Harmful Habits

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The human body is a miraculous auto-regulating factory. It has inbuilt systems to clean, feed, protect and destroy unnecessary things without needing us actually doing anything voluntarily.

This post gives an idea about mucous membranes. Non-medical people or even those in the medical field other than doctors,(even very experienced staff nurse)don’t know its purpose.

This is not a lecture, but an insight to understand a very basic but important concept.

Any structure, to remain as a structure, it needs covering. The ultimate 2 important coverings in the human body are:
1. Skin
2. Mucous lining(mucosa).

The Skin provides the external covering, mucosa forms the internal lining. Imagine a pressure cooker. The outer plastic covering is skin. The inner Teflon coating is the mucosa. Just as a Teflon coating protects the contact areas of a vessel, the mucosa protect the exposed areas of the body.

Mucosa is similar to the skin but is very delicate. The Skin is very tough. We have skin in areas where we get friction. we have mucosas in places where we don’t have much friction but still exposed to external environment.

Just like skin produces sweat, sebum(an oily secretion usually comes out mixed with sweat, responsible for body odor), a mucosa secretes mucus. For skin, we can wash as we bath, because it is accessible.Mucus is essentially a watery liquid meant to wash the body lining, where we actually don’t have accessibility to wash. Imagine it to the small pipes in the temple entry, which streams out water and washes our feet. Since the body cavity is of various direction, mucus may not reach every place and also sometimes stagnates in a place because of pits. To prevent it, the body has inbuilt brushes(CILIA) which wipe away the mucus towards the exit point. These brushes are very delicate and will be destroyed even if we just rub it with our fingers. That’s why it is placed in the inaccessible areas.

1 . Ear canal mucosa- normally secretes wax, which prevents dirt in the air from depositing onto the tympanic membrane. So this dirt is mixed with wax and expelled out normally by CILIA. Normal chewing movements cause the daily accumulated wax to come out without us being aware of it.
It doesn’t want manhandling because trying to clean the ear with buds /any sort of instruments, actually destroy these brushes. So wax accumulates. The worse thing is wherever a mucosa is manhandled, it gets replaced with altered skin. When it gets sloughed it is not able to clear by itself, so accumulates repeatedly, causing the wax to harden. Chronic manhandling causes this altered skin to become cancer.
DONOT CLEAN YOUR EAR WITH BUDS.

2. Nose has the same mechanism, but most adults don’t rape the nasal mucosa and so it doesn’t need much mention here.

3. GIT: it means food passage. From inner, pink half of the lips to anus. We do not rub mucosa in mouth much. Though while brushing friction occurs, mucosa in the mouth is considerably tougher than ear/nose mucosa so it doesn’t get much damage unless using corrosives like betel leaves/tobacco(all forms – pan, gutkha, hans, cigarette smoke.) so only these people get cancer in the mouth.

4. Airway: it includes from the nose, windpipe(trachea), lungs.
Millions of infant deaths per year can be prevented by not doing a simple thing- blowing child's nose to vacuum clean it, showing the baby to sambrani (incense) smoke after bathing it.

5. Eyes: the eyes are very sensitive and any damage is permanent. Putting oil in eyes before going to sleep as an attempt of “cleaning “ your eyes and “improves vision”- don’t do it unless u have an extra pair of eyes ordered from eBay.

All mucosa in the body normally produces mucus. But the production rate is equal to clearance rate, so we don’t feel their presence. Whenever there is increased production/decreased clearance, we feel an increase in secretions like running nose, sputum after coughing.

Increased production occurs when there is more need to clean the mucosa- increased dust /bacteria/viruses depositing in nose/airway. It can be avoided by avoiding pollution or by treating the infection.(-eg.benadryl cough syrup-decreases secretion; but in addition, we have to remove the stimulus-bacteria/virus by using antibiotics).

Decreased clearance occurs when:
1. The mucus is very thick so that the brushes are not able to sweep them.
2.The brushes are destroyed by using buds/irritants like smoke, alcohol.
       
If the problem is because of increased thickness, we can use mucus thinners(Benadryl expectorant), which breaks the mucus and makes it easy for the brush to sweep away. And drinking lot of water to keep the mucosa moist and mucus watery. But if the problem is because of the destruction of ciliary brushes, there is no way in the world to bring it back/ make new ones. Once the mucosa is converted to an altered skin(metaplasia), it is irreversible and might in due course lead to cancer. The only thing we can do is prevent the destruction of remaining mucosa.

Potential insults to the mucosa:
1. Earbuds
2. Tobacco (both food passage and airway)
3. SMOKE (agarbathis, sambrani smoke to "cure " newborn's infection).
3. Alcohol(predominantly food passage)
4. Kajal, eye liners, putting oil in eyes
5. Rare( shaving ear canal /nose hairs)

All these things are simple kinder garden science, but our lack of awareness made it a wonderland. only those who saw it knows, others think it’s a bluffing.

Ultimate objective: DONOT DESTROY YOUR MUCOSA. U MIGHT HAVE THE PLEASURE WHILE DOING IT, BUT IT LL KILL THE MUCOSA, AND ULTIMATELY YOU. THE PROCESS IS IRREVERSIBLE SO NO MATTER HOW MIGHTY YOU ARE U CANNOT ESCAPE FROM THE CONSEQUENCES.