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How to Blow Your Nose

Do you know the correct nose-blowing technique?

How can there be a correct technique to blowing one's nose? What's the difference?

How you blow your nose can impact the severity and duration of your cold. Blowing one's nose can create a lot of pressure, as much as ten times the pressure created by a cough or a sneeze. This pressure increase results in mucus not only being blown out of the nose, but back up into your sinuses as well.

On average, adults blow their noses about 45 times a day during the first three days of a cold. With each nose blow propelling about a millimeter of germ-laden mucus back into your sinuses, that's a lot of bacteria or viruses going the wrong way.

Rather than blow hard out of both nostrils at once, close one nostril by pressing your finger against one side of your nose, and blow gently out the open nostril. And drink extra fluids or use steam to thin the mucus, making it easier to blow gently.

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