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