You might not care to admit it, but you’ve probably gone digging for treasure up your nostrils at some point in your life. Just us? (Oh).
Well, it turns out what most would consider a filthy habit may actually be good for you: experts are insisting that picking your nose and eating the deposits will benefit your teeth, immune system and overall health.
So what’s the crazy science behind it? Dr Scott Napper, professor of biochemistry at the University of Saskatchewan, has an evolutionary perspective.
“Nature pushes us to do different things because it is to our own advantage to have certain behaviours, to consume different types of food,’” says Napper.
“From an evolutionary perspective, we evolved under very dirty conditions and maybe this desire to keep our environment and our behaviours sterile isn’t actually working to our advantage.”
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In other words, since we evolved from cavemen we shouldn’t be too quick to drop all of our prehistoric habits. It’s probably worth noting the average life expectancy of a caveman was only 25, so perhaps keeping clean and not eating your snot has some credence?
Try telling that to Dr Fruedich Bischinger from Austria, who believes picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to maintain optimum health. He thinks society should change its attitude to nose-picking and even thinks parents should encourage their children to pick their nose.
“With the finger, you can get to places you just cannot reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner,” Bischinger said.
“Eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body’s immune system.
“Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do,” Bischinger explains. “In terms of the immune system the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria is collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.”
While this news probably won’t be enough to convince non-nose-pickers (liars!) to start, it’ll definitely convince seasoned nostril miners to continue.
