However, according to Dr. Arnold Levy, a gastroenterologist in Washington and vice president for education of the American Digestive Disease Society, ''Precious little data are available anywhere in any language on the effects of hot, spicy foods on the digestive tract.''
Dr. Levy said: ''Caffeine and alcohol are gastric irritants; citrus fruits are acidic and can irritate the lower esophagus and add to stomach acid; chocolate, mint, nicotine, alcohol and fatty foods can relax the lower esophageal sphincter, the muscle between the esophagus and stomach, and cause heartburn, but there just aren't any data on hot, spicy foods.''
He added that people with chronic heartburn are likely to have less severe symptoms if they stay away from spicy foods, but this alone won't diminish the episodes of heartburn. For ulcer patients, he said, avoiding acid-stimulating foods is important, but there is no evidence that eating spicy foods will slow the healing of ulcers.
Dr. Levy noted that some people experience gastrointestinal burning or intense stomach cramping when they eat spicy foods, but that different people are sensitive to different foods, a fact that they usually discover on their own and can then avoid the offending foods.
A recent study in Sweden on laboratory animals indicated that a dose of capsaicin soon after birth desensitized the animals' respiratory tracts to some adverse effects of cigarette smoke and other irritants. The researchers suggested that this extract of hot peppers may be useful in treating asthmatics and others with hypersensitive airways. Certainly, consumers of hot peppers commonly report that they help to clear the sinuses.
Peppery hot foods have been a part of the human diet for more than 8,000 years. Long before the ancient Greeks and Romans gave monetary value to peppercorns (they were used to pay fines, rent and taxes and to buy and free slaves), the South American Indians were eating fiery hot wild chilies. Chilies were eaten in Mexico, Brazil and Peru 6,000 years before the birth of Christ and were one of the first domesticated plants in the New World.
In fact, chilies came to be called peppers through a navigational error. Christopher Columbus had sailed in search of precious peppercorns from India; when he landed on American shores, he dubbed the hot food eaten there ''pepper'' and their consumers ''Indians.'' Columbus took chili seeds back to Spain, and from there they spread to tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world.