The upper part of the nasal passages are arch shaped extending up and back until it connects to the roof of the “nasopharyx” or the area where the “top” of the throat cavity joins. The floor of the nasal cavity is more or less on a plane parallel to the ground. If you stick something in perpindicualr to the plane of the face and lift the tip of the nose and slide it along the floor of the nasal passage, it is a straight line to the front of the upper throat cavityslightly above the soft palate.
The area of tenderness / pain mentioned, beyond which it got easier when Q-tip was inserted probably is the fleshy “seashell” shaped structures called the nasal turbinates. These function to warm the air and increase turbulence so that pollen, dust etc. gets stuck in the snot before it can be inhaled into the lung. Makes the air go like miniature tornadoes in each nostril and spin debris to the walls of the passages.
A word of warning: These structures “the turbibates” are extremely vascular(lots of blood vessles).If you gert rough with these parts you won’t have to see the blood to know you have screwed up. YOU CAN HEAR IT.
Some people have such prominent turbinates that there is no way they are going to get much of anything past them and onto the plane of the floor of the nasal passages.
Hope this helps. Be careful, if it hurts, your body is trying to tell you something.
If the above anatomical discussion is not clear, get a copy of Gray’s Anatomy, Lopez-Antenuse or Pernkoff’s for anatomical drawings.
Why in the hell would you think a q-tip is a better than a nail a Q-tip causes friction and scraps up the inside of your nose. Ouch. The nail has tha same diameter thw whole way down so your nadl cavity doesnlt closse up on it and make it harder to pull out.
I did a human blockhead routine in HS and to be honest if you have a enough mucus in your nasal cavity the nail slides right in. The hammer is just a prop.
Make sure your nails are rust free and sterilize them some rubbing alcohol.
Let the nail slide in on it’s own, if there is any resistance stop.
The oddest thing about it is that you can taste the metla like when you put a cold spoon on your tongue.
A Q-tip is not pointy, so when I hit something I’m not supposed too, it doesn’t hurt like hell. I’ve tried it with a nail too, and it’s not working so good yet. It is possible that you and I have differently shaped inside of our heads.
I do appreciate the advice, hopefully I’ll be able to make it work soon. tasting the metal sounds pretty awesome.
Aren’t you afraid the cotton wool from the Q-tip will get stuck in your nose?
Call me a Darwinist and a Social Darwinist, but putting nails up your nose is physiologically, psychologically, and socially a bad idea. Noses and nails just weren’t meant for eachother.
If you are looking for attention, you might just consider riding a unicycle around…
A tetanus infection in the sinuses could be something you cannot recover from.
You can make a nail not pointy with a file, make sure it doesn’t have sharp edges from the molding process either. And remember to sterilize, use an autoclave if you can.
If it’s not working so good “yet” that it will never work well. If you’ve used a Q-tip you’ve obviously found where the hollow cavity is so if you’re having trouble than the nail diameter might just be too big for your particular anatomy. It literally should slide right in without any resistance.
I concur, but you could also say people weren’t meant to lie on beds of nails, or walk on tightropes, yet all three of these things are common circus acts.
Even though putting nails in your nose alone sounds like a bad idea by itself, most performers like Nick do actually take all necessary precautions to make sure that nothing bad can happen. That is to say, he probably won’t find a bent rusty nail on the street, and say, ‘hey guys watch this!!’
And you’re setting a bad example by not wearing your helmet.
But in all seriousness, wouldn’t it be better to start with a running chainsaw rather than a Q-Tip? That way the nasal and sinus cavities could be widened for objects of ever-increasing size. An added benefit is that those soft tissues would become toughened very quickly.
Noses are bacteria and dust filters: ie they are dirty places, just like vacuum bags.
If a surgically clean nail enters the nose, the nail becomes dirty, just as if you put it into a vacuum bag.
If that nail (or qtip or chainsaw) punctures the sinuses, you can develop an infection in anaerobic conditions. This is how:
Soil bacteria are common in dust, tetanus and botulism are ubiquitous (everywhere) soil-borne bacteria, and probably are present in the nose, which if healthy and not punctured is aerobic, so these bacteria are harmless spores. However, they thrive in anaerobic conditions, like puncture wounds, so a puncture in the sinuses is a good place for any previously dormant anaerobic bacteria to thrive. Like tetanus…
Make sense?
Well, I have never wanted to put anything in particular up my nose. Not for money, nor for fun. Reading about the various normal occupants of the nasal cavities, might we conclude that a common nosebleed, usually regarded by most od us as little more than a nuisance, could in fact be highly dangerous, and quite prone to infection from these various nasal intinerant buglets?
Nao
I did the blockhead trick in HS too, that is, until i met with my doctor. But up until that time i had worked up to a 10 penny nail (i think). Pretty good size. I always dulled the nail with a file and sterilized it frequently. As for the little membrane that you encounter… first of all, most people have a ‘dominant’ nostril. I cannot, for the life of me, do it in my right nostril. For my left nostril, i lift up the nostril-flap and then go straight back for a little bit, then i encounter some little membrane or ‘wall’. I then push the nail (that is in my hand) down a little and to my right to get over this membrane. So, that means that the nail goes in, hits the ‘wall’ and then goes up and to the left, then i can go to the back of my throat. But, I stopped (mostly) all of this after I spoke with my doctor who said that if i punctured that membrane in the back of my throat (seeing how it’s next to the 2nd dirtiest part of my body - the nasal passages) that i would probably get an infection and when it’s that close to the brain, he said that i would die in 3 days. so… talk to your doctor and weigh the pros and cons. for me, i don’t think it’s worth it, but it’s way cool to put a nail into your head…
The difference is that a puncture wound creates an anaerobic environ for these critters, whereas the capillaries that cause nosebleeds are on the surface of the cavity and in an aerobic environment where the peskiest of anaerobic bacteria cannot reporduce.