Hey, Who Knew? Snot's snot so bad!

[kenny]

What your snot can reveal about your health

Snot plays a powerful role in protecting us from disease – and its colour alone can provide insights into what's going on in our bodies.

www.bbc.com

 

[kenny]

Gosh!
First it was snot, now it's poop.

Current medical research is getting gross as it crosses new boundaries.

NSFW, means not safe for work, but NSFED means not safe for eating dinner.

How your microbiome can improve your health

The myriad of microorganisms that live happily inside and on our bodies could change the future of human health.

www.bbc.com

 

[Matata]

paywall on both articles.

 

[kenny]

paywall on both articles.

Really? I'm surprised!
I could read both and I certainly do not subscribe to BBC, and have never pay them a penny, and never given them my email address or any identity info.

Hmmm.
Interesting!

Perhaps there is something different about which browser you use or the 245 trillion ways your computer system, history, searching is different from mine.
I've never used a VPN, perhaps you do.
I'm very curious what could explain why I can see it, but you can't

Can anyone else read the BBC articles?
If so, do you subscribe to BBC?

 

[kenny]

To @Matata and all:

Credit to BBC:



... The rest of the text:
... an excess of any of them could cause illness. For instance, phlegm was thought to be made in the brain and lungs, and during the cold and wet seasons, it could become too abundant and even cause epilepsy. Somebody with a phlegmatic personality would have a cold, damp and aloof character.


Of course, we now know that snot doesn't affect people's personalities or cause diseases – rather, it helps to protect us from them.
And though nobody likes a runny nose or flinging snot across the room in a sneeze, the mucus in our nasal passages is arguably one of the wonders of the human body. It protects us from intruders, and it has a unique composition that can reveal profound insights into what is going on inside us. Now scientists are hoping to hone the powers of snot to better diagnose and treat everything from Covid-19 to chronic lung conditions.
The gooey substance shields the insides of our nose, moisturising the nasal passages, and trapping any bacteria, viruses, pollens, dirt, dust and pollution trying to get into our body through our airways. Aided by hundreds of tiny hairs, snot is a barrier between the outside world and our inner one.

The adult body produces over 100 millitres of snot over the course of a day but children tend to be much snottier than adults because their bodies are learning to deal with being exposed to all of the world's molecules for the first time, says Daniela Ferreira, a professor of respiratory infection and vaccinology from the University of Oxford in the UK.

With a simple glance, our snot's colour and consistency can already help us glean a little bit about what's going on: snot can be like a visual thermometer. A runny schnozzle with clear mucus suggests the body is likely expelling something that's irritating its sinuses, like pollen or dust. White mucus means a virus may have entered the premises, as the white is caused by the white blood cells called up to fight off intruders. When mucus turns denser and yellowish-green, it's just a lot of dead white blood cells accumulating after having gathered in great numbers and flushing out. If your snot is reddish or pink, it may be a little bloody: maybe you've blown your nose too much and irritated its insides.
But looking at snot is just the first step.

The snot microbiome​

While the gut microbiome – the ecosystem of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microorganisms that inhabit our bodies – is very much in the public consciousness, scientists think that the microbiome in our snot is equally important. In fact, scientists now believe that it's intricately linked to human health and the proper functioning of the immune system.

Why snot really should gross us out

Technically, Hippocrates wasn't all wrong when he theorised that mucus makes people sick. Mucus is a protective barrier for the nose, but it does help bacteria and viruses spread when the nose gets runny, says Ferreira. We wipe our faces, we touch things, we sneeze and inadvertently fling snot across to the other side of the room. When we're infected with a respiratory pathogen, snot is hijacked as a vehicle for bacteria and viruses to multiply and travel around in, so that we spread them to as many people as we possibly can. So really, it helps us make other people sick.

Everybody has a unique snot microbiome. It is affected by sex, age, location, diet – and even whether you vape. The microbiome's makeup is what helps it fend off intruders, and some of these interactions are subtle. Research from 2024, for instance, found that whether potentially harmful Staphylococcus bacteria survive in the nose and infect a person, causing fever and pus-filled boils, depends on how the snot microbiome's bacteria hold onto iron.

Ferreira is working to figure out exactly what a healthy snot microbiome looks like so that it can be put in an everyday nasal spray to boost snot health, like taking probiotics for gut health. "Imagine if you could alter what we have in our nose with lots of very good-guy species that stay there and colonise, and do not allow for the bad guys to come in and cause us to get sick," says Ferreira.
Ferreira's colleagues have selected the bacteria they think make up the perfect schnozzle microbiome, and they're testing them to see if these bacteria can take over people's airways and last long enough to impact and improve their health.

