Thanks to Babbel, a language learning app,
for supporting this SciShow list show.
As a SciShow viewer, you can use our link to grow
your language skills with Babbel for up to 60% off
and a 20 day money-back guarantee.
Sneezing is a part of life.
Whether it’s from allergies or a cold,
sneezing is your body’s natural reflex to remove stuff
that shouldn’t be inside your nose.
And it’s a pretty forceful eviction.
When you sneeze, you’re exhaling a stream of air
at up to 23 meters per second.
That puts about 41 kg of force on your chest,
which is similar to a mid-level intensity bench press.
That much force can do drastic things to your body, from
making you lose your hearing to increasing your blood pressure.
If that kind of thing makes you squeamish,
you might need to watch this video through your fingers.
These aren’t just stories your older sibling would
tell you to freak you out during allergy season.
Everything in this video has really happened to at least one
person and been reported in peer reviewed academic journals.
So get ready to learn about five of the weirdest things
that have ever happened to people after a sneeze!
[♪ INTRO]
One of the most popular legends about sneezing
is that it can pop your eye out of its socket,
only to be left dangling on your cheek like
you’re starring in the next zombie apocalypse movie.
And we’ve already made a SciShow video generally
debunking the idea that this can happen to you out of nowhere.
But it turns out that a sneeze can dislocate your eye.
It’s called a blow-out fracture, which, I know,
sounds like exactly what I just told you doesn’t happen.
But it just means that enough air has built up
behind your eye socket to make the eye stick out a bit,
not pop out entirely.
In one case, a 32 year old was seeking
medical advice for their swollen eye.
It was very much still in the socket, just, you know, kinda puffy.
The air pressure from their sneeze was forceful enough
to damage their orbital wall,
which is made of the bones on the rim of the eye socket.
So the top and bottom part of their eye socket was still intact,
but the side was pushed a bit out of place.
Normally, this kind of injury happens when
you’ve been hit in the eye socket
or you’ve banged your forehead against something.
But this person’s eye started swelling after they just sneezed.
While it’s definitely not comfortable, this is generally
the kind of thing that sorts itself out within two weeks.
And you won’t shoot your eye out.
Eye pain after a sneeze might not be a massive health concern.
But chest pain that crawls up your neck
and into your back for three hours is a horse of a different color.
Especially when it affects your ability to breathe.
That’s what happened to a 57 year old whose
super-powered sneeze ended up tearing their aorta!
You know, that really important artery on your heart
where your blood flows out to the rest of your body?!
Physicians suspect that this extreme response to sneezing
was helped along by something called the Valsalva maneuver,
which you’ve probably done before.
If you plug your nose when you sneeze,
you’re already familiar with it.
When your sneeze is pushing air out while you clog its exits,
it can increase your blood pressure even more
than sneezing already does on its own.
Like I mentioned earlier, sneezing exerts a lot of pressure.
And plugging your nose just adds to it.
But you don’t really want to mess around with your blood pressure
because tearing your aorta could be fatal.
Luckily, not in this case.
This person was given blood pressure medication and recovered,
leaving them with quite the story to tell at dinner parties.
For some people, that kind of event changes
their whole approach to sneezing.
This next lifelong nose-pinch-sneezer swore off the
Valsalva maneuver after losing their hearing from a sneeze.
When a 32 year old suppressed their sneeze,
they likely created an explosive force on the inside of their ear
at the tympanic membrane, leading one of their ear bones to break.
The tympanic membrane is also known as your eardrum,
and it’s the barrier between the outside world
and your delicate little ear bones.
When sound waves come into your ear,
they vibrate the tympanic membrane,
which then transmits those vibrations to the
malleus, incus, and stapes bones.
But if one of those bones gets broken,
then you can lose hearing in that ear.
Injuries to the malleus bone are mostly caused
when you jam something into your ear.
And, while it’s very rare to break or bruise
your malleus via a sneeze,
it’s still been reported multiple times in scientific journals.
