The Gift Shop at the Kansas Learning Center for Health offers toys, gifts and souvenirs for students and visitors of all ages, from as little as a nickel to $15. Some of our most popular gift shop items are cartoon-style t-shirts available in three full color imprints: What's A Booger?, What's A Zit?, Why Do Stomachs Growl?, and Why Do Pits Stink? Here are the answers to those important questions!
What's A Booger? - To understand what boogers are, you need to know about mucus (say: myoo-kus). Mucus is the sticky, slimy stuff that's made inside your nose. If you're like lot of kids, you have another name for nose mucus: snot. Your nose makes about a cupful (about 237 milliliters) of snot every day.
Mucus has a pretty important job - it protects the lungs. When you breathe in air through your nose, it contains lots of tiny things, like dust, dirt, germs, and pollen. If these made it all the way to the lungs, the lungs could get irritated or infected, making it be tough to breathe. Luckily, snot helps trap this stuff, keeping it in the nose and out of the lungs.
After this stuff gets stuck inside the nose, the mucus surrounds it and some of the tiny hairs inside the nose called cilia (say: sih-lee-uh). These hairs help move the mucus and the trapped stuff toward the front of the nose or the back of the throat. When the mucus, dirt and other debris dry and clump together, you're left with a booger. Boogers can be squishy and slimy or tough and crumbly. Everybody gets them, so they're not a big deal. In fact, boogers are a sign that your nose is working the way it should!
If you have to get rid of boogers, your best bet is to blow 'em out of your nose and into a tissue. Picking your nose isn't a great idea because boogers contain lots of germs and because poking around in your nose can make it bleed.
Why Do Stomachs Growl? - This happens when your stomach walls squeeze together in an attempt to mix and digest food and there's no food there. Gases and digestive juices slosh around in your empty stomach and before you know it - borborygmi.
What's A Zit? - Zits or pimples pop up when the skin's oil (sebaceous) glands get clogged and burst open, injuring surrounding cells. This attracts bacteria and the body fights back by sending more blood to the area (inflammation) and by producing pus (white blood cells that die battling the bacteria).
Why Do Pits Stink? - Bacteria are to blame. These tiny critters normally inhabit your pits and feet. They multiply in sweat, so if you don't wear deodorant or bath, they really get going. In the right conditions, bacteria will feast under your arms. These bacteria eat dead skin cells and oils from your skin. Their colonies will grow and start getting rid of waste in the form of organic acids. It's those organic acids that smell bad.
What Is Bad Breath? - Bad breath is the common name for the medical condition known as halitosis (say: hal-uh-toe-sis).
Here are three common causes of bad breath:
Poor oral hygiene leads to bad breath because when you leave food particles in your mouth, these pieces of food can rot and start to smell. The food particles may begin to collect bacteria, which can be smelly, too. Plus, by not brushing your teeth regularly, plaque (a sticky, colorless film) builds up on your teeth. Plaque is a great place for bacteria to live and yet another reason why breath can turn foul.
Why do feet fall asleep? - Many people say this is because you've cut off the blood supply to your foot, but your nerves are more to blame. Nerves are like tiny threads or wires that run through your whole body, and they carry messages back and forth between your brain and body.
When you sit on your foot, you temporarily compress, or squash, the nerves in that area. These nerves can't send messages back to the brain normally, and so for the moment, the connection is cut off and you don't feel anything. It's kind of like a phone call where your friend hangs up and you haven't yet: Your brain is saying "hello," but your foot isn't able to answer.
What is a toot? - When you eat, you don't swallow just your food. You also swallow air, which contains gases like nitrogen (say: ny-truh-jen) and oxygen (say: ahk-sih-jen). Small amounts of these gases travel through your digestive system as you digest your food. Other gases like hydrogen (say: hy-droh-jen), carbon dioxide (say: kar-bon dy-ahk-side, the gas that makes soda fizzy), and methane (say: meth-ain) are made when food is broken down in the large intestine. All of these gases in the digestive system have to escape somehow, so they come out as toots!
Gases are also what can make toots smell bad. Tiny amounts of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane combine with hydrogen sulfide (say: suhl-fide) and ammonia (say: uh-mow-nyuh) in the large intestine to give gas its smell. Phew!
If you want to be less tooty, try cutting back on foods like beans, onions, and fried foods. These can release larger amounts of gas as they break down in your body. If you have a lot of gas after you eat ice cream, yogurt, or milk, talk to your parent about it - your body may have a difficult time digesting the natural sugar called lactose, which is found in dairy foods. And don't forget that tooting can sometimes be your body's sign that it's time to take a trip to the bathroom.
The bathroom is also a good place to go if you're feeling particularly gassy because it's not polite to toot in social settings, like in class or at the dinner table (Yuck!). But don't worry if this happens accidentally. Just remember to say "excuse me!"
Why do muscles ache? - All muscle is made up of long, thin cells called "muscle fibres". But muscles differ in what they do and how they do it. They also differ in shape, appearance, size, and in other ways. When a muscle is contracted, it produces an acid known as lactic acid. This acid is like a "poison". The effect of this lactic acid is to make you tired, by making muscles feel tired. If the lactic acid is removed from a tired muscle, it stops feeling tired and can go right to work again! But, of course, lactic acid is not removed normally when you exercise or work. In addition, various toxins are produced when muscles are active. The toxins are carried by the blood through the body and they cause tiredness—not only in the muscle, but in the entire body, especially the brain. So feeling tired after muscular exercise is really the result of a kind of internal "poisoning" that goes on in the body. But the body needs the feeling of tiredness so that it will want to rest. Because, during rest, waste products are removed the cells recuperate, nerve cells of the brain recharge their batteries, the joints of the body replace the supplies of lubricant they have used up. So while exercise is good for the body and the muscles, rest is just as important!
