FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Health

And Now We Bring You a Useful Snot Decoder

Green vs. yellow, and other things you need to know.
Image: JGI/Jamie Grill / Getty

Having a runny nose blows, but the truth is that snot, or as elitist intellectual types sometimes like to call it, "mucus," is some of the most important goo in your body. The average human body produces between one and one and a half liters of mucus every day. Why? Cause it's good for you. It's like a liquid antibacterial blanket that coats your insides and protects them from infection, germs, dust, dirt and allergens.

Advertisement

Most of the time, we don't notice our snot, but when it does make itself known, it's usually with good reason. If you wake up to find your nose is leakier than Donald Trump's White House staff, it probably means your internal mucus machine is working overtime to deal with a potential health issue.

Personally, I think anyone who says they don't examine the tissue they just sneezed for a full color analysis is either a liar or a prude. I'm all about honoring my snot's truth, but an investigation deep inside the land of boogers taught me that you can't necessarily judge a sneeze by its color.

Myers Hurt, a family practitioner in Galveston, Texas, says when cold and flu seasons pack his office to capacity, snot color is a hot topic among patients.

"A patient will say something like, 'I felt bad three days ago, then started seeing yellow snot, but today it is green so I know I need an antibiotic.' In reality, the color of snot—while important—is rarely used as an indication by itself for the presence of an infection or not. Patients with clear snot can actually have severe infections, and patients with green, bloody snot (you're welcome) can be fine without any medications. Doctors look at the big picture—symptoms including fever, chills, duration, congestion, swollen glands, cough, as well as mucus color to more accurately diagnose disease."

Snot hue may not offer definitive insight into what's going on in our bodies, but it can still offer clues. Here's a guide.

Advertisement

Clear 
Normal mucus is clear, but Arthur Wu, a sinus specialist from Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, says that an excess of clear mucus isn't necessarily just a sign of the common cold. It can be an indication of other problems, like allergies, chronic sinusitis, or the very glamorous sounding vasomotor rhinitis.

"Vasomotor rhinitis is a condition where the nerves that control the mucus production in the nose are hyperactive," Wu says. "Usually patients with this have a worse runny nose when stepping out into the cold, changes in weather, while eating, or when the air conditioning is hitting them."

If you're a hypochondriac, attention whore, or just someone whose boss won't let them out of work for a plain old cold, announcing that you're waiting to get your test results back regarding a potential vasomotor rhinitis diagnosis may do the trick.

White or Yellow
When mucus turns white or yellow it could be a sign of infection, or it could just mean that your body is trying to flush out a virus by producing more mucus. The volume of the snot can thicken the consistency and darken the color. So, if your snot is white or yellow, you can congratulate your body for its productivity. Think of your nose as a snot entrepreneur. But seriously though, if it goes on for more than ten days you probably need to go see somebody.

Green
If your sneeze looks like it's something that came out of Kermit the frog, you may be looking at a real illness here. Mucus turns green when it's full of dead white blood cells known as neutrophils which the body creates to fight off an infection.

Advertisement

Still, a 2009 study showed that mucus color alone shouldn't be used as a sole determining factor in whether or not a doctor should prescribe antibiotics. You'll need your snot officially lab tested for a doctor to know for sure, since antibiotics only help with bacterial infections, not viral ones. A 2016 CDC report showed that 47 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions are written by doctors every year. That's a lot of wasted drugs, not to mention possibly another reason people are building a resistance to them.

Brown 
Stop smoking and/or snorting dirt. It's bad for you. Brown-colored mucus is sometimes a sign that you're inhaling pollutants or actual dirt from the air, or that you're sucking tar and carbon monoxide into your lungs purposely because you think it makes you look cool. And, of course, there's always pneumonia. It could be that.

Red or Pink
If your snot is red or pink, you're probably blowing out some blood along with your snot. This could be due to a crack in the lining of your nasal membrane from dryness or irritation. Drinking more fluids, using a humidifier, or using a nasal moisturizing spray are all helpful ways to get the red out.

Black
Now things are getting really interesting. If your snot is the color of Steve Bannon's soul it could be a few different things: inhaling dirt or foreign objects, smoking, eating dark colored food, or an exotic fungal infection like aspergillosis, which can usually be treated with an antifungal medication; or the more serious infection mucormycosis, which could require surgery to remove the infected tissue.

So, snot color analysis remains an imperfect science, but I'm pretty sure I'm still going to look in my tissue after I sneeze because I'm intellectually curious by nature. And gross.