Some seem to be able to down scalding hot coffee, while others have to wait until it has cooled down a bit. In Norway we do not have a name for this phenomenon, but they do in Japan: 猫舌 (ねこじた) nekojita – cat tongue. This word refers to having a ‘heat-sensitive tongue’ and is used to describe people who cannot tolerate hot food and drinks.
The researchers gave 87 people a cup of coffee. Participants checked if the coffee was too cold, just right, or too hot for them. Then they were given new cups of increasingly hot coffee.
Participants stopped when they felt the coffee was burning their tongues.
There were large differences in the temperature at which participants reached their pain threshold. The first cup of coffee that everyone received was 58°C. At that temperature, some felt that their tongue was burning. While one participant did not feel a burning sensation until the coffee was 71°C.
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“There is a huge difference in how much pain people feel and can endure,” says Christopher Nielsen. He is a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and does research on, amongst other things, sensitivity to pain.
Some people feel pain quickly, and can be characterized as having a low pain threshold, while others are able to tolerate more before they feel pain.
