Parenting UP! Caregiving adventures with comedian J Smiles

Protect Your Brain: Stop Picking Your Nose

June 11, 2023 J Smiles Season 3 Episode 20
Parenting UP! Caregiving adventures with comedian J Smiles
Protect Your Brain: Stop Picking Your Nose
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Did you know that your nose-picking habit might be putting you at risk for dementia? Join J for a fascinating study conducted by Australian scientists, which discovered that excessive nose picking can lead to amyloid beta plaques on your brain - a precursor to Alzheimer's disease. UGH!!

In this eye-opening episode, J Smiles shares anecdotes spanning three generations of nose excavation. Since the majority of humans are world class diggers then J hopes to provide options -- dab on it or scissor trim. Brain health might be more simple than we thought, thanks Aussies! Don't miss out on these valuable insights into preserving your brain health.

Join Alzheimer's favorite family caregiver for another journey of heavy reality sprinkled with love and laugher.

Catch J's signature SNUGGLE UP ending for provocative take aways.

Australia Study linking nose picking and dementia:
https://enlighten.griffith.edu.au/why-picking-your-nose-is-dangerous/

ScienceAlert.com:
https://www.sciencealert.com/mouse-study-suggests-an-unexpected-link-between-nose-picking-and-alzheimers

"Alzheimer's is heavy but we ain't gotta be!"
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J Smiles:

I was not a normal kid, before you go too far with all your little laughing giggles. My nose didn't run. I didn't really have boogers. There was no reason for me to blow my nose much. There was nothing to pick. Yeah, I was a snorter. OMG! Hope that didn't hurt your ears too much. No one wanted to be near me in school, on the bus, playing on the playground -- because ooh, ooh, ooh, could I call all the forest animals. I should have been a veterinarian. I probably could have fixed a bunch of animals. Anywho, that wasn't my issue. Because my sinuses are so screwed up my whole body doesn't make mucus. But let me tell you what. Now, I am winning because apparently, all of y'all nasty people, adults and kids that have been picking your nose, you have been doing more then being gross. Did you know there's some studies out there that saying you are spraining your membrane and maybe increasing your chance of having some problems? We about to get into this. Your brain is getting exposed because you pick your nossse!

J Smiles:

Parenting UP Caregiving Adventures with the Comedian J Smiles is the intense journey of unexpectedly being fully responsible for the well-being of my mama. For almost a decade I've been chipping away at the unknown, advocating for her and pushing Alzheimer's awareness on anyone and anything with a heartbeat. Spoiler alert I started comedy because this stuff is heavy, be ready for the jokes. Caregiver Newbies, OGs, village members trying to just prop up a caregiver. You. ARE. IN. THE. RIGHT. PLACE. Hi, this is Zetty. I hope you enjoy my daughter's podcast. Is that okay? Today's episode: Seriously, Stop Picking Your Nose. OU R GLOBAL COMMUNITY is expanding. I want your feedback. Let's snuggle up. Send a purple heart, the little emoji, to plus one 4047371449.

J Smiles:

Parenting up family. I got teased incessantly as a kid for all the noises I made. I was called Miss Piggy, hippopotamus, elephant Face, like Mack Truck. It was awful. But apparently now I'm the cool kid because the noises I'm making may be saving my life.

J Smiles:

Picking your nose is now maybe linked to dementia. Now, I'm stressing maybe. I don't want you to freak out, but this is a simple thing that we can stop, to increase our chances of avoiding this stupid, crazy ugly disease. Now, you know we try to keep it light here, on the parenting up podcast, I'll put all the little really detailed links in the show notes. But the study was done by fancy scientists in Australia and what they found was when you do that nose picking -- not one time, but when you are serious nose picker, you know what I mean, when you go to town with your pinky and your pointed finger, when you in the car and you don't care if nobody's looking, even when you have a tissue and you dig so much that the tissue has a hole in it, you know who you are. [Laughing] And there's a little bit of slime on your finger And some of y'all then put it in your mouth. Okay, that's not why they believe it's linked to dementia. That's just gross, and then your stomach is going to hurt.

