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 Who Knew?
Fun, surprising facts about nose, germs, allergy, and other related topics.
• Honey made by local bees contains miniscule amounts of the very pollen that is causing your hayfever allergies. And ingesting it in small amounts works like allergy shots to slowly build your tolerance to these allergens, which decreases your response to them. Start with just a quarter teaspoon, slowly increasing up to two teaspoons daily. What a sweet deal!
• Your pillow can contain 10 to 16 types of allergy-triggering fungi, according to a study. Using allergy-proof covers is highly recommended!
• It's impossible to calculate the incidence of colds from a specific virus because there are more than 100 rhinoviruses, which can band together in an infinite number of combinations.
Source: The Five-Second Rule and Other Myths About Germs
• For high-speed action, nothing can beat a big, wet, messy sneeze. It travels out of your body at speeds high enough to get you a ticket on the highway. Some sneezes have been clocked at more than 100 miles an hour! Sneezes happen when cilia get super-agitated by things such as cold germs or allergens—plant pollen, pet dander, and other nose invaders. Your body just can’t wait to get rid of these offenders the usual way, so it blows them out. And here’s thrilling thought: that spray of snot is filled with all sorts of germ-carrying particles. Some can float in the air for almost an hour. Duck!!
Source: “Oh, Yuck!” by Joy Masoff
• Beware homebodies: Indoor air can contain as much as 70 times the pollution of outdoor air.
Source: Environmental Protection Agency
• Kenny G, the famous soprano saxophonist, has asthma and so does Alice Cooper, the shock-rocker, who is at the opposite end of musical style.
• It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. This is true. I just sneezed and saw nothing.
• In 1912, Polish biochemist Casimir Funk coined the term vitamine, meaning "essential to life". Funk (who moved to the U.S. in 1915) used the word to describe essential factors contained in foods that were vital to the human body, (the e was later dropped.)
Source: “The Big Book of Questions and Answers”
• Your nose and ears never stop growing. Interesting…let’s hope the growth is invisible to human eyes which, by the way, do not grow.
• Does your nose turn itchy and develop blotchy hives when you step outside during winter (In rare cases, difficulty breathing or even anaphylactic shock)? If so, you may be allergic to the cold or what’s called “cold-induced urticaria.” Fortunately, the symptoms disappear 10 to 20 minutes later when you warm up.
• Researchers recently found that our palms have way more different kinds of bacteria than previously thought? But what really got my attention was that women have about 40% more species than men!! They speculate that it could be that men's more acidic skin discourages some species or that sweat, hormones or women's more frequent use of hand creams plays a role.
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
• Were you aware that pain is measured in units of dols and the instrument used to measure pain is a dolorimeter? Great! I can finally show people how much pain I suffer from sinusitis and allergy problems and they better believe it!
• One of the illnesses that contributed to Henry VIII's death was chronic sinusitis. And Billy Graham, probably the most well-known evangelist in the world, had a bad case of sinusitis and later had surgery because of it.
• Ewww fact alert! Dust mites feed on your and my skin flakes.
• Guess what. Your nose isn’t the only part of your body loaded with mucus. Whole parts of you wouldn’t work without it! In fact, if it weren’t for mucus, you wouldn’t be alive today, since mucus keeps your stomach from eating itself up, and helps make making babies possible. You also have mucus factories in your inner ears and the airways of your lungs. Mucus made in this part of your body is called “phlegm” (not to be confused with the Spanish dessert flan, though they are the same consistency.)
Source: “Oh, Yuck!” by Joy Masoff
• Did you know that your nose can remember 50,000 different scents? Another fact that demonstrates how marvelous human body is. Although a bloodhound’s nose may be a million times more sensitive than a human’s, we can identify a wide variety of scents and many are strongly tied to memories.
Source: 100-weird-facts-about-the-human-body
• Someone without a sense of smell suffers from anosmia and can therefore be called anosmiac.
• A study by German researchers has shown the powerful connection between scent and our subconscious mind. They determined that if you smell roses while you're sleeping, you're more apt to have pleasant dreams while the scent of rotten eggs is more likely to cause nightmares.
Source: US News & World Report, 9/21/08
• Good news for people who love cats but are allergic to them. Now they can pet them without sneezing and scratching. Allerca, Inc., a biotechnology firm in San Diego, California, says it has bred hypoallergenic cats and that they are available for purchase.
Source: interestingfacts.org
• Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. Well, for some people peanuts cause “explosion” to their immune system.
• Celtic sea salt has countless medicinal uses. For example it can help correct excess acidity, restore good digestion, relieve allergies and skin disease, prevent some types of cancer, boost cellular energy and give heightened resistance to infections and bacterial disease.
Source: Sea Salt’s Hidden Powers by Jacques de Langre, Ph.D
• Ryan Kim, a California teenager, has conducted a study that demonstrates that an English ivy plant can rid the air of mold and other nasty pollutants. Over a period of 12 hours, the ivy plant reduced mold particulates by 78.5 percent and airborne particles of fecal matter by an average of more than 94 percent. It seems like a no-brainer what to get next time you want to add some greenery in your home.
Source: Odysseymagazine.com
• Oddly, pigs can make great pets for people with allergies because they don't shed their hair. But be aware that pigs do need a lot of special care. Cool idea but do you want a high-maintenance pet?
Source: petcaretips.net
• It’s been proven that people can lessen reactions to allergies by laughing.Also, remember, laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens immune system.
Source: new-mind.com
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