Hi my little nuggets, Julian here for DNews.
Picking your nose.You all do it.
I know you do, don’t lie to me.
But once you’ve mined your golden gobs, do wipe it in a tissue?
Do you pick it and flick it?
Do you….
Do you eat it?
The behavior is not uncommon in kids at all, and a lot of adults still do it.
Usually when no one’s looking but they do occasionally get caught on the jumbotron at
sports games.
But is there a reason to be ashamed of it?
Or worse, could it actually be unhealthy?
Well the social stigma makes sense; mucus is inherently gross.
It’s stringy and sticky and drips out of you when you’re sick.
Once you learn the purpose of mucus, it adds another layer to the yuck pile.
Mucus’s job is to snag dirt, pollen, and pathogens.
It’s actually 95% water and 3% mucin, which are lubricating gel-like proteins that hold
a lot of water and have a high molecular weight.
The last 2% is assorted particles ranging from antibodies to fungus balls.
So knowing that one job of your nose goop is basically to catch the nastiness in the
air before it makes it to your lungs, why oh why would anyone put a booger in their
mouth?
Well, because they taste good… so I’ve heard.
Associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Saskatchewan Scott Napper thinks
so too, and moreover thinks boogers are sweet as a way of enticing us to eat them.
Since they’ve got weakened pathogens in them, perhaps eating them helps our immune
system learn to fight whatever might be in the air around us.
I’m going to call shenanigans right there though, because you’re already swallowing
a ton of mucus without knowing it.
You make about a liter to a liter and a half of mucus daily, and much of that gets pushed
back by cilia and flows down the back of your throat into your stomach without you even
realizing it.
You’re basically swallowing oodles of snot constantly, so a dried boogey that you put
their manually isn’t going to help you out very much.
Instead, I would like to offer a different hypothesis on why boogers are allegedly sweet.
Mucus also helps with your sense of smell, cutting up molecules that enter your nose
and delivering them to receptors in your nasal cavity.
A 2007 study claimed that the delay in the time it takes different pieces of the molecule
to reach receptors actually helps us differentiate smells, and this was backed up in a 2010 study
where mice with inactive mucus lost the ability to identify a target smell.
When it’s dry out, the mucus dries up and can’t transport those molecules well.
Mucus also keeps the tissue underneath it from drying out and cracking, keeping the
blood vessels in your nose safe from infection.
So in order for mucus to do all it’s jobs of lubrication and protection AND smell reception,
the mucin needs to stay full of water.
And how does mucin trap water?
By being coated in hundreds of oligosaccharides.
That’s right.
Sugars.
Boogers aren’t sweet because you’re supposed to eat them.
Boogers are sweet because they’ve got a job to do, and their taste is a byproduct
of their strategy to do it.
So it looks like eating your goobers isn’t beneficial but it’s not harmful either.
Just don’t pick so much you scratch up the inside of your nose and cause bleedings and
infections.
And probably avoid doing it on a date.
But aside from that, science has no criticism if you pick and lick.
So boogers are gross but apparently, ACCORDING TO A SCIENCE PROFESSOR, they taste good.
But you know what doesn’t?
Ear wax.
What’s that stuff for?
Trace tickles
your earwax here.