There is an episode of The Dollup podcast about ninjas in 1800s (I think) Japan and in one part they talk about how the ninja would often have to wait around all day or more hiding to assassinate someone. They way they could tell how long they'd been waiting was by the change of the "dominant" nostril.
Apparently even when not stuffed up the air passes thru one nostril more easy than the other when you breathe. It switches about every 40 minutes.
Before you take everyone's word about the nasal cycle, check if you have dust mite allergies. Turns out I did and my nose was far stuffier and itchier than what should be normal.
I switched out my pillowcase to an allergy pillowcase and started taking some allergy meds. It cleared up my nose a lot and now I can actually feel one nostril only being slightly more closed due to the nasal cycle instead of having it almost all blocked.
Yesterday I bought an air purifier. Today was the first day since the furnace turned on I woke up with clear sinuses! Dust mites and cat dander are what's happening with me I think.
See, this is what always bothers me with blocked noses, like. Okay, yeah, it's probably automatic, but certainly, the brain can just override the active nostril and switch ot to the other sode when it detects something is wrong.
Your body doesn’t want to override because it’s doing it to give half your sinuses a break and recover. If it just kept running on the unblocked one you’d quickly dry it out. Unfortunately the only override is manually switching to mouth breathing.
They aren't both fully open, but in the day time I breathe normally through both. I don't get the OP scenario any more but I used to, it's a different feeling to the normal cycle in my experience.
I have a love/hate relationship with mine. It does help with allergies and the constant runny nose that I had... But it's genuinely an awful experience lol. I feel like I'm gonna vomit every time.
You cycle through which nostril is dominant all day long, about every 30-50 minutes. This is to allow each side to return to body heat equilibrium and recover.
You pass 10-20k liters of generally colder than bodytemperature air through your nose in a day.
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