Can anyone else not eat spicy food anymore?

I’ve heard of this. I think it’s when your body metabolizes things differently due to your colon aging faster than normal, and the digestive enzymes end up changing your hormones enough for your big floppy vagina to grow.

That’s called being Midwestern. Welcome to Hell — enjoy the bland food.

Fried food, spicy sausage, and those jalapeños make it a rough day.

Getting older is rough, but I do it anyway.

Same for me. Love spicy food but 4-5 hours later I'm miserable on the toliet.

I'm exactly the same way. I used to eat jalapeños with nachos, tacos, pizza, etc. and get the spiciest sauces. Now it sends my stomach into pain for days when I try. I thought there was something physically wrong with me but everything was clear after a colonoscopy, endoscopy, etc. I'm learning to live with less spicy things like mild salsas. I really think it was the jalapeños and raw peppers for whatever reason that were the main culprit.

I have the same issue but different. I don't have the stomach issue like you, but spicy food now gives me acid reflux and terrible heart burn.

It really makes me angry as well. I can barely handle Tony's these days.

Yep, can't handle the spicy after about I hit 50. Late night eating gives me indigestion for a week. Getting old has its challenges...

It's Irritable Bowel Syndrome - Diarrhea (IBS-D) with spicy as your (and my) trigger. Used to be there was no such thing as too spicy or too often but about the time I hit 50 it changed like a light switch. I still eat spicy but just have to be more mindful of what I'll be doing the next few hours afterward before deciding to partake or avoid. For example, no spicy before getting on a long flight.

IBS can take different forms, some get constipation others get the opposite. And there's a variety of trigger foods; I've heard of some whose trigger is fried food, others it's caffeine. For me, it's spicy.

In my case I'm relatively lucky because it predictably hits with abdominal cramps a 4-5 hrs after eating spicy and then I'd damn well better be close to a toilet for the next hour. But once it passes I'm done, feel fine and back to normal.

There's a lot of things in your health that boil down to gut microbiome health. I've tried doing an extensive fast and cleanse then rebuilding the gut health but didn't help my IBS.

As I said, I still eat what I want but just work around it. I know that since I'm going to pay for it later I plan what / when I eat accordingly.

I bought a gorgeous chile pepper ristra in Santa Fe this summer and cut a pepper off when I cook a steak or chicken to spice up my life. It’s a smoky flavor on the peppers, one of the better tastes you can add to a dinner, but it absolutely wrecks me for an 8-10 hour stretch following consumption, and this is coming from someone that has been drinking hot sauce from a bottle since childhood. Hell, in my wild days I even snorted a line of extra spicy crawfish boil powder just to prove my stupidity. Spice is life as far as I’m concerned. There is a price to pay now for this addiction. FWIW I’ve eaten about a quarter of the ristra since July.

I still like spice, but I have toned it down as I get older. I made some Cowboy Candy using late season jalapeños a friend gave me. They were too hot for me to handle, so I gave them all to a friend who is still a pepperhead.