Rhinotillexomania!

November 26th, 2022| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

What’s that you ask? Well, it’s all Greek, you see!

Rhino = nose. Tillexis = habit of picking. Mania—you know what that is. Putting it all together, you get: the habit of nose-picking. You do it. And so do I. It seems.

In fact, in 1995, a formal study was undertaken: researchers mailed a Rhinotillexomania Questionnaire to 1000 randomly selected adult residents of Dane County, Wisconsin. Of the 254 that responded, a whopping 91% confessed to picking their noses. (1.2% every hour!) (2 people picked their noses so hard that they actually poked a hole right through the nasal septum separating the right and left nostrils!!)

Five years later, Drs. Chittaranjan Andrade and BS Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, India, went deeper into nose-picking. Since this mania suggests a habit, they decided to study 200 teenagers. All of them turned out to be rhinotillexomaniacs, picking at said organ on average four times a day. For this marvelous piece of research this pair won the Ig Nobel prize, given to studies that make you laugh (and then, maybe, make you think). At the award ceremony, Andrade remarked:

Some people poke their nose into other people’s business. I poked my business into other people’s noses.”

Nicely put. And there you have it: Rhinotillexomania.

You may be doing it right now, rhinotillexomaniacking away, slouched in your couch, while you try to digest all the turkey and stuffing you consumed. Well, you may want to stop bothering your nose. Now. Lest you get Alzheimers down the line.

Or so suggest scientists from Queensland, Australia, in “Chlamydia pneumoniae Can Infect the Central Nervous System via the Olfactory and Trigeminal Nerves and Contributes to Alzheimer’s Disease Risk,” in Nature: Scientific Reports recently.

Picking your nose removes mucus and hair, which serve as part of the body’s defense system, enabling the alleged bug to seep into the nerves for smell and sensation, and thence travel directly to the brain.

The study was done on mice—not, AFAIK, rhinotillexomaniacs, but still.

Apparently bacteria triggers some toxins that facilitate the formation of amyloid beta plaques that block and disrupt neural communication—a leading theory on the development of Alzheimer’s. And with more than 6 million Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s, rhinotillexomaniacs had better watch out.

Bad news.

But there are some folks who are worse off.

Take a look at Psalm 115, where unbelievers are taunting believers who in turn complain to God.

Why should the nations say,
“Where, now, is their God?”?
Psalm 115:2

The people answer their own question:

But our God is in the heavens;
all that He pleases, He has done.
Psalm 115:3

And then taunt the unbelievers’ gods.

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.
They have a mouth, but they cannot speak;
they have eyes, but they cannot see;
They have ears, but they cannot hear;
they have a nose, but they cannot smell;
their hands, but they cannot feel;
their feet, but they cannot walk;
they cannot make a sound with their throat.
Psalm 115:4–7

Utterly non-functional body parts, these idols have (and note the non-smelling nose: idols who are rhinotillexomaniacs?).

But what is worse …

They will become like them—those who make them,
all who trust in them.
Psalm 115:8

The makers of these idols become like them—dumb, blind, deaf, insensate, immovable, and silent—insensible and devoid of true life!

Instead, the psalmist exhorts:

The ones who fear Yahweh, trust in Yahweh;
their help and their shield is He.
Psalm 115:11

No more nose-picking. Engage in some Yahweh-trusting.

SOURCES: BBC; Nature: Scientific Reports; Daily Mail