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Literature
Old Facts
You may have heard the old joke: if your nose is running
and your feet smell, you must be upside down! But when you were done
laughing, did you ever stop to wonder why your nose runs? Read on to find
out the whole story.
What's Running?
To really understand why your nose runs, you need to know what mucus is.
This is the gooey, sticky, slimy material that's made inside your nose (it's
also known as snot). Take a look at a coffee cup in your kitchen: that's how
much snot your nose makes every day.
Mucus does a lot of good stuff for something that's kind of gross. It keeps
germs, dirt, pollen, and bacteria from getting into your lungs by stopping
them in your nose. But sometimes mucus doesn't stay put.
Reasons for Running
There are several different reasons why your nose might run.
If you have a cold or the flu, your nose goes into mucus-making overdrive to
keep the germ invaders out of your lungs and the rest of your body, where
they might make you even sicker than you already are. Hairs in your airways
called cilia (say: sill-ee-ah) also work to get bacteria and dirt out of
your lungs and into your mucus. You know what happens then: the mucus runs
down your throat, out your nose, or into a tissue when you blow your nose.
Or it can run into your head - which is why you get that stuffy feeling.
Kids who have allergies also get runny noses when they're around the thing
they're allergic to (like pollen or animal hair). That's because their
bodies react to these things like they're germs.
Sometimes your nose will get runny when the air in your bedroom is too dry
(this can happen when the heat's on or if you live in a dry, desert
climate). You might wake up in the morning with a runny nose because your
body's trying to make up for the fact that the air's drying out its mucus
supply.
You may also notice that your nose runs when you play outside on a cold day.
This happens because the air in your nose is a lot warmer than the air
around you. Think about when you take a shower - the bathroom gets all
steamy from the warmth. The same kind of thing happens in your nose - water
drops come together or condense, mix with your mucus, and run out your nose.
Your nose runs when you cry because when tears come out of your tear ducts
in your eyelids, they don't just run out of your eyes. Behind your nose and
eyes is a big open space called the nasal cavity. The tears run down the
nasal cavity and out into your nose, where they mix with the mucus there.