The Nose Knows a Lot, and so Should You

By Leslie Garcia, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Apr. 28–What helps us smell tomatoes at a farmers market and taste the corn dogs at the state fair? What reminds us to call the doctor when the air gets a bit stuffiness-inducing?

Our nose.

It helps us breathe, it helps us smell, it helps us taste.

“It is important in terms of quality of life,” says Thomas Hung, an otolaryngologist in private practice at Medical City Dallas Hospital.

“You’re miserable when you can’t breathe through your nose. It’s amazing how unpalatable food becomes when you can’t smell.”

Makes us reach for a tissue at the mere thought. Or at least have more respect for that protuberance — be it ski-jump, upturned, bulbous or button — in the middle of our faces.

Read on and see why we no longer look at a nose in quite the same way.

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ALLERGENS IN KC Plants and trees

There’s a season for everything, including environmental allergens. Here are some of the most common offenders in the area:

–Early spring, as early as February: birch and maple pollens

–Mid-spring, usually April: black walnut, cedar

–Late April: cottonwood and oak

–Last half of May, into June: grass pollen, including bluegrass, timothy and Bermuda

–Summer: few problems

–Early August to the freeze (typically ends by mid-October): weeds, most notably ragweed, but also others, including lamb’s quarter, thistle and cocklebur

Other common allergens

–Mold: outdoors from until fall; indoors year-round

–Dust mites: year-round

–Cat and dog dander: year-round

Not all runny noses are allergies

–Studies show that one-third of patients who see allergists have a condition called nonallergic rhinitis. This inflammation in the lining of the nose causes symptoms similar to allergies but is not a reaction to something in the environment.

–Mixed rhinitis is a combination of allergies and rhinitis.

Pollen count

To find out the pollen count for where you live, go to www.kcallergy.com and enter your ZIP code.

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Why does your nose run?

Allergies and infections are the two most common causes. Viruses stimulate the nose to secrete more mucus, thus leading to the call for a tissue.

With allergies, the allergen (be it cats, dust, etc.) stimulates histamines to be released from cells lining the nasal cavity.

Mucus glands are thus stimulated, secreting more mucus. The histamine also causes blood vessels to dilate, which could cause congestion, not running.

Throughout history, theories of runny noses have included:

–Your brain must be liquefying. This courtesy of the second-century Greek physician Galen, whose theory, at the time, made sense because so many people died of colds.

–You must be lacking sexual self-restraint. This was from a 1920s Baltimore physician, who said it was the body’s form of punishment.

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The truth about mucus

Mucus membranes produce between a pint and a quart of mucus a day. We don’t tend to notice the amount (thank goodness) because stomach acids dissolve it. But if a virus attacks these tissues, the mucus loses much of its water content (making it thicker), and it flows more slowly.

Mucus changes color depending on what’s going on in your body. But contrary to what you may have heard, green or yellow mucus doesn’t necessarily mean you have a bacterial infection. It could be viral.

“The truth is that mucus turns colors because of an increase in leukocytes, which are responsible for fighting infections,” otolaryngologist Thomas Hung says. That increase and the byproducts of leukocytes give mucus a green, yellow or brown color.

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Nose facts

–We have about 5 million olfactory receptor cells. Rats have 10 million and bloodhounds close to 220 million.

–During a typical day, we breathe nearly 25,000 times.

–Many people inhale mainly through one nostril at a time, alternating nostrils every one to three hours.

–About 80 percent of what we taste is affected by what we smell.

–When we’re hungry, our sense of smell becomes stronger.

–We can recall smells with better accuracy than photos.

–We smell many more odors than our brains register. Only when an aroma pleases, irritates or reminds us of something do we take notice.

–When we breathe, our noses warm the inhaled air to our body temperature and humidify it to 100 percent saturation. The moistness and dampness help keep the air from damaging our lungs.

–Nose jobs — excuse us, rhinoplasties — hail from the Renaissance. The Catholic Church excommunicated the most celebrated surgeon because he was believed to be tampering with God’s work.

–Describing a smell is infinitely more difficult than describing a sound or a scene. One reason: The area of the brain that deals with odor competes with that used for language.

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i FOR MORE ON NOSES SEE D2

Source: Jeffrey Wald, Kansas City Allergy & Asthma Associates — Lajean Keene, The Star

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