Every incoming breath faces a treacherous ride before it arrives at the relatively peaceful area of your lungs. The fast and furious journey through your nasal cavities flings the breath around like a small boat shooting the rapids.
There is only a second or less to warm, moisten and capture every bit of grit and grime from a breath before it descends into your vulnerable lungs. Lung tissue has heavy responsibilities and is not built to defend itself. That security duty must be completed pretty much by the time the air leaves your head.
Both nostrils are lined with stiff hairs. Like screen doors, they keep out the big stuff like gnats and grit. Then the breath passes through adjacent “saunas” with warm moist walls. The sauna walls are lined with strategically placed floppy shelves (the turbinates) that bounce the air around, slamming it again and again against the surfaces of the inner nose.
The entire route is covered with really sticky mucus. Every time the air is tossed against the “fly paper” some of its garbage sticks. Remember that all mucus is constantly moving toward an exit where you periodically swallow, spit or blow out the contaminated mess.
Having been forced through the tumbling of the nasal cavities, the incoming air almost immediately encounters a sharp right turn just before the downward journey into the throat. More grit is dropped when the air hits that sudden bend, the same way silt is dropped when the stream makes a sharp turn.
Be well. Breathe beautifully.
LINK: Snot Is Your Friend
