Warning : graphic description of boogers and their extraction methods (maybe)
So, I have been contemplating writing down something for a long time, but just couldn’t think of anything, when my nose started irritating me and I had to get rid of a booger, and I realized I have no idea how they are made!
I mean, yes I know there are seromucinous glands in the nasal mucosa, there are goblet cells too, which are said to be the source of all of it. But that is way inside the nose, my finer cannot reach there. So how does it read a the front of the nose, to a more accessible place, where most humans have been extracting them from?
Med school taught me that the cilia in the respiratory tract beyond the pharynx move upwards, such that the secretions reach the pharynx and are the swallowed. Now if I can feel all these sticky things in the vestibule of my nose, would that mean the cilia in the nasal epithelium pushes all the secretions away from the pharynx. I also wonder if there is a variation in this in different people maybe?
Also, what happens when an individual is intubated, does the nasal mucosa still make a lot of secretions, do intubated patients also have boogers?
What happens when there is a strong wind blowing, how does it affect the cilia?
Also, if the cilia work in one particular direction, that would mean there is a polarity set up in the epithelium, I wonder how that is accomplished.
Do different people make different amount of daily nasal secretion? Is the quality of daily nasal secretion on healthy days different in different people? How about as they age? I know people who just have a cold or a blocked nose throughout the year, I wonder if it has something to do with their ciliated epithelium.
So, a preliminary way to assess the method of formation of boogers would easily be intubated individuals. A camera in front of their nose, taking a timelapse. From there on, we could graduate to mask like devices, that look into one nose at a time over a few days. Then to compare during sickness and health. Yes, yes I make it sounds too simplistic, there would be a looot of things to figure out to go ahead with this.
And I could go on. (Obviously) But I will stop here and get back to work.
Let me know if anyone has an answer or wishes to conduct an experiment.