Why I Rarely Got Sick as a Child

by William Jackson on 2006-01-18

The nose is the only organ of the body that for the most part does nothave a self-cleaning mechanism. The purpose of the mucous is believedto be (among other things) the entrapment of bacteria and otherundesirables that would otherwise have entered the body.

By picking, we provide the nasal passages with a method of cleaning toprovide new mucous and by — ugh — eating we introduce the bacteriainto our systems that were otherwise trapped, thus allowing our immunesystems to learn about it and, more importantly, learn to defeat it.[source]