SCHNIFFFRRPGHRRT. Ah, that’s better. Uh oh, unbecoming drip is rapidly re-forming on end of nose. Hunt frantically through pockets for bedraggled scraps of paper hanky. No joy… oh well, only one thing for it. Time to deploy the sleeve.
Admit it, you’ve been there. You are fabulously dressed to impress, on your way to the office festivities, ready to mingle, frolic, see and be seen. After a 20-minute walk in the freezing cold, you arrive triumphant. Then, as your body warms up and you begin an intelligent conversation with your boss, your nose begins to drip like a leaky faucet.
Cold may be the best-known trigger of annoyingly runny noses, but even if you are spending the holidays in warmer climes don’t feel too smug. The spicy chilli at the office barbecue is just as effective at making your nose betray you in your finest hour.
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Why cold weather and spicy foods make your nose run is something of a mystery. But a few intrepid scientists have been unpicking its secrets. The good news is that, even though we know little about what causes a runny nose, there is an effective way to ward it off. And the bad news? We still have some pretty disgusting ways of dealing with a dripping nose.
Runny noses brought on by food or the chill have plagued humanity since the dawn of history. According to Dave De Witt, editor in chief of Fiery-Foods.com, the Aztecs even took advantage of this reaction to treat their colds. When suffering from stuffy noses, they ate large numbers of chillies to shift the troublesome mucus. In effect, they invented the first decongestants.
Thousands of years later, the phenomenon has earned an entry in medical textbooks as “cold-induced rhinitis”. But don’t be fooled by the fancy name. The truth is that no one knows very much about it. Allergists commonly refer to it as skier’s or jogger’s nose, or as “gustatory rhinitis” if the reaction is triggered by spicy food. The unannounced runny nose can also be brought on by a variety of other things, such as exercise and even stress. The mechanism, though poorly understood, seems to be different from the process that leads to the stuffy nose of allergies or colds.
Although scientists don’t know exactly what this mechanism is, they have pointed the finger at the autonomic nervous system, which directs involuntary actions such as breathing. Nerves belonging to the autonomic nervous system, some of which connect to the nasal glands, use a neurotransmitter known as acetylcholine.
Problem solved
And that turns out to be enough to point the way to treatments that stop and even prevent a runny nose. “Believe it or not, we can prescribe a drug for it,” says allergist Clifford Bassett from the New York University School of Medicine. Called ipratropium bromide, it is an inhibitor of acetylcholine. Two squirts of the solution in each nostril 45 minutes before skiing or eating spicy food and the problem is taken care of.
For patients who take it for the first time, Bassett says, it’s a revelation. “They say ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I’ve let my nose run for 10 years and didn’t do anything about it!'” Most people go through life unaware how easy it is to fix the problem.
According to William Silvers, an allergist from Vail, Colorado, whose fascination with runny noses has won him recognition as “The Skier’s Nose Doctor”, people don’t do much about their sudden bouts of sniffling because they are simply not seen as a medical issue.
In fact, says Silvers, when faced with the grim realisation that their nose has begun to leak, the majority of folks take the matter into their own hands – quite literally. “That’s why they make cycling gloves with absorbent terry cloth on the outside,” he says. You thought they were designed to mop sweat? “Well, I use them for my nose,” he replies, unabashed.
Silvers has been researching cold-induced runny noses since the 1980s, using the slopes of several Colorado ski resorts as his field lab. And his findings on people’s nose habits make intriguing reading. Women tend to be better prepared and often carry tissues, for example. Men prefer their sleeves, or in certain situations (especially in the great outdoors) they may even resort to what he refers to as “the farmer’s blow”: block one nostril and blow, then repeat for the other side. “They blow it out and keep on going,” says Silvers. Children just ignore it. Wiping may be their parents’ favoured option, but a good old snort to recycle that lovely snot is good enough for the kids. “It doesn’t bother them as much,” he says.
Silver’s fascination with the runny nose doesn’t end there. He can even tell you how common the phenomenon is. In a 1991 survey of people at a ski resort he discovered that 96 per cent of respondents complained of a runny nose during the winter, and half considered the problem to be moderate to severe. He has even gone as far as quantifying the usage of tissue by placing boxes of them near ski lifts. The colder it is on the slopes, he found, the faster the tissues disappear.
A few teams around the world have carried out studies of cold-induced rhinitis in animals as well as humans. But the most fiendish snot-inducing experiments have involved people. At Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, for example, volunteers were asked to inhale cold dry air for 45 minutes so that scientists could measure their nasal emissions in search of any hint of why the phenomenon is different from, say, an allergic reaction. There have even been studies in which just one nostril was blasted with chilly air. Surprisingly, both nostrils were equally prolific producers of mucus in this situation.
Why spicy foods make your nose run also remains a mystery. The one thing people agree on is that it involves the vagus nerve, which is connected to the stomach and also belongs to the autonomic nervous system. Bassett says that this reaction to spicy foods is very common, especially among older people. And for an unfortunate few – about 2 per cent of the patients Bassett sees – any food, not just the hot kind, will trigger the sniffles.
Of course, plenty of people have their own pet theories. The ancient Greeks thought that a runny nose was a sign that the brain was turning into mush. One day, science may reveal just why copious amounts of watery goo end up on our sleeves when we least expect it. Until then, only the nose knows.