March 20, 2026 • 48 mins
Unless you have an arcane disorder from a lesion on a very specific spot on our medulla, the chances are you sneeze. Turns out most animals do it, even lizards! Learn the whys and hows of this most interesting involuntary reflex.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Spring is so many wonderful things, trees, budding, flowers, blooming,
getting to wear straw hats. But for a lot of
people it also means a miserable season of allergies, and
sneezing is the poster child for allergies. Let's just admit it.
So we chose our episode on sneezing so we can
at least help you understand what the heck is going
(00:25):
on with your face. Even if we can't cure you,
we wish we could so seal all the doors in
the windows and kick back with this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of Iheartradios
How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryan over there. Jerry is a disembodied spirit,
but she's still with us, haunting us. And we are
now set up for achievement, which means this is stuff you.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Should know, set up for achievement. That sounds like very
eighties Reagan era campaign.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
It does, It definitely does. Certainly not the kind of
thing that would irritate you, whether it be in your
nose or your brain or anywhere.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Not the best segue, huh, I'm surprised you didn't try
and work sternutation in there. Somehow.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I love that word. Were you familiar with that word before?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I don't think you know, I'm forty nine years old.
I don't think i'd ever heard sneezing being called sternutation.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I got oh, man, I just remembered. I'm forty four now,
So you got me beat. But I'm in the same
boat with you.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, I never heard that, But that is what if
you're a scientist. Well, if you're a scientist and you
want to be a real stuff, you probably say sternutation.
If you're a scientist that wants to be friends with people,
you'll still probably say sneezing.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And I mean, it sounds super clinical, but it's actually
really old. It's from I think the first appearance of
it is in a text from fifteen seventy six.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
It sounds old to me.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
It sounds clinical, but there's also a couple derivative words.
Sternutative or stern utatory are things that make you sneeze,
and Howard stern bubba buoe right chewy. So we're talking
sneezing obviously, because we just discoursed on stern neuitation imagining
(02:30):
an extra syllable there are and I stern mutation.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
That's the Josh Clark way.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Why do I have to complicate? Why do I have
to complimicate things?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
We're talking about sneezing, and sneezing is a really sort
of and I hate it when people call things like
this elegant, so I'm going to refrain. But it's just
a very efficient system that the human body has worked
out to basically allow your your nose and we'll get
(03:02):
into all the ins and outs of how it all happens,
but to allow your nose and your nasal passage and
your brain to act as bouncers and just say, get
out of my body. Fast.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Cut off pal like real fast, you're cut off cigarette smoke,
You're cut off Chanel number seven that nobody likes, you know. Sure,
that's uh yeah, that's a pretty pretty good way to
put it. I mean, and it's an ancient, ancient reflex too.
I mean, basically, all mammals at least sneeze some more
(03:33):
than others. I didn't realize this, but apparently iguanas sneeze
the most because it's part of their digestion.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, and then I don't know what it's technically called,
but you know when dogs do what it's called the
reverse sneeze.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, Momo has that bad.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
It's so scary.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It is, it is. And we finally got her checked
out and they verified she doesn't have a collapse trachia,
which is when it really is threatening. It's just something
to do with her nasal passages. Yeah, she's bracky as cephalic.
You ever had a dog that that has that.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I mean, I've I've never had a dog that didn't
do it occasionally, but Nico, I feel like goes and
it's not often, but it's it's like a you know,
it's like can be prolonged like for like a minute,
and it just seems like are you about to die?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, it's terrible, it's really bad.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I think you're just supposed to leave them alone too, right,
just let him do it.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
No, we help her out. We'll we'll rub her throat,
just kind of stroke it. It seems to help, uh,
And then sometimes we'll just lightly plug her nostrils to
kind of give her like a hitch to it, and
that that frequently cures it too sometimes though. Yeah, she
just has to work it out. But she gets it
every time she gets excited, and she gets excited a lot,
(04:47):
so it's sad for her.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Yeah, but it's really not a sneeze actually, because a
sneeze is when you were you're trying to get something
out of your nose, and that nose is is a
pretty amazing little system. It's it's an amazing filtration system.
