Enduring a cold is most trying! And not much beats the temporary relief gained by a good old blow of the nose – a brief moment of clarity in the nostrils. But, as with all things pleasurable, a good honk down the hooter has to be treated with caution for two reasons:
- The more we blow the nose, the more snot is encouraged. At night, if we are kept awake by the constant drip, drip, dribble from our conk, it is much better to stuff a rolled up tissue into the nostril holes. Yes, awful to mouth breathe all night, but we will wake with a dry nose – and there is a strong chance we got some sleep. And yes, we do look awful….
- When the dribbly nose gets just too much and we indulge in blowing it – oh joys! – blow very, very gently. This not only discourages the mucus membranes from going into over drive and producing more and more gunk, it also hopefully prevents the snotty stuff from shooting into our inner ears and making us temporarily deaf – and giving us a temporary vestibular disorder.
- If you do find you have gone a bit deaf whilst grinding through the virus, be extremely careful what you do since your balance will be very poor and your eyes and inner ears are definitely out of harmony: if deaf in one ear, the brain thinks you are tipping and turning towards the good ear, but the eyes say the horizon is level and pandemonium ensues in the brain due to conflicting information coming in. After all, the brain is just a lump of jelly in a bony box and depends upon information coming in through the eyes, inner ears and body to make a good decision as to what to do next when it’s not sure where level is, it slows us down and cause us to injure ourselves to keep us safe from worse harm.
