[Andoror]

I was responding to the parts of your post that I quoted...something along the lines nobody else on earth is affected except Dominicans... "I expect the reason Dominican's are effected is merely suggestion"...which is why I referred you (and still do) to the OP where I provide the definitions from the Royal Academy dictionary...These definitions make clear that the concept extends at least through the Spanish-speaking world...they have no indication that the words/concepts are "regionalisms", and they also give some MEDical definitions, all consistent with the usage in the DR.

With all due respect here are the quotes from RAE:

Enfriar mucho o bruscamente.

Ocasionar o causar suspensión o pérdida de los sentidos y del movimiento.

The first quote only refers about cooling something rapidly, and does not specifically state the body. The second quote refers to parts of the body to lose feeling such but does not specifically state the cause, it could easily be caused by a stroke.

The fact are that there is no scientific proof that the mouth will twist because the body experiences a change in temperature other than a very, very small minority of people claiming this effect. Therefore, it would have to assumed to be based on the power of suggestion. A similar effect is the nocebo effect, aka "vodoo death" whereby people feel symptoms or even die from taking placebo medicines or react negatively to innocuous stimulus like dying from fright after being bitten by a harmless spider. This is a real medical condition and is widely documented. Nocebo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia