Snot

[Jaded]

How does it work? You are sitting there, watching Celebrity Kitchen Nightmare, wondering whether picking your exceptionally dry nose will make it bleed and WOOSH!!!! a Niagara of snot floods out, requiring a dash for the tissue box before your shirt is ruined.

When you have a cold, is your nose like the Fountains of Bellagio? Fourteen minutes of flat calm interspersed with a minute long raging torrent of snot?

[rogerzilla]

We had joy, we had fun
Flicking bogeys at the sun
But the sun was too hot
And the bogeys turned to snot

[Legs]

Warning: graphic content

(click to show/hide)

I'd never experienced this before, but on Sunday, after blowing my nose and clearing out the stringy bits, my sinuses discharged a deluge of wetness down my face.  Not just dripping, but pouring, in glorious Technicolor hues from green to orange. 

[Ian H]

Snot is proof that there's no such thing as 'intelligent design'.

[ian]

Snot is basically being carjacked by a virus. They're getting you to give them a ride via your nose. A former colleague of mine destroyed her laptop, it 'just came out' (admittedly not an excuse you hear often from the direction of a woman) as she leaned over in deep concentration. A veritable torrent. Apres le deluge, the embarrassment of having to explain to IT that the keyboard doesn't work because it's filled with snot. I think she blamed it on coffee, then resigned, left the country, and now lives under an assumed name.

[FifeingEejit]

My rough understanding of it is:

You produce mucus, which is generally quite clear and quite benign if a bit manky when it is escaping.

If you have a dust allergy or similar to cause Rhinitis or Hayfever, you produce more in order to shift the irritant which in all likely hood isn't hanging around anyway so your snot stays mostly clear, with maybe a bit of blood in it.
Until I started taking Nasal Cortisoids to calm things down a bit I was producing a ridiculous amount of it.

You get used to being able to identify if it's the polen/dust or a cold by the colour of what you're regularly discharging into a tissue, you're also producing loads more of it (and the amount produced depends on the person), it also gets everywhere including in your sinuses and down your throat (which causes coughs)

Similar is happening with a cold, there's something nasty in your airwaves and sinuses and your body wants it out, and there's this magic liquid it can produce to get rid of it.
Sorry did I say magic? I meant disgusting.

The nasty stuff your body wants rid of is picked up by the mucus which discolours it, hence the green and black stuff.

A sudden deluge of it after a sneeze suggests the sneeze dislodged a blockage you were (presumably) unaware of.

[Kim]

There's a substantial inflammation factor too.  For me, allergic snot is clear and runny, but the associated inflammation of the nasal lining impairs my ability to breathe and makes the snot more annoying.  Sneezing and nose-blowing are counter-productive here, as there's no large mass of snot to clear and they just irritate the membranes more.  Responds to steroids, anti-histamines and *spectacularly* to vasoconstrictor decongestants.  People who tell you not to sniff have evidently never suffered from allergic rhinitis and can get to fuck.

Infectious snot is a completely different badger.  Much thicker, and can happen without the inflammation (although that's still a possibility if you cause excessive irritation trying to clear it), so unless it's a bacterial infection (which it usually isn't) there's little you can do medication-wise to relive it.  As there's less breathing impairment it's much less annoying, unless enough gets into my lungs at night to cause a secondary infection.

Snot caused by non-allergic irritation is transient and a non-problem.  Blow your nose and it's gone.


Obcycling:  A recumbent riding position means the snot drips harmlessly down the back of your throat, rather than forming stalactites at the end of your nose.

[T42]

I often experience a sudden release of snot halfway through drying myself after a shower, probably due to the higher humidity. Often when the towel is inopportunely positioned.

[Legs]

Responds to steroids, anti-histamines and *spectacularly* to vasoconstrictor decongestants.  People who tell you not to sniff have evidently never suffered from allergic rhinitis and can get to fuck.

My wife has a Beconase habit.  Ye gods it is expensive!
Otrivine is my go-to drug or nose-related woes.

[slope]

How does it work?

Dunno how it works, but being a ~360 day a year cyclist, the stuff really begins to flow when temperatures fall into their October to March averages. On the bike snot rocketing is a skill that takes time to master and is always vulnerable to mishaps/obliviousness of wind direction/force of discharge failing to meet required velocity etc.