J Smiles:

Today's sponsor is J Smiles Comedy. Fresh, curated content for corporations, clubs or keynotes. Live and virtual performances J SmilesComedy. com. The link that they found, potential link-- let me stress that potential link is that there's enough breakdown of the tissue in your nose that it actually allows bacteria to get to your brain. Now, it's a long word, bacteria, I'm not going to even try to say it, but this bacteria then gets to the brain and forms a very specific type of plaque, And that's the damn plaque that is present on Alzheimer's patients. Now, we all know at the ParentingU p! Family that you can't really prove that a person had Alzheimer's until they get their wings.

J Smiles:

Yeah, the autopsy. Oh, J Smiles, you talking about autopsies. It's so ugly. Well, you know, trying to really get y'all to stop doing it. I think it's so awesome that there's a daily activity that we could mitigate. Maybe everybody starts getting stock in toilet paper and toilet tissue and any kind of facial tissue and everything else with sponges and gloves and handkerchiefs. Maybe we need to bring handkerchiefs back and come up with handkerchiefs for women and kids and everybody, the transgender and anybody else who feels the need to have a gender neutral thing that's in your pocket where you will not put your finger up your nose. I am really about to beat this drum right now because if anything can lessen the risk of dementia in a human, i'm for that.

J Smiles:

First thing, pure moment of transparency. This study has not been done on humans yet. It's been done on our nice useful furry friends, mice. But everything gets done on the mice first. So, hey, sounds good to me.

J Smiles:

What has happened is the amyloid beta plaques that are believed to be the precursor or the cause of Alzheimer's. I mean, you know, the medical community does not know the source of Alzheimer's or exactly what in the brain while you're alive is determinant of, yes, this person has Alzheimer's but, going by today's standards of medicine, that amyloid beta plaque is the greatest sign that we have And the mice are getting the freaking plaque from this same bacteria that they know that humans expose their brains to from excessive picking of your freaking nose and plucking nose hairs. OMG, and you guessed it, it is intensified for those who are diagnosed with late onset Alzheimer's, which totally tracks and makes sense because you've given yourself more years to pick and pluck on your nose. So you probably ain't gonna get in your 40s or 50s, but by 70, 75, 80, because you know old people don't give a flying you know what! At church, on the bus and the airplane, in the doctor's office, they are going for it in their nose, bless their little hearts and their little nose hairs are longer and it's catching the soup and the grits. I'm from this deep South in the United States and we eat grits morning, noon and night and all the little stuff get caught in the little nose hairs, women and men, and then you have to trim them or choose to trim them with scissors and don't pluck it. Listen, cute, ain't worth breaking your brain.

J Smiles:

My grandfather, Zetty's dad, was diagnosed with late onset Alzheimer's. And I am here to tell you that dude was known to go digging for gold up his nose. Do you hear me? His pointer finger was as big as a thumb, and that man didn't stop. He would be frowning and squinting up his face and his nose and moaning like uhh, uhn, uhn, uhn, Jeh. yeah. He call me Jeh J E H. Yeah, give me. Ah, Get daddy a tissue. You know, in the South, your daddy is your granddaddy, great-granddaddy. Whoever is the oldest man in the room, it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not he is your biological nothing, he's your elder. So that's the daddy, JEH. Get daddy a tisha. Tisha with an A on it. Yes, he had a master's degree. A very intelligent man, had nothing to do with the dialect. Get this point, though, he did not use the tissue to handle his nose or what was occurring internally.

J Smiles:

No, the tissue was to remove the contents of his finger, after he pulled the finger out of his nose and looked at it like it was a microscope, and he was determining whether or not it looked right. I don't know, he wasn't a doctor. I don't know why he was looking at it that hard. He would take it out, uh-huh, uh-huh, and then he would wipe it off on the tissue and handed it to me. Hey, baby, here, go throw that way for daddy. That's how he used the tissue.

