Every person who loves to pick his nose will suffer 4 consequences sooner or later. I advise you to be merciful

When it comes to "unstoppable" personal hobbies, "nostril picking" should be nominated. But the news reported that a 15-year-old girl who loved to pick her nose nearly died.

One of the hobbies of 15-year-old Xiaohua in Shenzhen is picking her nostrils, as if possessed by a demon. Sometimes she even digs out secretions with bloody scabs, but she can't stop Xiaohua from continuing to stretch out her fingers to fiddle with her nostrils.

One morning, Xiao Hua, who woke up in a daze, felt very painful and itchy in her nose. She reached out and touched it and found that there was a pustule in her nasal cavity. Xiaohua directly squeezed the pustule with her hands , and finally flushed it with water.

As a result, Xiaohua suddenly began to have a fever , and the antipyretic medicine did not work. The next morning, one of her cheeks and eyes were abnormally swollen , and her eyes could not be opened. Xiaohua's parents were sent to the hospital and eventually went to the otolaryngology department.

The doctor said that the pustules in the nasal cavity are not acne, but the nasal vestibular furuncle caused by frequent nostril picking . The violent treatment of Xiaohua caused the furuncle and pus to start retrograde to the brain, causing intracranial infection . Now it has developed into cavernous sinus thrombophlebitis , and the situation is serious. has the risk of blindness or death.

Fortunately, the diagnosis was made at the first time, and relevant anti-infection and anti-inflammatory treatments were taken in time. Xiaohua finally recovered and was discharged from the hospital after more than half a month.

1. Can you pick your nose involuntarily?

Picking your nose, picking your ears, and picking your navel can be described as the three major "funs", and most people can basically learn it without a teacher.

In 1995, researchers from the United States surveyed 1,000 adults on the habit of picking their noses and received a total of 254 valid questionnaires, of which 91% admitted that they had the habit of picking their noses, and 3 people also admitted that they had the habit of picking their noses. Pick your nostrils every hour .

In a study in India, 200 survey data were collected from teenagers and found that 96.5% of them would admit to picking their nostrils, an average of 4 times a day, and 9 people even tasted picking from their nostrils. "Snacks" that came out.

How did the "small snacks" in the nasal cavity come from? In fact, the nasal cavity is equivalent to an air purifier. Nose hairs help filter large particles in the air. The nasal cavity also secretes mucus to adhere to smaller microorganisms and dust in the air.

The human nasal cavity secretes about 500 to 1000ml of mucus every day , and most of it is sent into the throat and swallowed into the stomach. Because the mucus contains lysozyme and stomach acid, it will remove impurities and germs.

The remaining small amount of mucus will remain in the nasal cavity , and will be "air-dried" in the process of absorbing dust and bacteria in the air, eventually forming a "small snack" unique to the nasal cavity - booger.

Because dry booger will always block the nasal passages, and it is easy to irritate the nasal mucosa and cause itching , so people can't help picking their nostrils with their hands because of their physiological needs.

Of course, there are also some people who are addicted to nose picking and cannot extricate themselves from it. This is a mental disorder and is called "mandatory nose picking and hair pulling syndrome". .

2. What might happen to everyone who likes to pick their noses?

The nose is just in the center of the dangerous triangle of the face , surrounded by extremely dense and complex blood vessels, and also connected to our intracranial blood vessels and nerves, but our fingers are not clean, especially the nails may hide tens of thousands of At this time, if you frequently pick your nostrils with your hands, the risk is actually extremely high.

Risk 1: Intracranial infection

When picking the nostrils by hand, the bacteria in the fingernails will also enter the nasal cavity, especially if the nails are relatively hard, they will scratch the nasal mucosa. Cause intracranial cavernous sinus inflammation, this intracranial infection will be fatal if not effectively controlled.

Risk 2: Pneumonia Risk

A study published in the "European Respiratory Journal" found that people's hands and nose can become the transmission route of pneumococcus. When we rub our nose with our hands, especially when we pick our nostrils with our hands, it is likely to increase the risk of pneumonia.

Risk 3: Damaged nose hair

The existence of nose hair is to help us block foreign objects such as dust and bacteria in the air, and frequent nose picking will undoubtedly damage the nose hair and cause the nose hair to fall off.

Risk 4: Traumatic epistaxis

There may be very rich capillaries in the small nasal cavity, especially in dry seasons. If the nostrils are picked frequently, it is very easy to damage the capillaries and cause traumatic epistaxis.

3. Will the nostrils get bigger and bigger?

Two things you probably want to know about nostrils the most, one is how exactly do two nostrils work? The second is whether frequent nose picking will make the nostrils bigger?

First of all, do you know that the working status of the two nostrils is actually "on duty"?

Under normal circumstances, one nostril is responsible for breathing, while the other nostril with less breathing is temporarily rested . After a period of time, the two nostrils begin to switch positions. This process is actually called "nasal circulation".

Secondly, will nostril picking cause the nostrils to become larger ? The author Roland Freit detailed the evolutionary history of the nostrils in "History of Nose Picking". It seems that it has really become larger.

There is elastic cartilage in the nasal cavity. Although the cartilage will recover after digging the nostrils, if the nostrils are enlarged by hand for a long time, the elasticity of the cartilage may be reduced, and the nostrils may really become larger in the long run.

Fourth, how to clean the nose?

Nose hair filters larger foreign bodies and the nasal mucosa absorbs small foreign bodies, so it is necessary to clean the nasal cavity, so how can we properly clean the nose?

Director Wu Yanqiao from the Department of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery of Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital in Beijing gave a suggestion: when washing your face on weekdays, you can use water to wash the nasal vestibule but do not inhale it, which will destroy the pH value osmotic pressure.

Of course, you can use a nasal aspirator if you can . It needs to be matched with an equal proportion of normal saline to rinse the nasal cavity.

In fact, there is no need to clean the common secretions in the nasal cavity every day , because the nose hair has its own self-cleaning ability. If there is a hard foreign body in the nasal cavity, you can dip the cleaning cotton swab in pure water or normal saline, and then gently roll to clean it to remove the foreign body. That's it.

You may be picking your nose to remove the foreign body in the nasal cavity, or it may be just a subconscious behavior, but it is not a good habit to pay attention to picking your nose by hand. It is best to use a cotton swab or a nasal aspirator to clean the foreign body in the nasal cavity.

References:

[1] "What happened to people who have been picking their noses for a long time? 》.Museum.2022-05-29

[2] "Why Can't You Pick Your Nostrils? Does frequent digging make your nostrils bigger? Only after reading can the truth be revealed". Tencent Medical Dictionary. 2020-10-27

[3] "Post-00 girls dig their nostrils, which leads to the risk of death from intracranial infection, can they still dig their nostrils? ". The whole people are true - Tencent News. 2022-05-28

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