2. To answer this question we conducted a simple experiment:
Let’s see...You’ve had some mint gum or candy,drank some cold
water,and everything in your mouth feels subzero.
This familiar incident makes us wonder…..
Can mint really cool things down??!.
3. 2-A box of minty candy.
3-A mouth.(JK).
1-A thermometer (a simple home
thermometer will do).
You’ll need:
4. 1-Measure your mouth’s temperature.
2-Chew some minty candy.
3-Re-measure your mouth temperature.
Observation:Your mouth’s temperature remained constant.
Conclusion: Mint doesn’t cool things down.
so..what happened????!.
5. That feeling is just a thermal
illusion that happen when our
sensory receptors get fooled
by stimuli.
-At the heart of the minty matter is menthol (a
waxy crystalline organic compound found in
peppermint and other mint oils).
-TRPM8 (the transmit receptor potential cation channel
subfamily M number 8 ) which is activated in the
presence of menthol.
6. Menthol stimulates TRMPM8 ion channels to open; as if the
ambient temperature in your mouth has dropped. The same
as: “Hey it’s cold in here!” signal is sent to the brain.
7. What about chilli?
•The same happens when you eat
spicy,hot food. But the effect of
chilli is much stronger that it
actually feels like the physical pain
caused by physical heat (burning
tongue and sweating for example)!.And water
increases the burning effect.
8. So,can chilli actually warm things up?
-To answer this question we conducted another simple experiment.
-Just replace the mint candy with hot sauce.
-Observation:Your mouth’s temperature remains constant.
-Conclusion:Chilli doesn’t raise temperature…
11. The burning and painful sensations associated with
capsaicin result from its chemical interaction with
sensory neurons.
Capsaicin binds to a receptor called VR1 (vanilloid
receptor subtype 1, which can also be stimulated
with heat and physical abrasion permits cations to
pass through the cell membrane and into the cell
when activated.
The resulting “depolarization” of the neuron
stimulates it to signal the brain by binding to the
VR1 receptor,the capsaicin molecule produces the
same effect that excessive heat or damage would
cause,which explains why the spiciness of
capsaicin is described as a burning sensation...
12. What will happen if you have a minty candy dipped in hot
sauce?!
It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on with
both the mint and chilli at the same time
without research, but it would appear that
chilli acts much more quickly than the
menthol and it is somewhat confusing
your sensory systems to feel something
both hot and cold at the same time...