How it's designed with those narrow nasal passages. It's not
like we have these big face holes like that. They're
(05:10):
narrow for a very good reason, and that is to
create turbulence inside your nasal passages. And you know that
turbulence shoves all that air that you're inhaling to the
sides of your nasal passages. Yeah, the nasal mucosa and
that's got tiny little hairs called cilia, and the cilia
(05:31):
mainly is sort of like a pre door man just
saying like, yeah, your ID is good, Why don't we
just move you to the back of the throat and
we'll flush you out that way. But if it's too much,
that's when you need to call in the big bouncer
to initiate that sneeze response.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah, sometimes it's just like no, I'm staying here, I'm
not leaving. You can't kick me out. They hate the
back of the throat super drunk, right, yeah, yeah, so
I didn't realize that, but it makes sense that we
swallow a lot of the particles that we inhale through
our nose, which is great but effective or tough it up,
we poop it out eventually, right yeah. But yeah, if
they get if they get stuck in the nose, then
(06:08):
they do something magical, almost as magical as soap. But
when it's when they're sticking to the sides and they're
they're not going anywhere, it's clear they're not going anywhere.
They actually like irritate some specialized cells that are in
that nasal mucosa mass cells and uh ireena fills I think,
(06:29):
But basically they're they're there to look out for little
particles that decide they don't want to leave, and when
those things get irritated, they release histamines which trigger this
reaction like an allergic reaction, basically where your nose is runny,
and they also simultaneously start sending signals to your brain saying, hey,
we we got one. We need some help.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, And I know we talked about this a little
bit with I know the pollen episode and I feel
like we did another allergy centric one I can't remember,
but the whole thing takes about a second for the
single sneeze, and you know it's going to send that message,
like you said, that chemical message to the sneeze center
(07:11):
of the brain, which is in the lateral medulla. Yeah,
and you know, the lateral medulla gets like everything in
the brain, it gets that signal and says, you know,
all I gotta do is react fast whenever the body
tells me to do something, and in this case, it's
to jet out whatever is in the nose as fast
as possible.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Right, So, and I was looking this up if you
want to get super clinical, if you're the kind of
person who uses words like ster mutation instead of sneezing,
there's actually something called an afferent phase and an efferent phase.
And an afferent phase is when you get ready to sneeze,
like your your nerves have been tickled and are triggered
and are itching and they're sending messages to your brain
(07:55):
in your sneeze center. And then that the efferent phase
is when your sneeze goes okay, it's go time, and
that's actually pretty interesting stuff. And the way that that
happens is, basically, from what I can tell, through a
system of nerves olfactory nerve, ethmoidal nerve, which is a
terrible word, and then your trigeminal nerve, which is basically
(08:17):
responsible for most of the sensation in your face and
your ability to bite and chew. And when these nerves
spring into action, they hit that message or the sneezing
center in your brain, and your sneezing center sends it
back over these this kind of same switchboard of nerves
in your face and all this is happening and just
you know, a very short amount of time.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, I mean, like I said, the whole thing takes
place in less than a second. And it's got to
reach you know, in order for it to reach that
sneeze center, it's got to be past a certain threshold
of irritation, basically, right. And once it does reach that
irt irritable point, of which there's no going back. He's
had too much to drink. Everybody in the bar knows it.
(09:00):
That's when it finally sends that impulse down through the
head and neck to initiate that response that involves a
lot of muscle groups. You know, when you sneeze, it's
a and especially with some people, it can be a
pretty violent action for the body.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, Like if you stop and take stock of what
you're doing right, then you might find that you're hunched over.
One of your legs is in the air, like, your
knees kind of pulled up, your face is all scrunched up,
your neck is tight. There's a lot of muscles involved.
