hey guys let's talk about your amazing mucus and I know it's kind of a
disgusting topic but I think it's underrated I think it's not emphasized
enough it's a very very important part of your body you make between 1 & 1 & a
half liters of mucus every single day you're obviously swallowing it's a lot
of it's getting recycled and the mucus is sitting on a mucous membrane covering
the inside of your body and the size of that membrane is huge it is 400 square
meters now how can that be well if you take a look at the inside of your body
there's a lot of folds and your sinuses there are a lot of it's called villi and
your intestines then look like that so if you were to stretch them out it's
quite large so that would be the size of two tennis courts or one large
basketball court and so the mucus membrane is part of your immune system
and you have all of your friendly bacteria that live in the mucus that are
protecting you you have your own immune cells that are ready they're waiting for
an invader and there are millions of invaders all the time trying to get into
their body and the immune systems job is to prevent it from getting in and
invading because it creates a lot of damage the good bacteria that you have
are friendly they exchange with you they give you compounds that are very
beneficial but these pathogens don't all they do is they take your nutrients they
create destruction they don't give you anything good and that would be a
definition of a criminal right this mucous membrane and the mucus on top of
it lines the sinuses the mouth the throat the lungs the stomach think about
it your acid in your stomach it ranges between 1 and 3 this acid is so strong
why doesn't it burn a hole through your tissues because of the mucus it's a
protective thing in testo mucus you have mucus in your kidneys urogenital so
anyway there's a lot of mucus going on what does it do it acts as a lubricant
okay it also is antimicrobial you have all sorts of enzymes that are sitting in
there you can vision the mucus as like a flytrap
so this microbe comes by it gets stuck in there certain enzymes start
dissolving it and killing it it's a great way to prevent pathogens from
invading the body because you have this like this gel thing that gets stuck
in also all the good bacteria in there create an environment so it makes it
very difficult for them to get in and there's also antibodies antibodies are
these little things right here that kind of like a lock and a key attached to
certain pathogens and bind them and prevent them from doing anything so they
can just dry up and and die so you have millions and billions of
these antibodies that are very specific to certain microorganisms now I already
mentioned the flytrap because they're like a trap it's going to hold and
contain a pathogen much like a spiderweb actually but the main purpose of mucus
is a barrier to the pathogen now realize to when your sinuses are congested not
all of that is mucus there's a lot of inflammation and swelling and there's
mucus as well but it's really the swelling and the mean reaction that's
creating the congestion now there's a couple things you can do to thin the
mucus there's a really good antioxidant called NAC you can get this as a
supplement and that is really good if you have real thick mucus and you need
to actually kind of loosen it up but out of all the vitamins the most important
vitamin for the mucous membranes is vitamin A if you're deficient in vitamin
A you're going to have a lot of sinus problems a lot of allergies a lot of
irritation inflammation in the mucous membranes the next most important
vitamin for this mucus would be vitamin D why because vitamin D is an
anti-inflammatory and there's a lot of conditions within the mucous membranes
that involve inflammation so anyway I hope you now appreciate this amazing
thing called mucus