In the midst of the overwhelming war and plague news, let’s discuss a long-overlooked but very important issue: the removal and retention of nose hair.
Humans are inseparable from breathing, and most breathing is carried out through the nasal cavity. Nose is hairy. From an evolutionary point of view, all human organs are functional, and even the cecum, which has always been considered harmful and unhelpful, has been found to have the potential to promote endocrine, especially in infants and young children. The role of nose hair is more intuitive, it is obviously to filter the air as its reason for existence. At the moment when the plague is raging, its importance is even more prominent.
However, just because it filters the air, and because it hinders the efflux of nasal fluids, the nose hairs can hide dirt and become a major obstacle to nasal cleaning. Of course, the messy nose hair can also be unsightly. In light of this, the urge to clean out the nose hair is justifiable. However, cleaning nose hair is not easy, or trimming, or plucking, can damage the delicate skin of the nasal cavity and lead to infection. No wonder, whether to keep or remove nose hair has become a major issue related to aesthetics, hygiene and health.
For such an urgent and difficult problem, human beings should have done extensive and in-depth research, right?
The New York Times investigation claims that the first scientific paper on nose hair was published in The Lancet in 1896. “Most of the lining of the normal nasal cavity is perfectly sterile,” the paper said. “However, the vestibules of the nostrils, the nasal hairs in the vestibule, and the crispy skin are crawling with bacteria. These two facts seem to suggest that the nasal hairs act as a filter, allowing a large amount of Microorganisms die in the moist mesh formed by the vestibular nose hairs.” The
paper was written by two British doctors, and “The Lancet” has also been published for nearly a century in 1896. Its history and reputation in medical journals They are ranked second, and the paper also uses rigorous scientific writing to “seem to explain”, but the shortcomings of the paper are obvious: there is no comparison experiment after hair removal, so although it sounds reasonable, it lacks scientific persuasive.
In the more than 100 years since then, human beings have allowed this defect to persist, and have never scientifically asked the question of nose hair. In 2011, a group of Turkish researchers surveyed 233 patients and found that people with thick nose hair were less likely to suffer from asthma, and concluded that nose hair has an effective filtering effect. His paper was published in the International Archives of Allergy and Immunity. This scientific research is only observational and cannot draw causal conclusions. Not only does it fail to make up for the shortcomings of The Lancet that have persisted for more than a century, it also adds to the suspicion of jumping to conclusions, because asthma is mostly a genetic disease, infection But it is possible to cause it to happen.
In 2015, the Mayo Clinic conducted the only human experiment to remove nose hair so far. Medical scientists at the clinic removed nose hair for 30 patients. Both subjective reports and objective measurements showed that hair removal did improve nasal air flow, and the more lush the native nose hair, the more significant the effect after removal.
After all, it is the famous Mayo Clinic. This conclusion is very scientific and cannot be refuted. It’s just that after the flow is smooth, will it be more conducive to the invasion of bacteria and viruses? The host of the Mayo experiment deduced that the virus particles are too small for the nose hair to prevent their invasion.
Thinking about it, I am afraid that no experimenter would dare to use some viruses to do experiments on a group of people with or without nose hair.
Since you can’t give too much hope to science, follow common sense. The top thread after the “New York Times” article is from an otolaryngologist: clinically seen nasal infections caused by a lot of hair removal. The second top thread is from a humorous woman: A man’s nose hair will hinder attracting others to be close to him, which can naturally reduce infection.
Hey, why can’t you explain things in this world so clearly?