J Smiles:

Then your fan fave Zetty, she didn't search for gold, but that baby would pluck a rose or two. Now, luckily for her, her pointer finger was not as large as my grandfather's, her dad, and she used her pinky nail. But after hearing about this research, the nail was likely scratching all the membranes and popping blood vessels. And that poor little tissue in her little nose. And her nose was much smaller than my grandfather's. So, who knows what she was disturbing. Ugh, because she was trying to get to the sediment. I'm going to try to keep it cute. And she did.

J Smiles:

Zetty did a combo. Okay, Zetty did a hybrid approach. My grandfather did excavation All right, it was. He went digging with a backhoe. Anybody in construction? That's how he used his finger. Zetty, on the other hand, no, she did a hybrid situation.

J Smiles:

Like, she has some electric and some gasoline. The tissue was electric and the nail on her pinky would have been the diesel, right. And then sometimes she just pinch using a pointer finger and her thumb -- And I guess that's a little more the gasoline, trying to get some of the mucus to just squirt out both the nostrils. Listen, they both had some juicy noses. I never had a juicy nose, though, because my sinuses don't produce normal mucus. This is what I want you to take to heart.

J Smiles:

This study is serious, is serious enough for scientists to care. They are getting the resources together to try it on humans. This bacteria that your nose is exposed to when you damage the tissues from picking at it excessively absolutely gives humans pneumonia. That is undeniable, and it has been found that the majority of brains that are affected by late onset Alzheimer's meaning after they do the autopsy they have this same plaque. So people, quit picking your damn nose.

J Smiles:

And it's gross -- And I mean it's so gross. There's cell phones and drones everywhere. People can see you. There's not enough hand sanitizer on the globe to get rid of all those germs. So save your brain, save your stomach, save your esophagus and make sure that the ParentingUp! Family, we are the leaders of doing something better for brain health. How cool is that? Did y'all know that nine out of 10 people pick and or pluck their noses? Plucking the nose hairs after the age of 65, it exponentially increases the likelihood that a virus or bacteria will enter through your nose and get to your brain and cause a problem with a dementia related disease, cause you've been fooling around and messing up your protective tissue.

J Smiles:

It's protective tissue in your nose that's keeping your brain safe. It's almost like a moat, or like a building or like a fence. You can't chip away at the fence. Ha, I know yawl gonna get it. Spread the word! Spread the word (excited whisper). {theme music starts} THE SNUGGLE UP: NUMBER ONE I know I know, I know some of you are thinking J Smiles, but this was done on mice. Ain't no proof that this will really be a problem with humans. Okay, true, but I know so damn well you are not about to wait for it to be proved on a human.

J Smiles:

--When this is something that you can add to your toolbox of preventative measures, come on, it's too easy. It's too easy. It doesn't cost you any money. You can start tomorrow or today. I know when you're gonna listen to this and anybody, in any country, in any age, can do it. Some nations, some cultures don't allow it anyway.

J Smiles:

NUMBER TWO if you are an animal rights activist and you are offended that mice were used to do this research, please do your best not to discount the results that were rendered. I'm not asking you to jump on board and enjoy that animals were utilized. I could do five years worth of podcasts on the struggles that I have in how the environment and animals and resources are used to provide a life and a way of living for humans, but on this podcast we are striving to find a cure for Alzheimer's and to support family caregivers --- Stop picking your nose. And in honor of the mice who laid down their little furry lives us. NUMBER THREE You are a family caregiver, currently, in the past, or you're supporting

J Smiles:

Let me know what you think the coolest thing about that role is. You can reach me on Instagram, facebook, on YouTube J Smiles Comedy -- Parenting Up. Whatever works for you. I hope you're already receiving text as a part of our community. 404-737-1449. Tricks, trends and truth. Pretty pretty, please, with sugar on top. Share and review it too. I'm a comedian. Alzheimer's is heavy, but we ain't got to be.

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Preventative Measures for Brain Health
Today's Nose Picking SnuggleUP