will wear a t-shirt and I never feel cold, because I was conditioned by the winter to think that -10 is cold.
In that same vein, a brisk summer day (below 65) after weeks of over 80 feels damn near freezing!
Thanks for the replies. The overall inconsistency still leaves me eluded: Why can I build up a tolerance to Jalepeno’s in a short matter of time, yet after years of religiously using Listerine I have absolutely no increase in tolerance? From what I have read, I could use Listerine every single night for my entire life, building up no tolerance to that pain (which is in reality just Substance P), and after I am done swishing I could then swallow it. At first I would feel intoxicated; then I would build up a tolerance to the effects of the ethanol - but not the pain it induces. Even when it is clear that other types of pain can be tolerated.
