They show up uninvited.
They shake your whole body.
And they can travel up to
160 kilometers (100 miles) an hour.
When you sneeze,
all the muscles in your body react,
from your eyelids
right down to your sphincter.
Do you hate sneezing in awkward situations?
Are you scared of spreading germs?
What would happen if
you held in all your sneezes?
To figure this out we have to ask:
A sneeze has the role of getting anything
out of your nose and sinuses
that shouldn’t be there.
That could be anything,
including pepper, dust,
perfume or even pet dander.
The official name for sneezing
is sternutation.
During the act of sneezing,
your body is building up pressure
in your respiratory system.
Your lungs, throat and sinuses
are shaking in suspense.
Sneezes are involuntary.
When an uninvited guest shows up
in your sinuses,
the red flags go up,
and convulsions in the airway
rocket the air out of you.
Otolaryngologist Noam Cohen
of the University of Pennsylvania
compared it to fixing a computer error.
He said It’s like "resetting the system
—like Control-Alt-Delete."
In 2002, a study at
Denmark's Department of Otorhinolaryngology
at Rigshospitalet
showed that 95 percent of people sneeze
four times or less each day.
Worldwide, we could be sneezing
upwards of 7.8 billion times a day.
Well, infectious diseases
such as whooping cough,
the common cold and the flu
can all be spread by sneezing.
If you were to hold your sneezes in,
you could be stopping the spread
of several diseases.
But we wouldn’t recommend it.
When you hold in a sneeze,
you’re putting up to 24 times more pressure
on the respiratory system
than if you just let it out.
Possible injuries from trying not to sneeze
include pulled muscles,
burst eardrums,
and ruptured blood vessels in the eyes.
It can do some serious damage,
and result in serious complications
for your body,
including pneumomediastinum
(which is air becoming trapped between your lungs,)
and the rupture of a cerebral aneurysm.
Cases have also been reported
of a held-in sneeze causing
globs of infected mucus
to be slammed through the eustachian tube
and into the middle ear,
bringing an infection along with it for the ride.
Maybe you should just let the sneeze out.
In 2018, a man in Britain
was admitted to hospital
after he attempted to stifle a sneeze.
The attempt resulted in
rupturing the back of his throat.
He also managed to tear his pharynx,
which connects your mouth and nasal cavity
to your esophagus.
Doctors found that air from the man’s lungs
had managed to bubble into his deep tissue
and chest muscles.
Once there, it had no way to get out again.
This poor guy was hospitalized for a week,
and required a feeding tube
and intravenous antibiotics,
just to help with the pain and swelling.
If we held in all our sneezes,
this could go from being a medical rarity
to a common occurrence.
What would your world look like
if you held in all your sneezes?
Well, the phrase “bless you”
would rarely be uttered outside of church.
Pepper suppliers would see
a small dip in their business,
and doctors might see a big drop in cases
of the common cold virus.
However, they’d see a lot more patients
with beet-red eyes
from their blood vessels bursting.
Sneezing is a very simple,
everyday action that almost everyone does.
It’s a bodily function we take for granted.
It may be annoying,
but if you force sneezing out of the picture,
life becomes a lot more complicated.
A sneeze takes a fraction of a second,
the same amount of time it may take
to land in the hospital if you try holding it in.
So, it’s best to just let it happen,
and wipe your nose instead.
Did you know that there's research showing
a sneeze can release endorphins
the same way an orgasm can?
What if orgasms didn't exist in the first place?