Here at SciShow, we’re big  fans of another YouTube show you might have heard of called Hot Ones.

And we would love to get on the show, but you know we’re still like  waiting for the invitation So instead, we’ll let them keep  doing what they’re good at: interviewing people while they  eat progressively hotter wings, and we’ll keep doing what we’re good at: diving into peer-reviewed  research to answer questions like “What’s the best spice  chaser if he did go on the show?” That’s what this video’s about. There are a lot of claims out there  about which beverages are best at putting out the fire in your mouth  when you’ve had something too spicy.

But some of those turn out to be very wrong. And, yes, scientists have conducted the tests. So if you play along at home, here’s what science says are  the best and worst chasers to have on hand when you’ve eaten a hot one. [ INTRO MUSIC ] As anyone who’s eaten a pepper-filled dish knows, spicy food can be painful.

Chilis are full of capsaicin, which you can thank for that  tingly, burning feeling. The capsaicin binds to neuron  receptors in your mouth, and the pain signal radiates from there. You might even notice your  heart rate and breathing respond to this fiery attack.

So tiny peppers can create a full body effect. But you keep eating them for the bragging rights. Or maybe because they can also  cause you to make endorphins.

Either way, the thrill wears off pretty fast and you’re left with regret and a need to … make … it … stop! At that point, the question is: How?! Luckily, researchers have  conducted the experiments.

To test spice remedies, a team of US-based researchers  first had participants drink Five Pepper Bloody Mary Mixers. Now, those mixers aren’t screaming hot. The hottest of the five  peppers in there is a jalapeno.

But those can reach up to 10,000 units on  the Scoville scale that measures such things. Which is plenty of spice to  make most people uncomfortable. With their mouths on fire, the participants  rated how hot they thought it was on a scale of 0, “no sensation,” to 100, “strongest imaginable  sensation of any kind.” Finally, they got a swig of something  to help put an end to their misery.

And then they ranked how  their mouths felt afterward. At that point, they’d literally  rinse and repeat with a new chaser. So here are the rankings, from least to most helpful drinks,  when you’re feeling the burn: It’s like al little spicy I’m eating boneless wings I don’t  like eating on a bone, sue me In this study, the worst thing  you could do was drink nothing.

Every single beverage that  they had after the spicy mixer helped at least a little. And the reason is that capsaicin  works like any other molecule. It takes some time floating around until it finds receptors that it can bind to and make its presence known.

So not all of the capsaicin in your  mouth takes effect immediately. Which i am noticing as I am sitting  here and it’s kind of building Rinsing your mouth out helps  flush unbound capsaicin away before it has a chance to reach your pain neurons So if you’re worried that drinking  something will make everything feel spicier because it could spread  the heat around your mouth, you’re probably just putting  yourself through more pain. Instead, you could have a  drink of pretty much anything and feel better.

But some drinks will do a better  job at cooling you down than others. The worst in this experiment was seltzer water. See, the tingle from carbonation  doesn’t do you any favors.

That tingle comes from carbon  dioxide turning into carbonic acid. The acidification is picked  up by a kind of receptor on your tongue sometimes  called the Wasabi receptor, known for transmitting pain. And the rest is history.

Data suggests that the carbonation effect might be more powerful when  you drink cold seltzer. Which you might be more inclined to do when you’re trying to counteract very hot peppers. The effect of a liquid flushing out  the remaining capsaicin in your mouth is still strong enough to make  cold seltzer better than nothing.

But the carbonation makes it worse  than the other beverages tested. Now we’re gonna talk about  beer which I am not drinking But here’s some pretty broll of beer, fantastic …A prominent beer company sponsors Hot Ones, so they drink it a lot with their spicy wings. But they don’t sponsor us, so I’m here to tell you that of  all the drinks you could have with those incredibly hot wings, beer is one of the worst.

Not only does it have the carbonation effect. But it’s also alcoholic. Ethanol activates the same receptor  that capsaicin binds to, TRPV1.

So you’re better off with plain old water, which is still shockingly low in the rankings. That’s because water is polar, meaning the oxygen atom on  one side of the molecule has a slight negative charge and the hydrogen atoms on the other  have a slight positive charge. Capsaicin is non-polar.

And non-polar substances dissolve  in other non-polar substances. Not in water. Which makes water solidly mid  on the spice relief scale.

But before I get to the  research on what works better … we have to pay the bills with an ad. This SciShow video is supported by

JMP: the statistical analysis software trusted  by the largest pharmaceutical companies, consumer products companies, and  semiconductor companies in the world. That means a lot of young professionals  are benefiting from JMP in the workplace. The world’s 10 largest chemical companies  use JMP in their manufacturing process to find and address possible  batch failures quickly. That can keep waste and cost low  and result in better products.

People who use JMP to streamline  their chemical company output say that it reduces the occurrence  of contamination by 30 fold and that it provides twice  the result in half the time. To reap the benefits of  visual statistics for yourself and get a 30-day free trial,  visit jmp.com/scishow. Just when you thought we had  moved on from carbonated drinks, the next best option turned out to be cola.

Yes, it’s also carbonated. So you might expect it to have a  similar effect as seltzer or beer. But cola has another ingredient up its … sleeve? …label?

