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Comment by ivank | Hacker News Reader

70-80% of adults have a alternating congested nostril

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle

https://www.rhinologyonline.org/Rhinology_online_issues/2018...

It's weird how much we take for granted without ever expecting it to be different for others. I thought you guys were just screwing with me re: having an alternating congested nostril. Like, I only experience that during severe nasal congestion, and it seems mostly to stick with one side or the other depending on which side I'm laying on.

It never even occurred to me that people would experience something like that _all the time_!

Same, unless I’m sick my nostrils stay even.

I still don't get it. Do these people not blow their nose?

Just pay attention to it during the day. It alternates left to right with a short time in the middle when they are both open.

I literally spent most of the day after reading this yesterday testing, and they were identical (or near enough as made no difference). Today, same thing.

That's my point - you probably never thought it was any other way, and I never thought it was any other way, and we're both just like "wait, what? you LIVE like that?" That fascinates me! I think the last time I experienced this was the blue/black white/gold dress thing or when I first found out some people wipe standing up and some people wipe sitting down and everyone is shocked when they find this out for the first time.

It’s nothing to do with mucus. The size of the airway physically changes over time.

I went digging into that Wikipedia page and found a couple of interesting papers:

"The Ultradian Rhythm of Alternating Cerebral Hemispheric Activity" https://doi.org/10.3109/00207459309000583

"Effect of uninostril yoga breathing on brain hemodynamics: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study" https://dx.doi.org/10.4103%2F0973-6131.171711

"Selective Unilateral Autonomic Activation: Implications for Psychiatry" https://doi.org/10.1017/S1092852900021428

My takeaway: The nervous system is super complicated and has various rhythms. For example the circadian rhythm makes you sleepy at night and alert during the day. There are a bunch of other rhythms that are not yet well studied. The nervous system alternates activity in left and right sides of the body on a rhythm of about 1.5 hours. The nasal cycle is part of this rhythm. One can influence this rhythm by forcing the body to breathe through one nostril.

"Klein, Pilon, Prosser, and Shannahoff-Khalsa (1986) assessed cognitive perfor- mance during different phases of the nasal cycle. They observed significant rela- tionships between the pattern of nasal airflow and spatial and verbal performance. Right nostril dominance correlated with enhanced verbal performance, or left brain activity, and left nostril dominance correlated with enhanced spatial performance, again indicating that the hemispheres alternate with the phases of the nasal cycle."

"Leconte and Lambert (1988) demonstrated that subjects who undergo a test of immediate memory every 25 min with two modalities (semantic and graphic) present a fluctuation in performance with a periodicity of about 100min. The two modalities were in opposite phase."

If breathing can reduce emotional problems for some people, then we could possibly predict this effect by measuring peoples' nasal cycles and hemisphere EEG rhythms. I imagine a typical doctors visit would start out with: 1) filling out the questionnaire, 2) measuring weight, temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure, and then 3) wearing the EEG helmet with nostril sensors for a minute.

Yep, I've always had this. I knew it wasn't super uncommon, but I had no idea that I was in the majority!

I use knowledge of this to help me sleep: when I experience nasal breathing issues, I set up, adjust side I am sleeping on, and change my posture to affect the blood-flow to my head. The less constriction, the easier it is to breathe. (don’t need nose strips!)

So weird. My clear nostril just flipped a few minutes ago. I can't believe I never knew about this. Do you know how many times I dug around to clear obstructions out of my nose because I was only able to breathe from one nostril?

Congested doesn’t mean fully blocked right?

There are different degrees of congestion from light to fully blocked. When I was 14 I was 80% congested until i turned 20. I had to have some nose drops or I’d be lightheaded from poor breathing.

What solved it? A trick that an old doctor told me to do. With one hand hold with thumb on the soft palate and another finger (index or ring) on the forehead where the nose meets the forehead in a grip. Then jiggle the grip. The skull is made out of bones that are not fully connected so a jiggle does move the bones around and releases differential pressure in sinuses. That fixed me

My partner has some sinus congestion issues and we’ e been trying to find a remedy since forever.

We want to try this thing but want to make sure we’re trying it correctly. Have you encountered a more thorough explanation of this technique, preferably in a video?

Somethink like this except that it is done with the tongue and a finger:

https://invisiverse.wonderhowto.com/how-to/clear-your-stuffy...

I need to clarify that i did not have a sinus infection though, i had a persisting rhinitis for which doctors could not provide anything else but prescribe over the nose drops or flonaise

Thanks for the tip, we’ll try it out. Yeah no doctor managed to find the cause of the inflammation yet, even after years of tests. Every doctor is like “yeah you should be fine” its kind of infuriating.

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