Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Bogle bomb here, you've probably caught someone in the
Speaker 1: act of picking their nose and inspecting the contents. Disgusting, right,
Speaker 1: But you do it too, except maybe you opt to
Speaker 1: remove your boogers using a tissue in the privacy of
Speaker 1: your own home or car, or that empty elevator you're
Speaker 1: riding to the tenth floor. Whatever. We don't judge whether
Speaker 1: you know them as a bat in the cave or
Speaker 1: a nose goblin. There's a good reason for boogers, even
Speaker 1: when they stick around in gelatinous little lumps. The lining
Speaker 1: of the nose and sinus is also known as the
Speaker 1: epithelium produce at least one court. That's one leader of
Speaker 1: mucus every day. That's a lot of snot the mucus
Speaker 1: in your scius is keeps the nasal linings moist and
Speaker 1: helps with your sense of smell. Most importantly, though, it
Speaker 1: traps dust, bacteria, pollen, and other contaminants. Mucus essentially acts
Speaker 1: as a sticky fly strip, grabbing pollutants and keeping them
Speaker 1: from getting into your respiratory system. Without mucus, most of
Speaker 1: these particles would end up in your lungs. The trapped
Speaker 1: mucus clings to miniature hairs called cilia. The cilia move
Speaker 1: the mucus toward the nearest exit, either toward the front
Speaker 1: of the nose or the back of the throat, where
Speaker 1: it's swallowed in small amounts. But sometimes the mucus has
Speaker 1: trouble fully exiting the nostrils. It begins to dry out
Speaker 1: and may become clumped together. Additional dust and other debris
Speaker 1: join forces with the drying mucus and huila, a bugger
Speaker 1: is formed. Buggers form more frequently when you have the
Speaker 1: common cold or about with allergies. Dry, dusty or air
Speaker 1: conditioned air can cause an increase in booger formation too.
Speaker 1: Even with all this aired influence, a booger may remain
Speaker 1: soft and rife with airborne particles. Sometimes, however, a booger
Speaker 1: can become extremely hard and have rough edges that can
Speaker 1: pierce the nasal lining, causing it to bleed. Now, for
Speaker 1: rather indelicate matter, the next time you see a child
Speaker 1: or help us all an adult, inspect the contents of
Speaker 1: his or her nasal cavities, watch for surreptitious nibble. Turns
Speaker 1: out the people eating their booger is maybe taking a
Speaker 1: step forward on the evolutionary ladder. A biochemist at the
Speaker 1: University of Saskatchewan theorized that eating boogers is actually a
Speaker 1: way of introducing germs into and thus strengthening the immune system.
Speaker 1: This hygiene hypothesis asserts that dining on bits of mucus
Speaker 1: may actually build a superpowered immune response that could give
Speaker 1: booger eaters and edge over the rest of us. Bone
Speaker 1: up a teeth. Today's episode was written by Laurie L.
Speaker 1: Dove and produced by Tyler Claig. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other picky topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com.