The worst is when one suddenly stops riding - if it's in public/down the shops/in the pub - one must have a hanky available toute suite.

[FifeingEejit]

Responds to steroids, anti-histamines and *spectacularly* to vasoconstrictor decongestants.  People who tell you not to sniff have evidently never suffered from allergic rhinitis and can get to fuck.

My wife has a Beconase habit.  Ye gods it is expensive!

So do I but general taxation pays for it, thankfully.

[Kim]

Beconase stopped working for me (or at least caused more nosebleeds than it was worth) when they switched to an aqueous spray rather than a CFC-based aerosol.  These days I'm using fluticasone propionate, which seems even more effective, but I have to ration it to the worst part of the summer, as I still get nosebleeds after about 6 weeks of use.

That's on top of cetirizine, and eye/lung stuff.  Chlorphenamine seems more effective than cetirizine for non-hayfever allergies (dust, dogs, beastie bites), but drowsiness is a side-effect, so best used to stop the snot keeping you from sleeping, or to trade improbably swollen random body parts for low-level zombieness.

There's a Sudafed-branded xylometazoline nasal spray you can buy OTC which is dramatically effective (as in it takes about a minute or two for the inflammation to substantially subside and all the residual snot to fall out), but you can't use that for more than a few days at a time otherwise you get a rebound effect.

Speaking of Sudafed, proper pseudoephedrine (the stuff you have to persuade the pharmacist you're not manufacturing crystal meth to buy) is effective against snot, but the overall sensation is of having dry-cleaned your head.  Also it makes me jittery at higher doses.  Best avoided.

[Cudzoziemiec]

The worst is when one suddenly stops riding - if it's in public/down the shops/in the pub - one must have a hanky available toute suite.

Same for me. Or when entering a warm atmosphere, especially if it's relatively humid, from a cold one. When it's cold enough and/or dry enough, snot is an impossibility, or at least flowing snot is impossible.

[T42]

Beconase = bec au nase = beak in French, i.e. slang for nose + to + Nase = nose in German. I wonder if it was developed in Alsace.

[Mrs Pingu]

Snot caused by non-allergic irritation is transient and a non-problem.  Blow your nose and it's gone.

Speak for yourself. If I've got a cold I've got one of 2 types of snot - thin clear water fall stuff or really thick custard that bungs up all available spaces in my head and leaves me unable to breathe.
I seem to remember reading in New Scientist years back advice not to blow too much when you've got a cold as the pressure just forces all the goop deeper into your sinuses.

[Kim]

Snot caused by non-allergic irritation is transient and a non-problem.  Blow your nose and it's gone.

Speak for yourself. If I've got a cold [...]

If you've got a cold, it's not just irritation.  I was thinking of random particles like plaster dust or what passes for air in Mordor Central, as distinct from an allergen or infection.

[Mrs Pingu]

Ah, I misunderstood, ta.

[ian]

Tis science fact that snot issues through a transdimensional grotportal that has opened in your head. That's why, no matter how much you blow, the supply will never, ever be exhausted.

[Kim]

Tis science fact that snot issues through a transdimensional grotportal that has opened in your head. That's why, no matter how much you blow, the supply will never, ever be exhausted.

Barakta was involved in some early 1980s experiments to seal the portal using FRIKKIN LAZERS.  It didn't go well.

[Vernon]

Tis science fact that snot issues through a transdimensional grotportal that has opened in your head. That's why, no matter how much you blow, the supply will never, ever be exhausted.

Barakta was involved in some early 1980s experiments to seal the portal using FRIKKIN LAZERS.  It didn't go well.

Does her snot go green when she is angry?

[Kim]

Tis science fact that snot issues through a transdimensional grotportal that has opened in your head. That's why, no matter how much you blow, the supply will never, ever be exhausted.

Barakta was involved in some early 1980s experiments to seal the portal using FRIKKIN LAZERS.  It didn't go well.

Does her snot go green when she is angry?

That's gamma rays.

[Vernon]

Tis science fact that snot issues through a transdimensional grotportal that has opened in your head. That's why, no matter how much you blow, the supply will never, ever be exhausted.

Barakta was involved in some early 1980s experiments to seal the portal using FRIKKIN LAZERS.  It didn't go well.

Does her snot go green when she is angry?

That's gamma rays.

True, dat. And it was the '70s