And the reason why is because you're taking in a
bunch of air and then you're expelling a bunch of
(09:41):
air with a lot of force to get that thing
that won't leave out of your nose.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, like you can. And I've seen professional athletes that
have been sidelined from sneezing. If you've got a bat
back or something like, it can really hurt. Luckily, I
don't have back problems, but occasionally I have, and a
sneeze can really tweak it to where you're right. That's
when you know you're an old man's territory. You have
a sneeze and you're like, hold on, I can't get up.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, I'm gonna have to lay down this weekend.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
But your abdomen, your chest, your diaphragm, your vocal cords.
You know, you mentioned that you take that deep inhalation,
that's that like right before you go, and that builds
up a lot of pressure in your chest. And that
happens because your vocal cords just initially clamp shut.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Right, Yeah, So you're sucking in a bunch of holding it,
and so the pressure is building in your thorax and
then when you release it, your vocal cord openings open
up to allow the air out. But then also your
diaphragm is pushing that air out really violently, so that
(10:48):
it's going out your mouth and your nose. I saw
about one hundred miles an hour is the speed that
that can hit.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, easily around one hundred miles an hour. That is
crazy to think about. Yeah, your eyes close, But you know,
we can go ahead and dispel the old myth that
you can pop your eyes out if you keep your
eyes open during a sneeze.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Right, Yeah, not true. And apparently there are some people
who do keep their eyes open when they sneeze, and
they show quite clearly that your eyes don't pop out.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
That's just would be impossible. Plus they usually close anyway,
just automatically.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, it's a very small group of people who sneeze
with their eyes open. Most people just it's like involuntary.
It's part of the involuntary process of sneezing. I don't
know if we said that or not. Sneezing is an
involuntary reaction to an external stimuli in your nose.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, like you can't. I mean, you can try and
trigger a sneeze, and we'll talk about certain things that
can trigger sneeze, but huh, you definitely can't make yourself
sneeze like full stop.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, no, no, I mean, yeah, there's definitely things you
can do to make yourself sneeze, like you're saying, but
there are things you can do to keep yourself from sneezing.
Whether you want to or not is a different question,
because you know, sneezing can feel pretty good if you
don't throw your back out.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Well, we'll talk about my sneeze pattern later. I know
I've talked about it before, but okay, I find it fascinating.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
You you accidentally tap out, drink your ovaltine and morse
code through your sneezes. Is that your thing?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Very nice?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Thanks?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Should we take a break.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Let's take a break, Chuck, and then we'll come back
and talk more about sneezing.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Josh and Chuck shot, well, now we're on the road,
driving in your Chuck, I want to learn a thing
or two from Josh.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Chuck.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
It's stuff you should know, all right.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Hey man, before we get back into it too far,
I realized I didn't give a shout out to the
guy who gave me the idea for this episode. Doctor
Sneeze a lot, Yeah, Doctor Todd g sneeze a lot.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
No.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
One of my neighbor friends, Wesley, was like, hey man,
he actually listens and he's like, hey man, have you
guys ever done one on sneezing? And I'm like, sure,
of course we have. He's like, oh, because if you haven't,
you know, you really should. That's a great one. And
I went back and looked into my astoundment. We had
never done one on sneezing, Like never. I just can't
believe that that wasn't like one of the first ten.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
You know, Yeah, that seems like it would be an
early stuff you should.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Know for sure, And like it kind of feels like
one of those right now as we're doing it.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
But you know, my neighbors think I'm unemployed. It's great.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, but hats off to Wes for coming up with
that one.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Thanks Wes. Yeah, I leave Josh alone.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
He's he's the one that we got the the love
your Mama dot com stuff for and he's like, oh,
halfway done with our room spray. We need some more
because we're using it so far fast.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
And you're you're the pusherman.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah. I was like, first one's on me, the next
are gonna cost you.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah. I don't correct my neighbors. They think I'm down
on my luck. So that's all good. Yeah, opinion.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
No, that's definitely the way to go. He's very nosy.
So he he found out I had to finally just
stop lying.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Oh that's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
So we're back to sneezing. We're talking sneezing, and one
of the things we mentioned was the sneezing center, which
is this, up until not too many years ago, a
theoretical part of the brain that causes us to sneeze,
that coordinates this involuntary response because you're not like your
brain's not consciously saying like okay, now, diaphragm expel the air.
