Eating spicy food in tropical climates can help regulate body temperature by lowering it.

“But if you're in the tropics, you will be heated up by the sun. And if I go, as a westerner not, well, I like spicy food, but I haven't done it, and I'm sweating and then you have this really white man's burden in the tropics. You know that? Well, sorry. But, yes, if you have spicy food, you lower your body temperature, the sun is raising it but to the normal level you want. You don't have to sweat to get rid of the extra temperature because you set your thermostat lower, so that is what the hot pepper is doing.”