advice: the pitfalls of nose-picking

many people poke around in their nostrils — roughly four times a day, according to a study published for the national centre for biotechnology medicine. nose-picking, also known as rhinotillexomania, may seem harmless, and although science suggests that it’s probably okay to pick occasionally, if it’s a chronic habit, digging for the proverbial gold is neither safe nor healthy. in fact, it can make you sick and — in extreme cases — damage the nasal septum. and given that we are in the middle of a global pandemic in which we are warned daily about the dangers of touching our faces and potentially exposing ourselves to the covid-19 virus — it seems that putting fingers deep inside a nose should be avoided at all costs.

“in the era of covid, you are told not to touch your face because if you touch any kind of virus or any kind of bacteria and you stick it in your nose — that’s directly on the respiratory epithelium, that will get into your system and that’s how you can get sick,” says dr. yvonne chan, associate professor in the department of otolaryngology-head & neck surgery at the university of toronto and division chief for otolaryngology at trillium health partners .

and it’s not just fingers that can do damage. in a study of 200 adolescents, done by researchers from the national institute of mental health and neurosciences in bangalore, india, researchers found that teens also used tweezers and pencils to get the job done.

picking your nose can also cause inflammation, swelling and damage the nasal septum — usually when nose-picking is done out of compulsion. one woman with a history of compulsive nose -picking even went so far as to carve out a hole in her sinus.

although researchers from india reported that for most teens, picking of the nose is done out of habit, nearly eight per cent revealed that they do it out of compulsion, more than 20 times a day and usually because of stress or anxiety. most kids in the study said they picked their nose to relieve an itch or because it felt good.

and if damaging your schnoz isn’t worrying enough, what about nasty bacteria like staphylococcus aureus — one of the most dangerous of all the staph bacteria — which causes skin infections, but also pneumonia and bone and heart valve infections. a study by dutch researchers found that frequent nose-pickers were more likely to harbour the dangerous bacteria in their nasal cultures than the non-pickers.

friedrich bischinger , an austrian lung specialist encouraged picking our nose and eating it too to help “boost the immune system.” similarly, a 2015 study suggested that nose-picking may be more beneficial than we think — boogers contain salivary mucins, which can help protect teeth against cavities and decay.