A new study found a link between nose picking and dementia risk.
Picking your nose damages internal tissues, giving bacteria a clearer path to the brain, which responds with Alzheimer's-like symptoms.
There are plenty of caveats, including that the supporting research is based on mice rather than humans, but the findings are worth further investigation
A team from Griffith University in Australia tested Chlamydia pneumoniae, which can cause pneumonia in humans
In mice, bacteria travel up the olfactory nerve (joining the nasal cavity and the brain). When the nasal epithelium was damaged, nerve infections got worse.
This caused mouse brains to deposit more amyloid-beta, a protein released in response to infections