Sugar. It’s sugar. The carbonation effect and sugar effect basically cancel each other out in cola, making it statistically the same  as water in terms of spice relief.

So I won’t spend too much time  talking about sugar in cola when we can talk about its much  more impressive effects in Kool-aid. Just like the famous red pitcher would burst through solid brick walls  in the age old Kool-aid commercials, sugar bursts right through spicy peppers. And nobody knows for sure how sugar does this, so we can’t rule out some kind  of microscopic Kool-aid man taking on the capsaicin molecules.

Although I’ll be the first to admit  that is an unlikely mechanism. It could be because sucrose boosts natural  pain relieving pathways in the brain. It’s also possible that you’re just distracted  from the spice levels by something sweet.

Or maybe it’s something else entirely that makes sugar such a good pairing with spice … and everything nice. But even sugary Kool-aid isn’t as  effective as the last drink tested, the one you’ve been screaming at  the screen from the beginning. In this case, you really can  trust conventional wisdom.

There’s a reason pretty much everyone  who goes on the Hot Ones show gets a glass of milk. Although thinking about it, the glass of water  is a bit of a head scratcher given the research. Head to head against spice in the  research, milk reigned supreme.

But there’s still a lot of variation in milk that makes a big difference in  how well it takes on capsaicin. If you don’t discriminate when it comes to milk, whole milk is going to be your best bet  at reducing the turmoil in your mouth. Lower percent milks like skim aren’t  significantly better than water.

And if your diet is plant based, then I’m sorry to say that you’ll  never know the extent of relief that cow’s milk can provide. Because another study compared  vegan milk and cow’s milk, and they put the cow’s milk on top too. This might be because the lactose in dairy makes it a bit sweeter, giving cow’s milk the sugar advantage.

But for anyone who doesn’t  consume animal products, almond milk was better than soy milk, which was better than flax milk at  taking away that hot wing sting. And, really, the immediate effect of all  beverages tested in that particular study was very similar. It’s just that, over time,   the whole cow’s milk distinguished  itself as the best option.

There are a lot of potential reasons. Like fat. Whole milk has fats in it,  and those fats are non-polar.

So they could theoretically do the  dirty work that water wasn’t up for. But that explanation is still pretty theoretical, because some studies ranked  lower percentage fat milk at the same level as full fat milk. Or maybe it’s all the protein in milk.

This explanation also isn’t  perfect because plant-based milks can have protein in them too. And the dairy-free milk study found  that the options with more protein had a weaker effect on spice. So the most convincing reason  seems to be that dairy milk has calcium in it.

And calcium has a habit of  deactivating your TRPV1 pain receptors. But if all you need is calcium, then all dairy should work just as well. You should be able to eat a piece of chocolate and get the same relief that  a glass of milk provides.

And that’s not how it works. Not all dairy is the same. Although they’re both effective palate cleansers, drinks are better than snacks.

One study even found that warm milk is more effective than cold chocolate. And researchers think it’s because a liquid disperses through  your mouth better than a solid, so it can wash away more capsaicin. That’s a big deal because  cold stuff is usually better at putting out the fire.

See, TRPV1 receptors are temperature sensitive. They alert you when something you’re eating is thermally and spicily too hot. And when capsaicin’s around, these receptors are primed and ready to go, so it takes less heat to trigger them.

Which means that putting  something cold in your mouth should be way better than something warm. But, even in the face of a heat disadvantage, liquids are just that much better  at helping you through the pain. So if you have the choice, go for  a cold glass of whole dairy milk.

Now I’m sure you’ve tried some  of these heat solutions before. And maybe your own personal  rankings are different. Scientists can explain that too.

Starting with what we all know anecdotally: not everyone feels the same burn. It could come down to your genetics. A study comparing 140 pairs of twins found that genetics can account for up to 58% of your spice tolerance.

In this study, the identical  twins, who share genomes, had more similar perceptions of  spice than fraternal twins did. But if genes account for 58%  of how you respond to spice, that still leaves a huge part of that response up to your environment. For example, sitting down to eat ten wings that just keep getting hotter and hotter could throw anyone off their game.

One study found that people  will physiologically respond to just the thought of eating spicy food. These researchers hooked up participants  to an ECG to measure their heart rate. Then told them they were going  to get a box of hot peppers to test their spice tolerance.

The box was empty, but the researchers still measured  higher heart rates and faster breathing among the participants at the  anticipation of spicy food. So just the fact that you’re  attempting the Hot Ones Challenge may be enough to change how  you respond to spicy wings. But there’s also something  special about ramping up spice that might work in your favor.

You know how the last few  wings tend to go down easier? That’s not just psychological. We know from rodent research that a  high or repeated dose of capsaicin can overload TRPV1 receptors and  send them into a refractory period where they’re desensitized to heat.

So the thing that initially caused  you pain just doesn’t anymore. Until you reach that point, a glass of whole milk is probably your  best bet for putting out the fire. And if you want to try something  sweet or cold in addition to milk, go for it!

There isn’t just one spice solution because the effects of  multiple tools can compound. So go ahead! Run your own experiments  and try as many as you like.

I’ve found our experiment here today, really fun And I’m gonna drink this oat milk  because it tasted really good [ OUTRO MUSIC ]