how come if your left nose is plugged and you turn to lay on your right side your left nose unplugs? (and vice versa)

Question

Edit: y’all, didn’t you know we have two noses and one nostril sheesh 🤧

In: Biology

Answer 1

An ELI5 answer:

Your nose has 2 nostrils, but if you pay close attention when you sniff air in, you’ll notice you only use one at a time. You can feel which one air comes out of when you blow the air out.

Your sinuses are the parts behind your nose, inside your face, where your snot is made. Sometimes they push the snot out through your nose, like when you blow into a tissue, so there’s a little door up there to get that stuff out.

Think of your sinuses kind of like an hourglass. When you’re standing up, they both have some stuff in them. When you lay on your side, all the stuff goes into the bottom one and covers the “exit door”, so it blocks that nostril, which is fine, since we only use one at a time anyway. It’s just more uncomfortable, since it’s blocked and not just turned off.

To unblock it, you lay on the other side and wait. Just like an hourglass you flip over, all the junk in your sinuses will slide to the other side because of gravity. Then your other nostril is blocked and the first one opens back up.