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