(14:45):
I guess is all like we said, involuntary.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
That every time you wanted to sneeze right expel air.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So it makes sense that there would be a region
that was responsible for this. And because we've already we'd
already seen it, don't ask how we know where it
isn't cats, but in cats it's in the medulla, and
so it was hypothesized that it was in the lateral
medulla in humans too. And finally, I think around two
thousand and five, there's basically incontrovertible evidence that came in
(15:17):
the form of this fisherman I believe he might have
been Spanish who had this sneezing fit one day of
like about twenty really violent sneezes in a few minutes,
and then all of a sudden he stopped sneezing and
couldn't walk right, like his gait was affected, almost like
he'd had a stroke. And apparently either he caused alesion
(15:39):
on his lateral medulla from the sneezing, or that violent
sneezing was like an initial symptom of alesion, kind of
like here's your last sneeze as ever, and he went
to the doctor and they started testing them, and they
would do things like put capsaicin in his nose, like
red hot chili pepper in his nose, which makes everybody sneeze.
It's like a universal stern toutry right, makes everyone sneeze,
(16:06):
And it wouldn't make this guy sneeze. It would burn
his nose and it would make his nose running, but
it wouldn't make him sneeze. On the other side, it
would make him sneeze the other nostril, but not the
right I think. And so they found this lesion on
his lateral medulla and they said, sneezing center. Welcome to
our understanding.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
That's such a bad red hut chili Pepper's joke that
I just sat on through the whole spiel.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
That's a very grown up of you.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Should I say it?
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Sure? Whoever said we were grown ups?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
I was just thinking the doctor would do the capsation
and ask him how he feels, and he'd say, well,
I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I don't have
a partner. That's pretty good, yeah, you know, it's better
than fight like a brave. I don't know. I'm trying
to think of chili pepper songs.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
What if the doctor came in wearing nothing but one
of those reflector headbands and a sock on his Penis
that coming? That was it?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Oh, that'd be great that you know, you got the
right doctor.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, you do the party dog.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
So things that can make you sneeze, I know you
kind of rattle off some jokes about perfume and smoke earlier. Oh,
I wasn't joking, but those are all realities. The most
common cause of a sneeze is and that the collective
term is rhinitis r HI and I T I S.
(17:29):
And that is just your sort of standard inflammation and
swelling of your mucous membrane when you got allergies, when
pollen's in the air, when you have a cold. But
there are all kinds of other things that can cause
a sneeze too, that are all different types of rhinitis.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, speaking of rhinitis too, I ran across a term. This.
The clinical term for a running nose is rhyino rhea.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Gross.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, isn't that crody Like? That makes it at least
twelve or fifteen times worse than running nose?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
You know, yeah, weird.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah. So there's occupational rhinitis, which is basically when stuff
you're working around makes you sneeze or irritate your nose,
things like cleaning supplies or you know, flower I saw
was a pretty common occupational rhinitis sternatatory or sternatative, depending
(18:22):
on your preference. Cigarette smoke, if you're working a place
where they let you smoke, like maybe a cigarette factory,
although I heard that they don't allow smoking inside some
cigarette factories now in like North Carolina. Isn't that just
the end all be all?
Speaker 3 (18:39):
You think they would allow you to do that while
you're working?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
They used to up until very recently. Really, Oh yeah,
I have the impression you could just puck one off
the line and light it up.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Wow. I guess if you're a smoker, that's a big perk.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
It is. But then now they're like, no smoking inside,
which leads you to the follow up question why why
would why can we make because it kills you? And
they go, what very dangerous, dummy.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Uh, let me see. You've also got the hormonal rhinitis,
which is women might experience that when they have high
estrogen levels. Maybe if you're pregnant, or you're on the pill,
or you're going through puberty, you might have some sort
of run on sneezing episodes.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Sure, there's a drug induced drnitis. There's certain drugs that
are been identified. What'd you say the hippis kind right, Yeah,
mushrooms will make you sneeze. Apparently I'm guessing that I
didn't see this anywhere, but this is an educated guest.
