Article: If you grew up on a meat and potatoes diet and don’t have much experience with chiles, allow your body to grow accustomed to spiciness slowly.  Add a little spice to common foods in your current diet.  Add a shake of red pepper flakes to your soup, or put a splash of hot sauce in your ketchup.  Serve diced peppers, or a chile-based sauce, on the side, and add it to your food as you eat.  This gives you maximum control over the spiciness. If your buddy chows down on ghost peppers while you nibble on a bell pepper, it is likely that he has built up a tolerance for capsaicin over time.  Slowly but steadily move up the ladder from milder to spicier chiles.  You can train your body to adapt to hot weather, and you can do the same with hot chiles. The Scoville Scale is the standard guide for heat in chiles.  The more Scoville units, the more capsaicin, the spicier the chile.  Use it as a guide on what chile to try next. Instead of thinking you can get the pain all over with at once by popping the whole pepper, take smaller bites, especially as you build up your tolerance.  Dole out the capsaicin in smaller doses so your body can absorb it more efficiently. If you don’t overwhelm your taste buds with heat, you’ll be better able to appreciate the range of flavors in spicy dishes. Everybody is different.  Like the guy who can drink you under the table without seeming the least bit buzzed or your friend who can eat as much as she wants without gaining a pound, some people can simply tolerate spicy foods better than others.  The idea of “no pain, no gain” might urge you forward, but use common sense in deciding when you’ve maxed out your body’s adaptability to spiciness. If you seem to have reached a plateau as you work your way up the Scoville Scale, you may just want to accept that as your limit.  Think of all the spicy foods you’ve already added to your eating repertoire.

What is a summary?
Start small. Move up the heat ladder. Eat slowly and savor the spice. Don’t force it.