I absolutely love spicy food, and it’s never affected my gut. I was actually confused when I read about people getting the shits after a curry and wondered if it was a joke. I’ve had curries so hot it caused people to recoil into a coughing and sweating fit after they dipped their finger in and had a taste and I have one every other day. I feel the burning in my mouth, my face turns red, my forehead sweats, my esophagus feels weird, but (tmi I know lol) when I go to the toilet I’m completely fine. no gut pains either.
Most of the gastrointestinal distress from capsaicin is the result of poison countermeasures triggered by contact pain signals.
But capsaicin is telling your cells a lie which fewer believe each re-telling, so it requires increasingly ridiculous doses to trigger those internal signals.
If you eat spicy food regularly, you likely won’t get any internal signals again until you graduate to a different category of spiciness, such as extracts.
Hot sauce nerds consider extracts cheating, since you can achieve heat that’s many orders of magnitude above what the hottest pepper hybrids can produce, but do what you must to feel alive.
Oh, and in case you’re looking for recommendations, my current daily driver is Blair’s “Ultra Death.”
To set expectations, Tobasco (a common North American vinegar-based chili sauce) has a heat rating of 7,000 scovilles, whereas Ultra Death generally measures over 1 million.
If you like heat, extracts are a cost-effective step up, since each bottle lasts longer. At first anyway.