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.