Tell me if you think it sounds convincing, those drugs
(19:42):
probably stimulate your mass cells to release histamines, and then
that's just basically almost like a phantom allergen. Okay, that's
what I'm going with, all right, But apparently end said's
beta blockers and some anti hypertensive drugs are the ones
that are known drug inducedrinis sternatories.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
If you are of advanced age, you might have what's
called jerryatic rhinitis, which is that's when those sub mucosal
glands atrophy, and that means your nose can get really
irritated and you might sneeze a lot. Right.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
That is very sad to me if you think about it,
because there's not much that can be done. I'm sure
you just put like maybe basoline or something in your nose.
That's got to be the cure for that. But let's
just say it. Because it's like your little body's you know,
running down. We should have a cure for that. Yeah,
Like our medicine is not far enough along in my
(20:47):
opinion for this to be twenty twenty. It's kind of
a disappointing twenty twenty everybody, am I right?
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
So we've talked before, Chuck multiple times about photic sneezing,
which I am a photic sneezer, and I don't remember
if you are or not.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
I feel like I have, but I don't. It's not
like roundly something that happens to me. I don't think.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
So, Okay, I am a photic sneezer more than I'm
a native born Toledo win even maybe they're tied.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So how does it get you? Like, any time you
like turn on a light.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Very rarely light, it's almost always sunlight, and I think
it's just because the intensity of it. But yeah, like
if I walk out, say, like if I go see
a movie in the middle of the day because it's
a slacker and I come out in that nice and
I come out and it's very sunny, sure it is
guaranteed three sneezes in a row?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Is that every usual pattern?
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah? Usually and I looked into that, like why do
we sneeze multiple times? Apparently there's a very simple answer
for it, and that's that your your brain has determined
that the irritant hasn't been ejected yet. But with photo sneezing,
it's it's almost like it's a mistaken identity, right.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah. I actually did see some other things too about
the patterns, because that's always fascinated me because I always
sneeze in threes. Oh yeah, okay, And I did see
where some places said that just once isn't enough, so
it's like a setup a get it to the front
of your nose and then get out. But I also
saw where it could be genetic. Yeah, like that you
(22:23):
inherit a sneeze pattern. Oh really, and that like double
sneezers beget to double sneezers.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It makes sense because there are like photic sneezing is
one of a couple ways that you can inherit a
genetic sneezing trait, So that would make sense.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yeah, that's right, photo, I'm sorry, photic sneeze reflexes passed
on by autosomal dominant inheritance. And and I love this,
this acronym because this is one of those reverse engineered
ones that we like so much.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Do you like this one?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I like this one. I hated the other one.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, man with a passion.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I wouldn't even I wasn't eve gonna bring that one
up to be.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Okay, we'll just pass it by and let everybody wonder
for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
But autosomal dominant compelling helio ophthalmic outburst syndrome A CHU,
it's a little rough.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
It is. I mean, there's a whole d, a whole
dominant in there that's missing. But okay, fine, we'll go
with that. But that's the that is a term for
photic sneezing that was coined at some point by someone.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
That's your biggest pet peeve, right for acronyms is when
they just sneak a word in there and don't use
it for a letter.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, it's lazy, although I mean I get where they
were coming from. You don't want to be ad chew.
