Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and you've seen the trope. A
Speaker 1: mental battle rages between a heroic character and her nemesis.
Speaker 1: As the struggle wears on, we see the first signs
Speaker 1: of the toll. It must be taking a trickle of blood.
Speaker 1: Ruby red appears at one nostril. The strain of invisible
Speaker 1: psychic abilities is admittedly difficult to illustrate in a visual medium.
Speaker 1: Perhaps that's why so many authors of comic books, television shows,
Speaker 1: and movies turned to this tried and true trope, the
Speaker 1: psychic nose bleed. When blood comes from a character's nose,
Speaker 1: it signifies that the character is exerting themselves. After all,
Speaker 1: blood vessels can rupture things to physical exertion as many
Speaker 1: a weight lifter nose, So perhaps psychic powers could cause
Speaker 1: some sort of cranial pressure build up. It's concise and
Speaker 1: visceral in a way that a mere facial twitch, drop
Speaker 1: of sweat, or vein throb can't cover. It's become such
Speaker 1: a common way to imply a mind push to its
Speaker 1: limits that the Comics meets Medicine blog Polite Descent has
Speaker 1: been tracking its appearance in comics for nearly a decade.
Speaker 1: The site even gave the fictional phenomenon a name, epistaxis telepatheca,
Speaker 1: the medical term for a nosebleed being epistaxis. The psychic
Speaker 1: nosebleed has appeared in more than just comics, of course,
Speaker 1: beyond comic book adaptations like the two thousand five film
Speaker 1: Fantastic Four and the TV series Smallville, and media directly
Speaker 1: influenced by comics like Heroes and Chronicle to other genre
Speaker 1: media like The Fifth Element, Star Trek and Carnival. It
Speaker 1: also features prominently in the Netflix series Stranger Things, in
Speaker 1: which a mysterious girl called Eleven escapes a creepy government laboratory,
Speaker 1: then uses her telekinetic powers against her former captors and
Speaker 1: some trans dimensional creepy Crawley's The internal severity of these
Speaker 1: psychic abilities is evidenced by the blood that trickles sometimes
Speaker 1: from Eleven's nose. Stranger Things pays homage to pop culture
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties, with the Spielberg meets Carpenter meets
Speaker 1: even King sort of vibe, So it's fitting that one
Speaker 1: of the earliest cinematic instances of the psychic nosebleed appears
Speaker 1: in the four film adaptation of Stephen King's fire Starter.
Speaker 1: A seven year old girl named Charlie starts fires using
Speaker 1: the power of her mind evidence to not only buy flames,
Speaker 1: but by the occasional nosebleed. But for some of the
Speaker 1: earliest psychic nosebleeds, we're going to have to go back
Speaker 1: to the paranormal thriller Scanners from David Cronenberg. It's the
Speaker 1: first film to clearly connect nasal bleeding with psychic exertion.
Speaker 1: In the movie, Scanners are people born with telepathic and
Speaker 1: telekinetic powers, the extreme use of which makes them subject
Speaker 1: to nosebleeds and more. But if psychic powers really existed,
Speaker 1: how might this work. There's a theory that using psychic
Speaker 1: powers could raise the pressure of your cerebro spinal fluid.
Speaker 1: But pressure in this fluid, which surrounds the brain and
Speaker 1: spinal cord, would not cause a nosebleed. It would cause
Speaker 1: a coma. It's actually more likely than nosebleed would be
Speaker 1: brought on by enthusiastic nose picking. The scientific term for that,
Speaker 1: by the way, is epistaxis digitorum. While the appearance of
Speaker 1: nosebleeds adds to the nostalgic eighties drama of stranger things.
Speaker 1: Actual nosebleeds can be dramatic and horrific on their own.
Speaker 1: Anytime a body part starts spouting copious amounts of blood,
Speaker 1: it's bound to cause a ruckus. It seems but a
Speaker 1: small leap to connect nosebleeds to fictional worlds, but that's
Speaker 1: all it is. Fiction. Nosebleeds are not caused by how
Speaker 1: hard we use our brains. If that were true, think
Speaker 1: of all the situations would need to choose for tests,
Speaker 1: job interviews, presentations. Surgeons might bleed more than their patients.
Speaker 1: The majority of nosebleeds in real life are caused by
Speaker 1: fist versus nose or finger versus nose collisions. Infections, allergy
Speaker 1: and irritations, and foreign bodies can also be to blame,
Speaker 1: and high blood pressure can cause one, although it's lower
Speaker 1: on the list of dangers than strokes or heart attacks.
Speaker 1: Most nosebleeds occur during winter months and are exacerbated by
Speaker 1: climates that are dry and cold. The vast majority about
Speaker 1: of nosebleeds are of the and or variety, caused by
Speaker 1: the rupture of a blood vessel at the front part
Speaker 1: of the nose. These nose bleeds are relatively easy to
Speaker 1: control and usually stop within a few minutes. Posterior nose
Speaker 1: bleeds are a different story and are caused by an
Speaker 1: arterial rupture at the back of the nose. A most
Speaker 1: common and elderly people. Posterior nosebleeds are difficult to stop
Speaker 1: and usually require hospital admission. Of course, all of this
Speaker 1: isn't to say that we're not prepared to suspend our
Speaker 1: disbelief just in case fiction starts bleeding over into reality.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't want to think about it too hard. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Laurie L. Dove and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: Bloody Pool topics, visit our home planet has stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com.