This blog posting represents the views of the author, David Fosberry. Those opinions may change over time. They do not constitute an expert legal or financial opinion.

If you have comments on this blog posting, please email me .

The Opinion Blog is organised by threads, so each post is identified by a thread number ("Major" index) and a post number ("Minor" index). If you want to view the index of blogs, click here to download it as an Excel spreadsheet.

Click here to see the whole Opinion Blog.

To view, save, share or refer to a particular blog post, use the link in that post (below/right, where it says "Show only this post").

Eating Your Boogers Is Bad For Your Health!

Posted on 30th January 2019

Show only this post
Show all posts in this thread.

This article on Business Insider, describes the health risks of eating your own boogers (in British English, bogies).

This topic is especially relevant for people like me, who live in Germany, which is the nose-picking capital of the world.

Unsurprisingly, picking your nose is unhealthy; eating your boogers is even more so. Some of the rarer described health problems are rather nasty.

One of the things which the author seems to be unaware of is oral tolerance. This is a mechanism, which probably evolved to prevent us from having allergic reactions to our food, whereby the body identifies things in the mouth as non-threatening. Eating your boogers, which are filled with viruses and bacteria, therefore means that you are likely to have a reduced immune response to these same viruses and bacteria in other parts of your body. In other words, eating your boogers will likely mean that you will be sicker, and for longer, than if you didn't eat them.

The article mentions that there are some people who claim that eating your boogers strengthens your immune response, and that there is no proof of this effect. The truth of the matter is, due to oral tolerance, exactly the opposite.