I don’t know about you, but I have a distinct memory of the point in my childhood where I consciously considered eating my boogers.
I couldn’t tell you if I ate them when I was a baby (I probably did, what baby doesn’t?) But I remember being a very small child and internally debating the issue. Of course, the authoritative adults in my life strongly discouraged the behavior. Could it be they thought I would be a social pariah as the only kid with a finger up their nostril?
What are Boogers, Really?
Boogers are really just clusters of mucus that gather the debris that would otherwise flow down into our lungs. Humans generate almost one liter of mucus every day. (1) Creating boogers is essentially one of the ways our body protects the respiratory system and keeps us breathing healthily and happily.
What we call ‘boogers’ is when this mucus gets pushed to the front of the nose and hardens. This is a natural process because, after all, that mucus has gotta go somewhere, doesn’t it? The mucus that doesn’t make it to the front of your nose ends up slipping down your throat. So could it really be so bad for kids to eat them off their fingers? If you think about it, you’re already eating some of your boogers anyway.
What’s The Big Deal?
Picking your nose may be the one time where the saying, ‘what’s the big deal, everybody does it!?’ applies – because they actually do!
It seems more and more that researchers come up with some new disorder or condition plaguing the public. Can’t some quirky human behaviors be just that – quirky behavior – without it being a psychiatric disorder? Well, researchers hypothesized this very notion back in 1995 when they set out to see how many people really do pick their nose. They figured nose picking was just something people did – and guess what – they were right! A questionnaire was sent to 1,000 Dane County, WI residents about their nose mining habits, and 254 responded. Of those 254, an overwhelming 91% said they were current nose pickers, and 75% figured everybody else was doing it too! (2)
A 2001 survey focusing on adolescents found the same thing to be true. Nearly all 200 adolescents from 4 urban schools reported picking their nose at least a couple times each day. The conclusion was the same – nose picking is common. (3) I guess that’s why there aren’t too many studies on the matter. Researchers weren’t going to let us off the hook that easy though. Compulsive nose picking still does have a fancy term – rhinotillexomania. However, if you do anything to the point of obsessive compulsion, it will probably be classified as a disorder, and nose picking is no exception. When picking your nose becomes detrimental to your everyday life or, in rare cases, causes intranasal destruction rhinotillexomania is present and can be the sign of an underlying psychiatric disorder. (4)
So, What, I Should Just Let My Kid Pick Their Nose?
No, not necessarily. Just because everybody is doing it doesn’t mean deterring kids for the sake of hygiene is unreasonable. The reason the nose caught the dirt in the first place is that it was trying to keep it out of the body. For public and personal health reasons, it’s highly beneficial and recommended to help kids learn to use tissues as they get older. The point is, if you catch your kid sticking their finger in their nose every so often, there’s no reason to worry, they’re just like everybody else.
Correction: This article was updated to remove false information indicating kids who eat boogers grow up to be happier and healthier adults.
Article originally appeared in Healthy Holistic Living
