Okay, so this weekend I have the joy of dealing with a minor cold - just a cough and a few sniffles. No big deal. However, the past couple of times I blew my nose I had a funny feeling in the corner of my left eye, and I felt some moisture there. So I just blew my nose again in front of the mirror, and I can now report that the feeling and the moisture were the result of stuff (tears/mucus?) bubbling back OUT of my tear ducts (both top and bottom). :eek:
Let me say that I did NOT blow excessively hard (no need to - I’m not that stuffed up), and I was able to reproduce the effect by blowing very gently through my left nostril only.
This is cool in a weird sort of way. I certainly understand the connection between the tear ducts in my eyes and my nasal passages, but things have always heeded the force of gravity before. I’m just curious because this is a brand new phenomenon for me, and it only happens with my left eye. Should I should be concerned, or have I simply gained a new party trick?
You know how you pressurize your ears while underwater or in a plane or driving in the mountains? You feel your ears start to ‘pop’, so you hold your nose shut and try to blow your nose at the same time, and the air comes out your ears?
If I don’t close my eyes tight, the air comes out the inner corners of my eyes. Go figure.
When I was but a wee shaver, I could do the exact same thing. At some point during puberty, as my head took on its current misshapen proportions, I lost the ability. At the time I was too busy plotting the deaths of my classmates to notice.
Ah, well. It’s not like I was ever going to use this mutant power to fight crime, or anything. And I never went deaf, or suffered from any kind of massive tear-duct infection, if that makes you feel any better. But I’d probably refrain from doing it these days , just out of fear of damaging my eardrums. A word of warning, though; watch out when drinking carbonated beverages. If someone made me laugh while drinking a Coke, the stuff would not only come out my nose, but from my eyes as well, and it burned like hell.
Nice to see the posting. A couple years ago I started to have the problem that when I blow my nose I sometimes make a mess on the insides of my glasses, and was wondering if my GP would be annoyed if I asked if it meant anything was wrong…
I can do that too, from my right eye, and have been able to for years (tried it just now for the first time in probably a couple years; I hardly ever do it). When I was a little kid I asked my mom what would happen if you blew really hard but didn’t let the air out your mouth or nose… her joking response was “your eyeballs will pop out”… Har har har - however I could almost buy it once I noticed this little leaky spot in my head
I haven’t tried blowing air through my tear ducts, but there was a brief time when I could blow smoke through my ears. This happened during a very cold winter in Prague and I got a terrible ear infection. My eardrums eventually ruptured in a mess of ooze…well, being in Prague I kept on partying! I discovered that I could easily smoke a cigarette and exhale the smoke out of my ears! it was really neat… people were amazed at parties. After the eardrums healed I could no longer do this.
I’m just curious because this is a brand new phenomenon for me, and it only happens with my left eye. Should I should be concerned, or have I simply gained a new party trick?