# Can spicy food clear your sinuses? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 5, 2005, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-spicy-food-clear-your-sinuses/288553 "2005-02-05T18:43:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-spicy-food-clear-your-sinuses/288553/21 "2005-02-08T16:48:22Z")
> [@NattoGuy](#): > > My post was on the assumption that the clearing of sinuses is necessary because sinuses are blocked. In that case, I can’t see how adding more snot into them would help. > > I appreciate you sharing your techniques for getting your faucet going, but I wasn’t able to glean how this is actually helping you. Are you cleaning irritants out of your nose, or are you removing crusted nasal mucus by causing a flow of fresh, moist, mucus? > > (I’m really sorry everybody, but yes, it’s come to this sort of language.) Sinuses, when working properly, drain out the nose and drain down the back of the throat. If nasal mucous is collecting in your sinuses, then somethin’s plumbed funny, or you’re sniffing way too hard. ---
**Author:** ![emmaliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7bcc69/32.png) [@emmaliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emmaliminal)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-spicy-food-clear-your-sinuses/288553/22 "2005-02-08T18:30:25Z")
> [@NattoGuy](#): > > My post was on the assumption that the clearing of sinuses is necessary because sinuses are blocked. In that case, I can’t see how adding more snot into them would help. > > I appreciate you sharing your techniques for getting your faucet going, but I wasn’t able to glean how this is actually helping you. Are you cleaning irritants out of your nose, or are you removing crusted nasal mucus by causing a flow of fresh, moist, mucus? … If you don’t get achy blocked sinuses often, I’m not surprised this doesn’t make sense to you. er, TMI, y’all— The aim is actually to clean out the _sinuses,_ not the nose. (If once suffers from “crusted nasal mucus,” discreet picking would be more effective.) **WhyNot** and **NattoGuy** , “nasal” mucus isn’t the problem. Mucus is actually made inside your sinuses (among other places). If your sinuses are making snot that—for whatever reason—isn’t all draining properly to your throat or nose, the snot reserved there starts to dry out and thicken. It can go from regular drippy snot, to gelatinous gludgey snot, right on down to semisolid little boogergballs of snot. (It doesn’t seem to get all the way to crusty, as it does in the nose; I assume this is from insufficient airflow.) This is often accompanied by nasty pressure headaches, because thicker snot blocks sinus drains even more thoroughly than regular snot, and thick snot doesn’t equalize with atmospheric pressure well. New snot made in response to irritants like chiles seems to be especially thin, even compared to new snot from allergies or viruses, maybe because it comes all at once instead of in dribs and drabs. If you “get your faucet going,” the new liqui-snot helps clean out the sludge, much like running a lot of hot water through a mostly-blocked sink drain can help dislodge a clog. I ate most of a packet of Cheetos Crunchy Flamin’ Hot last night, blew my nose many times, and was eventually treated to Kleenex wads full of juicy runny snot peppered with little round olive-khaki snotballs. Yay! Got those boogers OUT! Ideally, if you’re doing this on purpose to alleviate symptoms of sinusitis, you follow it up with something else. Now that I have the drains unblocked, I can use my sinus saline rinse bottle to clean out whatever’s left—which I couldn’t have used last night, pre-Cheetos; since the canals from my nose to my ears were freer than from my nose to my sinuses, I’d have ended up with an earful. (Done that once—unpleasant.) BTW, I think the guys at Hooter’s do it for the rush. Chiles, wasabi, horseradish, hot mustard—all of them trigger a lot of reactions besides just mucous production; in particular, they trigger endorphins. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-spicy-food-clear-your-sinuses/288553.md?page=1)