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Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

Voluntarily sealing your nostrils is something I never knew about until I was complaining about some city odor to a girlfriend who said "Just plug your nose." I said I didn't just want to walk around pinching my nose, and she gave me the most incredulous look. She was like "No, just do it without touching your face..."

This definitely shocked me. May as well ask me to sprout wings and fly!

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Here’s how it went with my wife.

Me: I wonder why our son doesn’t like to get his head wet in the bath or the pool.

Her: I think he doesn’t like to get water in his nose, like me.

Me: uh... what?

Her: blah blah blah

Me: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CANNOT CLOSE YOUR NOSTRILS FROM THE INSIDE?!

Or something like that. I guess I assumed that everyone could just block it off from the inside. It’s apparently not something that comes up very often?

Wife: can you pick up that pencil off the floor please?

Me: picks up pencil with foot.

Wife: WTF?

I used to to that when I was a kid but then I started sweating...

Don’t we all naturally seal our nostrils from smell when we use non-nasal sounds? Think a nasal ahhhh sound versus a non-nasal ahhhh sound.

Although I am guessing sealing nostrils from water versus from smell is distinct: I feel you can seal at the front “inside” the nostrils (think blocked nose) versus sealing at the back (soft palate?). Edit: Also when you blow your nose, i think you partially use the muscles that close off the nasal passages?

Although quite possibly I am misunderstanding something - we often struggle to even realise what we naturally do (e.g. when swimming) or struggle to understand that others do things differently.

I tried to exhale through my nasal passage and then block it off with just the muscles in my nostrils, building pressure in the nasal cavity. I cannot do that.

Wait, what? People can do that?

That's the coolest thing since a friend showed me he could move his ears.

You can't? Have you tried it?

I'm not sure how to start trying it. I can move my nostrils a bit, but it's more to expand them : I don't have any muscle 'plugging' them it seems

Or are you supposed to plug from the inside, with your tongue blocking the top of the mouth kind of ?

I don’t know about others but I don’t use my tongue. I can block my nasal passage and breathe through my mouth. I can have my mouth wide open and do this. It must be controlled by some muscle but I don’t know what.

you can either breath through nose or mouth not simultaneously. I thought this is normal ..

I can breathe through the nose, the mouth, and also through both at the same time.

"both at the same time" blew my mind!

For me this is the norm. I can breathe through my nose, or my nose+mouth at the same time. There is no "just breathing through mouth"

Are you sure about that? I don't think that's true, not for everyone at least.

I am pretty sure I am breathing through both right now (trying on purpose to do so). I can definitely feel the breath on my tongue and hold something to my nose and smell it.

Whether air from both places actually goes into my lungs? That, I don't know. So you may be right in that regard? I really don't know. :)

I just looked it up and found this pdf[0] on some technique for divers I didn't bother to understand, but it contains an instruction (Step 3: Learn to control the soft palate) how to get a feel for this. It's not really nostrils, but I think this is what GP meant.

[0]: https://freedivewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/frenzel....

I'm no professional diver but thinking about it and reading that link, it's really a technique to maintain enough pressure inside the nasal cavity to prevent water from rushing in, achieved by closing the soft pallet then slowly moving air into the nasal cavity as needed to maintain that pressure. So not really closing nostrils (for me at least) just restricting them a bit I think... it still sucks to get water past the nostrils but that can be prevented and it's not something I've really had to think about before. When diving into water or changing depth I have to exhale hard through the nose to combat the surge of water pressure but after that it just happens.

I do it by pushing my top lip up against my nostrils. I look silly if there's someone with goggles on to see me underwater, though. Like an extreme duck face.

Also, it doesn't work well now that I have a mustache.

"No, just do it without touching your face..." -- doesn't that simply mean "stop breathing"? because that has the same effect. I do this all the time these days when I walk past people and not waring mask ;-)

Jokes aside apparently people can do this while still breathing through their mouth

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