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you might get a surprise one as a kid or an awful embarrassing ones as an adult.
But what the heck causes nosebleeds?
Hey guys, Julia here for DNews
60% of the population will experience epistaxis EP EH STECK SIS or a nasal hemorrhage sometime
in their life.
They’re embarrassing, messy, and fun fact: in Japanese pop culture a sign of sexual arousal.
So what happens when Mount Vesuvius erupts on your face?
Well , your nose is filled with lots of blood vessels with only a thin membrane to protect
them.
Often this membrane gets torn or irritated. and boom, your face is dripping with blood.
there’s two kinds of nosebleeds, anterior and posterior.
Anterior nosebleeds are in the part of your nose called Kiesselbach's triangle and are
triggered by an irritation to the lower nasal septum, the thin membrane that separates your
nostrils.
Kids most often get this kind.
I think they spend too much time digging for gold.
More common in adults, posterior nosebleeds originate further back and higher up in the
nose, to where arteries are.
Sometimes they can be severe enough to warrant medical attention.
So how do you get them?
Well the nose is in a vulnerable place, so a bump or a punch might do some damage.
Other than that common irritants include cold, high altitude, dry air.
Anything that dries out your nose leaves the lower nasal septum vulnerable.
A little scratch from a fingernail can start the blood gushing.
Although.
spontaneous nosebleeds might be a sign of hypertension or infection disease, or even
more rarely Vitamin C deficiency, anemia, or heart failure.
Those are common causes, what about more strange ones you ask?
Recently it was reported that A scottish backpacker who had just come back
from South Asia started to have frequent nosebleeds.
After a few weeks, she went to see a doctor, who thought it wasn’t serious and told her
just to go home.
Then one night, she felt the blood clot move.
Upon closer inspection she saw something with ridges.
A leech had lived in her nose for FOUR WEEKS.
Another nasty nosebleed comes out of Saudi Arabia.
A 22 year old man reportedly kept getting nosebleeds on and off for about three years.
When he finally went to the doctor, they discovered a tooth growing in his nasal cavity!
So how do you stop a nosebleed?
Dr. Mary Pickett, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School says a pinch will
do the trick and you should treat all nosebleeds like an anterior one.
Pinch your nose halfway between the tip of the nose and the bridge.
Lean forward so the blood doesn’t drip down your throat.
Hold tight for five minutes.
If that doesn’t do the trick, repeat.
On rare occasions you might need to go to the hospital.
More complicated methods include cauterizing the blood vessel using silver nitrate.
Researchers from Detroit Medical Center won an ig nobel prize in 2014 for using an old
school approach.
The award celebrates silly and surprising but practical research.
The researchers couldn’t stop a young girl’s nose bleed with traditional methods so they
tried salt pork.
They say that "there are some clotting factors in the pork ... and the high level of salt
will pull in a lot of fluid from the nose”.
Unfortunately this might cause more harm than good if its coated in bacteria so it’s not
recommended.
So do you get nosebleeds?
How do you stop them?
Would ever use pork?
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