The pseudo allergies are back, yet again! I know, I know, as the allergist said, I'm not allergic to anything. Then why does my nose start running randomly and why do I suddenly start to sneeze all the time? A conundrum.
So I decided to read up on some fun nose facts from Martha's Whole Living website. My favorite are below and the rest are at the link:
- When our noses are congested and we're forced to breathe through our mouths, the air we take in is not fully warmed, filtered, and humidified, as it should be.
- Mice, for example, have about 1,000 smell receptors in their noses, while we have only a few hundred. Some 40 million years ago, around the same time that apes and Old World monkeys developed their acute, full-color vision, their sense of smell diminished, says Emily Liman, an associate professor of neurobiology at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. But those 300 receptors operate in countless combinations to give humans and other primates a respectable, and useful, sense of smell.
- The flow of air through our noses is not a simple stream, but rather a course of whirls and eddies moving past curved, spongy bones known as turbinates.
- Although we remain blessedly unaware of it much of the time, the nose also produces a steady stream of mucus that cilia propel from front to back, where it is swallowed. "We swallow about a quart of mucus a day from our nose," Bothwell says. "It's tiny amounts, and it's constant, and it's cleaning your nose."
Ok, so I am probably the only one that finds this interesting! Me, and maybe my favorite person: Martha Stewart.
