Amy's Robot

Healthy Nose Picking = Early April Fools Joke? Let's Find Out.

Something about the widely reported and heavily blogged story that there are health benefits of nose-picking struck me as an early April Fools joke, so I set about trying to establish the existence of the story's source, Dr. Friedrich Bischinger, who is supposedly one of "Austria's top docs."

At first, I guess because of overly-specific queries, Bischinger was nowhere to be found in Google outside of the context of this story. He didn't exist before last week.

But then...A broader search yielded a treasure trove of Bischinger and his expertise, including his picture:

• this page, apparently the results of a race near in Innsbruck, where the good doctor Bischinger is from!
• A page listing several Innsbruck doctors named "Bischinger," but no Friedrich.
• And: Here he is! [scroll way down til you see his name in yellow.] He works at Gabelsbergerstr 41 in Innsbruck! You can call him up at 0512/399885!

In case you can't get in touch, here's some of his meditations (translated by robots) on nicotine addiction, and how it's more powerful than sex:

Skurril is also the craze power of the cigarette or better the admittedly fascinating drug nicotine, which lets the difficulty of curing understand also. In one Pleasure Score sucked - thus an evaluation "which - how much desire and pleasure make", stand nicotine in highest place. Followed reduced from - in descending attractiveness - gambling, alcohol, power, sport, meal and far "Sex"!!! Possibly the cigarette is also a reason for the sinking geburtenzahlen, in any case is it a concurring cause for the increasing Unfruchtbarkeit of our civilization. We thus rather cough.

You can even email him via another page. So, of course, I did:

Hello. Is it true that picking the nose is good for you? Is it true that eating it is good for you? I saw the news story. May I believe it?

Ist es zutreffend, daß, die Nase auszuwählen für Sie gut ist? Ist es zutreffend, daß, es zu essen für Sie gut ist? Ich sah die Nachrichten Geschichte. Mag ich ihr glauben?

Thank you!

I will update this post as soon as I hear back from the Herr Doktor Bischinger.

Of course, it's still possible that either the doctor made it up for Austrian April Fools day (which was, actually, last week) or Ananova, the original source for the story, is pulling our legs, using a doctor from another country as a shill.

Aside from all this -- though I'm no doctor -- the argument that actually EATING your mucus is good for you just doesn't make much sense. Dried mucus is a waste product. Does it ever seem like eating your body's waste is a good idea? Sure, urine is better for you than salt water, but that's not saying much.

But just to be safe, you should probably keep picking. Especially at traffic lights.

Update: Well, he hasn't written back yet, I guess because the email address isn't valid. (One bounced, the other prompted no reply.) So here's the page where you can see all his contact info.

categories: Health, International
posted by adm at 2:02 AM | #