It's like why even why even do it? But but
you gotta figure it out, you know, I mean, just
take dominant out, just go with autosomal, you.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Know, Yeah, no, wouldn't who would know?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
I wouldn't have noticed. So you were saying, was that
it for the patterns sneezing patterns.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah, I mean they're just a couple of theories, either
hereditary or that it just takes that much. But I'm
not sure. I just don't know if I buy that
for myself, because it's always threes and it's not like
I have a weak sneeze, so it takes three. I
don't know. It feels ingrained somehow.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, like if you only do two, you notice, and
it does it feel incomplete.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
It does, but that almost never happens. Occasionally I'll do
a forebanger, but I don't know that I ever sneeze
once or twice. It's almost always three.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, And speaking of incomplete, if you actually go, if
you experience the afferent phase, but the efferent phase isn't triggered,
but it's enough to drive you nuts, there's things you
can do. And one of those things that's recommended is
to look at a bright light or look kind of
don't look directly at the sun, but look toward the sun,
(24:56):
and that should help jumpstart that efferent phase. The second
part where the actual sneeze takes place.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Oh okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
But they think what's going on is that there's a
crossover between the sneeze reflex arc and the pupillary light
reflex arc, which basically is one nerve becoming so stimulated
that it stimulates by proxy. Yeah, the other nerve, the
(25:25):
sneeze nerve. So you're getting so overloaded with bright light
when you see that sunlight that it accidentally jumps on
over to your sneeze reflex as well and makes you sneeze.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
It's like, are you getting all this light?
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Are you getting get a load of this?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
And I think they've landed on about between twenty three
and generally of people have this photic sneeze reflex.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Right, So that's I mean, that's pretty substantial. There are
some other small identity groups of sneezers that are far
smaller than that. Apparently there are people who there's four families,
not one in four people, four families, as far as
anyone knows, who have something called natiation, which is where
(26:13):
you if they eat too much and they feel overly full,
it will trigger a sneezing attack.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, I would call that rare.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, four families for sure, and we're just going to
pass right on by right chuck.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Yes, okay, that acronym getting back to the photic sneezing though,
they think it also could be a holdover and an
evolutionary advantage from when we were little babies. Because little
babies don't have they can't blow their nose. They don't
know what that even is. So the only they can't
pick their nose, they can't they can't use any implement
(26:50):
at all to clear out their nose except the sneeze.
They rely on the sneeze to get that mucus out,
or of course parents who will suck that stuff out
through a little device yeah, which is no fun but necessary.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Or you hold them on their side and you blow
in their ear. It usually clears out thanenos. But I
should probably just go ahead and say, yeah, don't do that.
That was a joke.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
You can whisper sweet nothings, sure, but don't Yeah, don't
do that. But babies are pretty sensitive to that photoic
light reflex, and they think that may be a reason
that basically we that's just sort of a holdover from
when we were babies.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
It makes sense. It also makes sense to me that
babies might have more active or kind of raw or
nerve pathways, So maybe they're just more sensitive to that
jump over that crossover. Maybe plucking nose hair has that
ever happened to you every time? So it doesn't make
me sneeze, but it makes my eyes water like I've
(27:51):
just seen every long distance commercial from the nineties all
at once.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Yeah, And it's interesting because those you talked earlier about
the trigeminal nerves that are all through the face. I
think it's just all related. Like you pluck, you could
pluck an eyebrow and it could make you sneeze and
your eyes are watering, and that's part of your face. Like,
it's just all sort of one big nerve bundle that's
all interrelated, and it could any of those could trigger
(28:19):
either watering of eyes or or definitely sneezing. Even if
you'd like pluck a hair out of your head, that
could do it.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
That's never happened to me. But my nose hair and
my eyebrow hair, oh man, my eyes will start watering.
It's not a pleasant experience, for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
I've never plucked an eyebrow hair.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Oh, every once in a while I'll get one that's
a big, fat, long goat hair. It just suddenly comes
up overnight.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
No, I've seen I've got those two.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Okay, well I pluck those.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I just trim those.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
You know, it's maybe I should trim them. That's a
good idea. But have you ever noticed if you get
one and there's almost invariably one on the other, like
they come up in pairs. Does that happen to you?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
I have not noticed that. When you pull on one,
does the other one get shorter? That was wonderful, that'd
be great.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, it's like pulling that spaghetti through your nose and
out of your mouth.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Don't do that either, Can you do that? No, I've
never tried to do so.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I've never tried either. I don't want to. There's also
a group of people who sneeze when they become sexually aroused.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah, that's a thing apparently, or if you orgasm, like
after you orgasm, it could trigger a sneezing fit.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, it's apparently a bigger group than you would expect.