Since the snot's microbiome is so tightly linked with the immune system, says Ferreira, they are also studying it to fine-tune how to boost the immune system and even make it more receptive to vaccines. Research suggests that how a body reacts to a vaccine is altered by the type of microbiome a person has. Studies on the Covid-19 vaccine, for example, suggest it affected the snot's microbiome, and in turn, the microbiome affected how efficient the vaccine was.


Everybody has a unique snot microbiome. It is affected by sex, age, location, diet – and even whether you vape
"The Covid-19 vaccines were great at stopping us from getting sick, but we continued to transmit the virus," says Ferreira. "We could actually develop much better vaccines [so] the next generation people don't even get sick, whether that is Covid-19 or flu or any other respiratory viruses – and it's all there in that snot immunity."

The rise of d​

While Ferreira's work pinpointing the exact formula for the perfect snot microbiome might take a couple of years, in Sweden, scientists have had a head start by transplanting healthy people's snot into those who are sick with a chronically blocked nose and hay fever, everyday symptoms of rhinosinusitis.

The researchers asked 22 adults to shoot themselves up the nose with a syringe full of snot from healthy friends and partners each day for five days. They discovered that symptoms like cough and facial pain, for instance, dropped by almost 40% for up to three months in at least 16 of the patients. "That was great news to us, and no one reported any negative side effects," says Anders Martensson, a senior consultant in otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery from Helsingborg Hospital in Sweden, who led the study. These trials were inspired by work done in other laboratories about gut microbiomes, with faecal transplants, he says.

That first pilot programme, however didn't gather much data about how these people's snot microbiomes changed and what happened to the specific bacteria in their nose, whether they increased, decreased, and so forth. So another larger and more precise trial is underway.

Mulligan's team have found that a vitamin D nasal spray could help restore a sense of smell in people who have lost it due to smoking (Credit: Emmanuel Lafont)
In fact, snot can be a great barrier to chronic nose and lung diseases.

Jennifer Mulligan, an otolaryngologist at the University of Florida, uses snot to study people with chronic rhinosinusitis and nasal polyps – a condition that affects about 5 to 12% of the global population. In the first years of her career, she needed to surgically extract nose tissue from rhinosinusitis patients, but that was invasive and limiting. Now, her research has shown that snot can be an accurate proxy to more closely examine what's happening inside the body when someone develops rhinosinusitis. "We're using it to whittle down who are really the guilty culprits here, who's really driving this condition?" says Mulligan, adding that every patient has a slightly different profile for what's causing their rhinosinusitis.

Similarly, while treatment before was mostly trial and error – varying greatly from patient to patient, and sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars for treatments lasting months – Mulligan suggests a snot analysis can quickly help identify the right treatment or surgery needed.
Several clinical trials for Mulligan's technique are underway worldwide. Emerging health-teach companies, such as Diag-Nose, launched by engineers at Stanford University, are developing snot-analysing AI systems and patenting devices for nasal microsampling: in 2025, they launched the first FDA-approved nasal microsampling device – a sampling device that collects precise volumes of nasal fluid – to reduce research variability by standardising sampling methods.
"We have learned so much that we could have never learned with just tissue biopsies. It's completely changed what we know about the disease, and it's going to change the way patients are diagnosed in the future and how they receive treatment," says Mulligan.
Mulligan uses the same snot tools to study what causes people to lose their sense of smell, too. Her team has already found that a vitamin-D nasal spray could potentially help restore a sense of smell in people who have lost it due to inflammation from smoking.

Plus, Mulligan says, what happens in the lungs happens in the nose and vice versa. So these diagnostic tools and therapies can be used for lung diseases too. New research suggests that by simply analysing how much of the IL-26 protein is present in a patient's snot, doctors can tell whether somebody is more or less susceptible to developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – a common smoker's disease, and the fourth most widespread cause of death in the world. With snot analyses, patients can be diagnosed early and treated rapidly.

Similarly, research teams around the world are developing analogous tools and methods to use snot to detect asthma, lung cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease. Snot can also be used to measure radiation exposure and several recent studies suggest that the gooey nasal fluid can pinpoint how much somebody is exposed to pollution, such as heavy metals and microparticles in the air.
"Snot is the future of personalised medicine. I wholeheartedly believe that," says Mulligan.
*Disclaimer

All content within this column is provided for general information only, and should not be treated as a substitute for the medical advice of your own doctor or any other health care professional. The BBC is not responsible or liable for any diagnosis made by a user based on the content of this site. The BBC is not liable for the contents of any external internet sites listed, nor does it endorse any commercial product or service mentioned or advised on any of the sites. Always consult your own GP if you're in any way concerned about your health.

