Is it normal to eat snot

A team in was attempting to find out how common-place the practice of consuming your own bogies is among adults, and whether some people do it to the point that it could be considered a psychiatric disorder. They anonymously surveyed randomly selected residents of Dane County, Wisconsin, and found that a whopping 91 percent of them were current nose-pickers, though only about 75 percent of people thought that it was something that everyone else does.

So is mucophagy — the mildest form of autocannibalism? First off, getting the boogers out of your nose in the first place may cause you harm, in the form of potential staph infections, with nose-pickers significantly more likely to harbor Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in their noses than non-pickers, with the authors of the study that found this noting that "the role of nose picking in nasal carriage may well be causal in certain cases.

Though having this bacteria in your nose doesn't always lead to infection, if it does develop into a staph infection you could be looking at boils, blisters and painful lumps. Not a great start, booger consumers. People who compulsively pick their nose also run the risk of infection by creating wounds in their nose. In one particularly horrifying case, a year-old woman who had picked her nose since she was ten ripped a hole through the part of the nose wall that separates the nostrils.

There are those out there who believe that eating your boogers is good for you. Based on my research, my kids were either going to be fine or very sick or have the septums of s day traders. In a moment of clarity, I did what I should have done in the first place: I reached out to a doctor.

However, kids who pick their noses more than others are at higher risk of nosebleeds. Good enough. My parenting intervention for my little booger eaters now consists of nothing more than a little life advice: Private body things should, speaking generally, not be done in public. Me being totally grossed out is the one negative side effect I could absolutely confirm. Sign up for the Fatherly newsletter to get original articles and expert advice about parenting, fitness, gear, and more in your inbox every day.

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Science Suggests Proportions Matter. So chances are you've probably mined for some juicy nose nuggets yourself. Let's take a closer look at that booger. It's mostly made of water, gel-like proteins that give it that gooey consistency and special immune proteins that fight off germs. Those immune proteins are especially useful because boogers are teeming with harmful viruses, like influenza. That's the whole point, actually. Boogers serve as your body's front-line defense against invading germs.

When you breathe in, you're not just inhaling air. You're also taking in bacteria, viruses, and dirt. Which get trapped by a layer of sticky snot that lines your nostrils. It's like fly paper for the flu. And as you continue to breathe, air hardens the mucus into a solid booger, a gooey prison cell for your ensnared enemies.

Now, normally, you can get rid of that bacteria-ridden ball either when you sneeze or blow your nose. But if you decide to eat it instead, it stands to reason that you're putting yourself at risk of infection.