Nasal Infection
Respiratory infection is closely connected with nasal congestion. So, the first line of defensive posture that one should take is to keep the nose clean. The best way to elaborate this is to use a simple simile; to clean a drain you use a broom, broom in the case of nose are ‘cilia’ - microscopic hairs which are protruding from cells all along the air passage.
These hairs under normal circumstances wave back and forth every second 8 to 10 times, to sweep the mucus to the back of the nose where we ultimately swallow it. In the trachea and bronchi, the cilia sweep the mucus up the airway where we swallow. The mucus acts like sawdust or detergents that we put on the floor to trap the dust to help its removal from the floor. Our generation of mucus is about a teaspoon every five minutes. The mucus is quite sticky and traps every foreign particle that we breathe in. It takes about 15 minutes for cilia to take the mucus from the entry point to the back of the nose for our swallowing it.
This sweeping goes on round the clock, all the seven days in a week and is very effective. However, there are certain behavioral or environmental reasons that may affect this sweeping process. If the weather is dry and not enough water is consumed, the mucus becomes dry and hard to make cleaning difficult. And when the mucus is dry, it becomes easy for the bacteria and viruses to make themselves free from dry mucus and travel directly to lungs and the sinuses.
People suffer from cold in winter season, when central heating is used, the air and mucus gets drier and urge for water consumption also gets substantially reduced compared to summer months. Sufferings of cold, which is caused by viruses, infection of lungs, ear and sinuses also occur in winter season more and caused by bacteria in the nose