 

[Matata]

Really? I'm surprised!
I could read both and I certainly do not subscribe to BBC

I was surprised too because I usually can read their stuff on both Chrome & Safari. FYI, I just tried accessing using Safari and I could read them. Sorry I didn't think about trying that earlier. Now I'm curious why there's a difference between the 2 browsers. Thanks for posting the articles.

 

[kenny]

I was surprised too because I usually can read their stuff on both Chrome & Safari. FYI, I just tried accessing using Safari and I could read them. Sorry I didn't think about trying that earlier. Now I'm curious why there's a difference between the 2 browsers. Thanks for posting the articles.

The Internet creeps me out, even though I'm on zero social media and do not load any apps.
Unlike most people, I don't even have a "news feed", that spies on me to spoon-feed me WHATEVER holds my eyeballs (for their advertisers) for as long as possible.

If I have a "news feed" it's my critical thinking informing my source choices.
Though, right here on PS, I've learned that even BBC supports terrorism, murder, rape, etc.



So, I usually feel relatively safe from much of the Internet's creepiness.
But what you've posted is an example of how much creepiness goes on behind the curtain.

 

[kenny]

@Matata
Isn't Chrome owned by Microsoft? ...

 

[Matata]

Isn't Chrome owned by Microsoft? ..

Google owns Chrome.

 

[kenny]

Google owns Chrome.

UGH! That's even worse

Google is the SPY-QUEEN.
They know everything about you, so they know you're more likely, than I am, to pay for that paywall.

Great example for why I don't just join everything.
The more they know about you, the more you're screwed, and the richer they get.

 

[ShinyPink]

I read it on Chrome, no problems. Such a pain in the ass when things aren't compatible on one. Anyhow, thanks @kenny for the gross info.

 

[kenny]

I read it on Chrome, no problems. Such a pain in the ass when things aren't compatible on one. Anyhow, thanks @kenny for the gross info.

That reinforces my suspicion that it's not the browser itself, but what the browser has learned about the habits and behaviors of each human using it.

Speaking about gross, per the VOX link below, we all swallow over a quart of snot every day.

Gross? You Bet!
But better than a quart continually draining from your two other openings all day.



So, Cheers!
Drink up!

Mucus is gross. But here are 9 things you should know about it.

Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money...

www.vox.com

 

[kenny]

And, from PBS Science:
What's snot to love?

 

[Garnetgirl]

Really? I'm surprised!
I could read both and I certainly do not subscribe to BBC, and have never pay them a penny, and never given them my email address or any identity info.

Hmmm.
Interesting!

Perhaps there is something different about which browser you use or the 245 trillion ways your computer system, history, searching is different from mine.
I've never used a VPN, perhaps you do.
I'm very curious what could explain why I can see it, but you can't

Can anyone else read the BBC articles?
If so, do you subscribe to BBC?

I use Safari on my iPad, and so far, have no trouble reading BBC articles. I am not subscribed.

 

[Tartansparkles]

I'm in the UK. I read last week that the BBC was going to start charging US customers for access to some of its content. So I'm guessing it is this change of policy rather than browser related.

BBC to start charging US-based consumers for news and TV coverage

‘Premium experience’ for US users will include BBC News livestream as broadcaster looks overseas for income boost

www.theguardian.com

(But of course, if you want to read the linked article you'll have to agree to accept cookies!). Grr.

 

[pearlsngems]

I read them on Safari, no problem. Interesting articles!

 

[kenny]

I'm in the UK. I read last week that the BBC was going to start charging US customers for access to some of its content. So I'm guessing it is this change of policy rather than browser related.
...

But Matata and I (in posts #1, 3 and 6) just demonstrated that in this case it is browser-related.
When Matata used Chrome it required a paywall, but when she used Safari it didn't.
I take that to mean that Chrome spies on you more than Safari does.

Then Shinypink reported in post # 11 that she can read the article using Chrome
Apparently this demonstrates how the browser, Chrome, has learned from it's spying on users use whether or not to let them see content free, or put it behind a paywall because you're behavior on Chrome increases the odds that you're likely to pay.

These "free" browsers aren't free.
They're all about using our data to make as much money off our behavior as possible.

Ya know, "Follow the Money".

 

[kenny]

I'm in the UK. I read last week that the BBC was going to start charging US customers for access to some of its content. ...

CNN has been doing that for a while now.
I am happy to remain a "non-premium" viewer.

Nice word choice, premium.
Reminds me of the brilliance of Zuck choosing the word 'friend' and and Facefvk making it a verb.
He should have used the term 'gullible sucker'.

They use psychology to manipulate us.