Pick your nose all you want - it's supposed to be good for you as long as you eat your boogers!

The nose hairs and the mucus catch the germs floating around in the air, and eating them may strengthen your immune system, says Scott Napper, a biochemistry professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He thinks that mother nature is prompting little kids to pick their noses, and that the grown ups shouldn't stop them. He is planning to do a controlled study on picking noses and eating boogers to prove his theory. He is planning on inserting some germs into the subjects' noses and then breaking them up into two groups, where one group would eat their boogers and the other wouldn't. He wants to see if the members of the group who don't eat the boogers get sick.


I must say, I am quite skeptical - why would eating germs caught in the nose be any better than eating with dirty hands? Isn't washing hands supposed to stop people from getting sick, and doesn't the nose stopping the germs from entering the body serve the same purpose? In fact, I remember reading somewhere that people with an abundance of nose hair don't get sick as much, since their noses are better germ barriers.
I am very curious what the results of the experiment will be. I bet the group eating the boogers will get sick and not the control group.

I think it might be interesting to have four groups in the experiment: Have the third group insert the finger in the nose and just lick it once and not eat the boogers, and the fourth group to insert the finger in the nose then rinse it in a glass of water and drink the water.  I would also try the same experiment with a bunch of people suffering from seasonal allergies, to see if eating the nose mucus would help the allergy sufferers. Now is a great time of the year to try it.