Why does the body, as a self defensive response to some sicknesses, swell the nose so you can’t breathe?
In: Biology
Swelling is part of the body’s response to fight viruses and other bad guys that try to make us ill. The swelling (inflammation) increases blood flow which brings tons of good bad-guy-fighting material (like white blood cells). It also increases heat to the area which helps speed up chemical reactions.
Once the bad guys are caught, torn apart or moved, the next step is to get them expelled from the body (such as via pus, mucus or snot).
Our nose swelling comes from irritation (eg blowing it a lot) but it doesn’t swell to stop us breathing. Our nose gets blocked because there’s some bad-guy-filled snot that needs gone. When there’s a lot of it it can cause some difficulty breathing.
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Your body is like downtown traffic and getting the flu is like a virus trying to rob a bank in your nose. The viruses run into all the bank vault cells creating mucous and chaos and runny noses. Swat teams of white blood come to get rid of the virus causing swelling and inflammation traffic jams of the nasal passages. They are trying to get rid of the virus quickly before it can spread too much and cause a bigger problem than they can handle. The white blood cells know they are congesting nasal traffic, but doing nothing would mean the virus wins.
Swelling happens when the smallest part of your body – a single cell – screams there is an emergency. If lots of Cells cry out at once, then a whole area of the body swells.
So the body doesn’t say to itself “let’s swell the nose shut even though we might suffocate.” The swelling simply accumulates. All parts of the body in distress swell up. The fact that all these parts together block your airway is an unintended consequence.
If swelling is our natural defense mechanism then how come we (medical professionals, general population, etc) always try to prevent or minimize the swelling from happening? (Eg: put ice on it to make the swelling go down/away etc)
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