Some myths are beautiful, and some are not.
“Beautiful” in the sense of flight of fancy. Most often, this same fantasy barely rises above the ground, just enough to see a couple of “scientific” arguments, but it also happens that it will soar high and give birth to a myth that will amaze the minds and excite the hearts.
Are you tired of carrying around a conditional “suitcase” with extra pounds?
You want to lose weight, but you don’t know how?
Have you ever tried, spent a couple of weeks on a diet, but nothing good came of it?
And now you are tormented by doubts – is it worth it to suffer, if still nothing of this idea will not work?
Because excess weight directly depends on the microorganisms that live in your nose! Some microorganisms do not affect excess weight, while others do. Moreover, these “others” are pathogenic, that is, they can cause infectious diseases in us. Pests of a wide profile, in short.
Want to lose weight? Start with restoring order in the nasal cavity!
Where you have a fork for removal of noodles from ears? At hand? Great! It’s time to use it.
But, you must agree, this myth is beautiful, non-standard, linking incongruous… Well, what can be the connection between the nasal cavity and overweight? However, scientists found it! And now fat people are besieging otorhinolaryngologists, or if it is simpler – ENT doctors, demanding that they urgently put their nose in order.
Lors convince patients that they are all right – there are no complaints, no symptoms, and in addition, a smear taken from the nasal mucosa did not reveal anything superfluous.
“How do you mean, no symptoms?! “what’s wrong with that?” the patients say, patting their bellies and thighs. – What’s this?” Or is the stomach not considered a symptom?!»
There are two ways out of this situation, both of them unfavorable. Either the ENT sends a strange, clearly inadequate patient to a psychiatrist for consultation, or the patient goes to complain to the chief doctor about the lazy and little-knowing ENT. Or it may be so – the ENT sends the patient to a psychiatrist for consultation, and the patient, instead of the psychiatrist, goes to complain to the chief doctor. Or even the Department of health. Especially dangerous, that is, the most active, patients can also write to the Ministry. It’s a shame when your good intentions are broken by someone’s lack of understanding and unwillingness to work. And it is doubly offensive when this incomprehensible idler wears a high title of a doctor and a starched white coat (and ENT doctors still have a beautiful mirror on top of the cap).
Where did the wind come from that disturbed the minds of patients and caused discord in their relations with ENT doctors?
It came from the American journal of human Biology. It is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published since 1989. dedicated to human biology. If someone does not know, then the words “peer-reviewed” or “refereed” in relation to a scientific journal are something like a quality mark or, rather, a certificate certifying that this scientific journal is really scientific. In peer-reviewed journals, articles selected for publication are pre-submitted for review by independent experts who are not members of the editorial staff, and are published only in the case of a positive expert assessment. The essence of a positive assessment is not that the expert writes: “Wow! Great, how cool!”, and in confirmation of the scientific nature of the article. Simply put, a peer-reviewed scientific journal will not be able to publish sucked-out nonsense wrapped in a” scientific ” wrapper, all publications are based on facts and are trustworthy.
In February 2014, a group of scientists from the University of Wroclaw published an article in the American journal of human biology, which described the study of the relationship between attractiveness and immunity.
Don’t be surprised. There is a rational grain in this connection. From an evolutionary point of view, attractiveness should be considered as a signal indicating good health of the individual, including the good state of his immune system, which is the key to the production of healthy, fully viable offspring. An attractive individual has a better chance of forming a pair and producing offspring. So attractiveness can be considered a favorable evolutionary trait, right?
The attractiveness of the study participants was assessed not based on personal likes of the researchers, but on such accurately measurable indicators as height, body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio (the latter indicator was taken into account only for women). Facial features were not taken into account.
One hundred three women and ninety young men took part in the study (the average age of women was 21 years, and men – 22 years). All participants were healthy, meaning they had no acute or chronic diseases at the time of the study.
The state of the immune system can be assessed using various methods and the spread is possible here the widest. Polish scientists chose one of the simplest and most cost-effective methods – they examined smears taken from the nasal cavity and pharynx of participants. Well, you know – the better the immune system works, the less conditionally pathogenic bacteria (bacteria that can cause diseases under certain conditions) will live in the body.
It turned out that the number of conditionally pathogenic bacteria, primarily Staphylococcus aureus, in the men who participated in the study was directly related to the body mass index. The higher the index, the more opportunistic bacteria. Since the body mass index is the ratio of weight to height, it turns out that participants with a larger mass in the nasal cavity and in the pharynx live a greater number of opportunistic bacteria.
In women, the number of opportunistic bacteria was associated not with the body mass index, but with the waist-to-hip ratio, but in reverse order. The lower this index was, i.e. the narrower the waist or the wider the pelvis, the more opportunistic bacteria there were. The ratio of waist to hip is directly proportional to body weight, the wider the waist, the greater the mass.
Thus, the study participants showed a direct relationship between body weight and the number of opportunistic bacteria in the body, and the participants-the reverse. The researchers themselves decided that the body’s immune defense indicators depend on the level of testosterone in the blood, which is negatively correlated with the body mass index in men and positively – with the waist-to-hip ratio in women [41].
Here is the initial data, the conditional “dough” for baking a mythical “pie”. Some scientists have studied the relationship between the body and the immune system, and then shared with the world the results obtained, eventually linking the work of the immune system with the level of testosterone in the blood.
TA-da-da-dam! (If anyone has forgotten, we are currently holding a master class on practical myth-making.)
Start cooking the pie!
We knead our dough well, then stretch it, fold it in a loop and twist it into a bundle. A couple of times we hit the tourniquet on the table in order to knock out the test (that is, from the text) mention of unnecessary testosterone.
Again we stretch, again we fold a loop, again we twist in a tourniquet and again we hit the table in order to knock out the mention of immunity …
Repeat the procedure until we knock out everything from the test-text, except the body weight and Staphylococcus aureus in the nasal cavity.
We are looking at what we have achieved.
We were going to make a pie, even took care of the filling, but instead of the pie we got noodles! And what else will you get out of the dough if you stretch it many times, fold it and twist it? Nothing, we can use noodles. This is even better – noodles are very convenient to hang on your ears. And the filling, if it is delicious, you can just eat it, without packaging in a pie.
We spread our noodles on the table so that the phrase turns out:
“British scientists have proven that excess weight is caused by Staphylococcus aureus, which lives in the nasal cavity.”
We admire our handiwork for a long time…
If someone did not understand why suddenly Polish scientists from the city of Wroclaw became British, then this is their problem. Any educated person knows that British scientists are the smartest and most efficient servants of science. They have made more discoveries than their colleagues around the world. Therefore, a qualitative myth (and we do not make others) must necessarily rely on the authority of British scientists. Even if the material for the myth was made in Poland, and the myth itself was made by Russians.
As for the inhabitants of the nasal cavity, it is constantly inhabited by various bacteria-sticks, cocci and others, including Staphylococcus aureus, as well as fungi of the genus Candida. Among these micro-organisms, there are good citizens who are under no circumstances capable of harming us, and there are villains who are just waiting for the opportunity to show their villainous essence. If these villains could talk, they would have said in his defense of the sacramental: “And what can you do? We must live somehow, and life is not sugar and, even more so, not honey.”
The life of microorganisms in the nasal cavity is really difficult. The mucous membrane is poor in nutrients, and in addition, its cells produce a viscous secret of mucin, which has a bactericidal effect. Therefore, there are few microbes in the nose of a healthy person. But with inflammatory diseases of the nasal mucosa, their number increases sharply (at the expense of” villains”, of course), because the products of inflammation are excellent food for microbes, you can say – a set of exquisite delicacies.