Snort more Nitrous?

Posted on September 21, 2003 in Humor? Pulmonary

Yule Heibel has been suffering from sinuitis. Not one to just take this lying down, she writes:

…I would like to know what the point of sinuses really is. There are theories, certainly — I especially like the theory that it lightens bone mass: that if your skull, which has to be large enough to accomodate your big fat brain, were solid bone, it would be too heavy for you to hold up. Thunk. It’s certainly the case that in the midst of sinusitis, one’s head feels so heavy and sad that one would like to lie it down and die.

I’m of the opinion that there are features of our body that exist for no particular reason. Sinuses could be one of those things which have stayed around with us because they don’t prevent us from reproducing. This hasn’t prevented medical scientists and anatomists from conjecturing as to their function. I can just imagine volunteers sitting patiently for hours while researchers probe their sinus cavities with tubes and electrodes, sampling the air and perhaps giving the subject a mild shock or two just to see what the thrill does for them.

Just to see if I could score one up on Yule, I went looking for a web page that would describe the sinuses and explain what they are there for. I found this one which, after describing the mighty four holes in the head lists these functions they might perform:

• Warming and/or humidification of the air
• assisting in regulation of intranasal pressure and serum gas pressures (and subsequently minute ventilation)
• immune defense
• increasing mucosal surface area (spread out the snot more thinly? I thought they secreted snot!)
• lightening the skull
• giving resonance to the voice (which leads me to ask, off topic, does anyone know how a person who has lost her or his nose sounds like?)
• absorbing shock (from what? A fist, I suppose)
• contributing to facial growth (that’s not a function, that’s a symptom!)

es of research, the article mentions a special atmosphere produced within the sinuses:

The most recent research on sinus function has focused on the molecule Nitrous Oxide (NO). Studies have shown that the production of intranasal NO is primarily in the sinuses. NO has been shown to be toxic to bacteria, fungi, and viruses at levels as low as 100 ppb. Nasal concentrations of this substance can reach 30,000 ppb which some researchers have theorized as the mechanism of sinus sterilization. NO has also been shown to increase ciliary motility.

Which leads me to invite Yule on a special date: we’ll go down to the grocery, buy up all the cans of whipped cream that we can afford, go home, and snort up the nitrous oxide propellant. We can kill the microbes that are making us miserable these days and have a lot of good laughs as we carry out our genocide. Are you up for this, Yule?