And a lifetime of Valsalva maneuvers might even weaken the
malleus by overpressurizing the inner ear and causing it to inflate,
which could make you more susceptible
to sneeze-related hearing loss.
But, in a marvel of modern medicine,
doctors can restore hearing by patching up the broken bone.
So after a surgery, you can make a full recovery
and hear just like before!
Some of these sneeze effects are life threatening.
But fortunately, some turn out
to be much less so than they could have been.
This is one of those.
You see, this patient broke their neck.
To be clear, it wasn’t the kind of neck break
that you see combat fighters do in the movies.
Instead, the 35-year-old patient experienced
what’s called a laryngeal fracture.
Your larynx is your throat pipe that air flows through
so you can do things like breathing, swallowing, and talking.
That means this person broke some cartilage in their neck,
but not any of the bones in their spine.
Since many of these sneezing snafus
are caused by increased air pressure,
it makes sense that the part of your neck where air travels through
is the part that’s most vulnerable to sneeze damage.
And ultimately, that damage was pretty bad.
It was brought on by a quote “violent sneezing fit” unquote.
Now, it takes about five times more force to fracture your larynx
than you’d generate sneezing, even with your mouth closed.
But it’s possible that your body position after a violent sneeze
could distribute that force in a certain way that breaks your larynx.
While it can be life-threatening,
this case turned out to be pretty mild.
The only medical attention needed was to monitor the situation
and make sure nothing escalated.
Luckily, the patient appeared totally fine
at the two-month follow-up visit.
It’s important to note that everyone I’ve talked about
in this video ended up okay.
Some of these people a-choo-ed their way
into really dangerous and scary complications,
so these case studies are nothing to sneeze at.
But they all came away from the experience with the same
amount of bodily function that they entered with.
And this final story is a triumphant tale in which our main character
leaves a sneeze better off than they were before.
This story begins with a 63 year old who had inflamed sinuses.
When they went to the dentist and then
to the doctor to get those sinuses checked out,
they learned that one of their dental implants
had found its way into their sinuses.
Turns out, that happens more often than you might think.
But the way this person removed their implant was the weird part.
Usually, you need to have a surgery to get all up
in your sinuses and take the implant out.
And this person was ready to go through all of that,
having prepped with antibiotics and
medicines that break down the mucus in there.
But two days after starting that course of medicine,
they sneezed out the implant!
See, the maxillary sinuses sit directly above the back molars,
so as the implant migrated upwards,
it ended up lodged into that sinus.
But the sinuses are also connected to the nose through
openings called ostia, so the implant had a nice escape route too.
So this story had a happy ending when they got to
cancel surgery without any symptoms a week later!
For all of the problems that sneezing can cause,
sometimes a good stream of pressure is
the solution you didn’t realize you needed.
There are so many weird things that
can happen to your body when you sneeze.
But most of the time, it’s just another trip to wash your hands.
All of the events I just covered are pretty rare.
So there’s no need for this video to keep you up at night.
Which is good news, since it’s not exactly possible
to stop yourself from sneezing for the rest of your life.
If anything, you might steer clear of
the Valsalva maneuver when you do.
This SciShow video is supported by Babbel,
the #1 language learning app in the world.
And it’s #1 because people have fun using Babbel.
The app includes games, podcasts,
and live lessons with real teachers,
to keep you engaged while learning a new language.
You don’t even need to commit hours every day to Babbel.
Each lesson is just 10 minutes that puts you on the road
to practical conversations fast.
You can start building those language skills in just three weeks.
And Babbel has a 20-day money back guarantee,
just in case you change your mind during that time.
As a SciShow viewer, you can get up to 60% off
when you sign up using the link in the description down below.
You can choose from different subscriptions,
including a lifetime subscription.
Babbel also offers live classes and
you can get 2 free classes with your subscription!
Thanks for watching!
[♪ OUTRO]