5 interesting facts about human nose

Our noses, along with our eyes and mouths, are the facial points of our appearance and – in many ways – our identity. The nose is prominently visible from the front and side, and in many cases, we can determine ethnicity from the size and shape of the nose. The critical life functions that our facial organs perform may seem pretty obvious. Yet, when it comes to the nose, there is more than meets the eye.

Here are several surprising facts about your nose:

1. Your nose helps you find a mate

It’s amazing how many of our body functions are directed toward sexual activity and reproduction. The nose plays a critical role in our perceptions of sex through the olfactory system. The sense of smell is a key component of how we identify people when we are close to them. The characteristic smell of a person’s perfume or cologne or the scent of their shampoo or soap may be important to sexual arousal. The smell of human perspiration has a direct effect on sexual receptors in the brain. Loss of smell correlates with decreased sexual drive.

2. Your nose shapes the sound of your voice

What we hear when people speak and sing is in large part related to the resonating structures of the throat and nose. The voice is produced in the larynx but that sound is really a buzzing sound. The richness of the sound is determined by how the sound is processed above the larynx, which occurs in the nose and throat. It’s the same principle that separates a grand piano from a child’s toy piano. The nasal voice we hear in someone with a cold and allergies is due to the loss of this nasal resonation since the air cannot pass through the nose.

3. Your nose plays a key role in taste

Smell plays a key role in taste. We have four primary tastes: bitter, sour, sweet and salty. All of the refinements in taste are in fact related to smell, so people feel that food is tasteless when their ability to smell is decreased.

The sense of smell is not only for pleasure; it is necessary for safety. We need our smell to detect smoke, spoiled food and some toxic gases. People who have lost their sense of smell need to have alarms for these gases and they have to be careful with what they eat.

4. Your nose humidifies and cleans the air you breathe

The nose processes the air we breathe to prepare it for our lungs and throat, which do not tolerate dry air well. As the inhaled air passes through the nose, it is moisturized and humidified, thanks to a complex multiple layer structure called turbinates.

Now you know why your throat feels dry when you’ve been breathing a long time through the mouth: The inhaled air didn’t get humidified in the nose.

The air we breathe has all kinds of stuff in it – from oxygen and nitrogen to dust, pollution, allergens, smoke, bacteria, viruses, small bugs and countless other things. The nose helps clean that air. On the surface of the nasal tissues, particularly the turbinates, are cells with small hair-like appendages called cilia that trap much of the bad stuff. Once captured, the bad stuff sits in the mucous and  gradually is pushed into the throat, where it’s  swallowed. Our stomachs tolerate bad stuff much better than our lungs.

Your nose also regulates the temperature of the air your breathe.

5. Babies can breathe and suckle at the same

This nasal breathing role is critical in newborns, who must breathe through their noses almost all the time. This is a unique feature related to the configuration of their throats that allow them to breathe and suckle at the same time without choking. This cannot happen in older children or adults who have to stop breathing to swallow.

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