> Is that just with curry, or with any hot spice? I have no idea if there was curry amongst the spices on those Doritos Extreme (maddeningly, all the ingredients list has to say is that there are "spices" in it -- what's the point of an ingredients list that's THAT vague??), but I suspect the primary source of hotness was chili powder. It's just a guess, though.

Usually with all hot spice mixtures, its chilli extract that provides the extreme heat, and capsaicin is the active ingredient. Its just a question of how much capsaicin is in the spice that determines how hot it is.

>
> > ...tends to inflame the effect, not quench it.
>
> Odd. I don't dispute you, because it seems you know more about the subject than I do, but I remember feeling quite a lot of pain *before* I had any water, and actually it was probably a good ten minutes before I gave up waiting for the burning sensation to go away on its own and took a drink of water to cool it off.

Oh yes, you will feel pain *before* the water, but drinking water with it tends not to help at all.

Its an interesting point about the concept of how different people experience different things, especially pain, as I was reading an article on the pain tolerance of the average human. One of the ways that you can test your tolerance level is to make up a bowl of 2/3 water to 1/3 ice (so that you have a "thermostat" bath between about 0 and 3 degrees C, then put your fist into the water up to the wrist and see how long you can stand to have it there. Less than 30 seconds is considered low tolerance, 30 sec to 1 min is normal, and anything over 1 minute is high pain tolerance. Anything over 3 minutes, and you start to kill off the nerves in your hand so take it out, okay?

Of course, its not a very exact measure as it will not only depend on your physical make up, but also your will to stand the pain.

So why would ANYONE do this? Apparently people with higher pain thresholds are less likely to notice some symptoms of a heart attack (shooting pains down one side, especially along the arm), and are thus in danger of letting their condition worsen before seeking help.

Odd as that sounds, I've seen a similar thing myself - my Dad suffered an anuerism a few days before his 50th birthday a few years ago, which developed into a haemorrage. He suffered a series of crippling headaches and blackouts for 2 days before telling my Mum something was wrong, by which point he had lost the use of his right arm. He survived, but is severely crippled. If he had undergone surgery sooner, he might have had a better chance of regaining the use of his right hand.


Bourne