Some researcher went around to internet chat rooms and said, hey,
does anybody sneeze when they become aroused or when they
have an orgasm? And she found seventeen people who sneeze
from sexual ideation. And three, who sneeze from orgasm? Which
is that is way more than I would expect from
(29:54):
just going around on internet chatrooms and asking people, you know.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Yeah, and also we should point out way not scientific.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
No, not at all, but yeah, anecdotally, it's still impressive.
But I read an explanation for this. It's a terrible explanation,
but it's an explanation by the Journal of the Association
of Physicians of India. It's an Indian journal. Coincidentally enough.
They suggest that it's because the nose contains a rectile tissue,
(30:25):
which it does, which a rectile tissue is just tissue
that can become larger and gorged by blood flow. And yes,
you have a rectile tissue in your genitalia, Yes you
have it in your nose, but they're not in any
way related as far as anyone's ever even thought, aside
from the people in this journal. And that the most
(30:46):
bizarre thing you've ever heard.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It's pretty bizarre.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Like your nose is becoming aroused, is basically what they're saying.
And so you sneeze, Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
There's also intractable sneezing or psychogen and that is something
that's almost exclusive to young women, girls, adolescents basically going
through puberty. And these are girls who may not suffer
from allergies, They are not sick with a cold or anything,
but can go on these big sneezing binges for days
(31:17):
and days at a time.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Yes, and apparently the world, the world, oh my goodness.
The world record holder is a girl named Donna Griffiths,
who was twelve when she started. She started in nineteen
eighty one January of nineteen eighty one, and her sneezing
fit ended nine hundred and seventy seven days later in
September of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
I remember hearing about this one.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And as it I mean as it went on, I
was way too young for this. But you know, had
had I been more aware, I would have felt very
bad for this girl, because as it went on she
could if she sneezed once in a day, it was
considered part of the record. And I think that that
was kind of how it was towards the end. But
that first year sounds like a bear yeah, no good.
(32:05):
A million sneezes in the first three hundred and sixty
five days, which is basically a sneeze a minute on average,
and Chuck ann it's impossible to sneeze in your sleep.
You cannot sneeze in your sleep. If you sneeze while
you're sleeping, you wake up to sneeze. Your brain just
isn't functioning correctly to sneeze while you're sleeping. So that
(32:25):
means this girl was averaging a sneeze a minute just
during waking hours, but sneeze a minute over twenty four
hours compressed into say ten or twelve hours that she
was awake that day.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Or would she wake herself up sneezing.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
I don't know. If that's the case, then she had
a really, really rough year because she was sneezing every
minute and not getting any sleep.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yeah, I mean, it's disruptive no matter what, no one.
I mean, you can't hold on a job if you're
sneezing every minute.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Well, luckily she was twelve, and this is after child
labor laws were passed. I'm hoping she did out of
cigarette factory, right, she has nimble little fingers for sorting cigarette.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Perfect. Should we take another break?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
All right, we'll talk about these the travel and droplets
right after this great band.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Josh and shot shot.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
I want to learn a thing or two from Josh
camp Chuck.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
It's stuff you should know, all right, all right, so
this is pretty relevant now. And I know and I
think this was put together before. I feel like we've
been sitting on this one. Was this before coronavirus? No?
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I think it was daring?
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Was it during? Okay?
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, and this is a Dave helped us out. Dave's
helped us out with this one.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yeah. So uh and I think we've all seen these
videos by now with everything that's going on. But in
two twenty sixteen, and a researcher from MIT named Lydia,
Oh boy, goodness me Barubia, Sure, Bariba.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
I'm going with Rubaba. There's a couple of the oh
sounds in there that follow one another. It makes it
very difficult.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, whenever you pack three vowels in a row, it's
always sort of a dealer's choice. So she published some
slow mo two thousand frame per second film images of
people sneezing and what that look like. That's where we
get and other people have done this too, and measured
the sneeze but that's one place where we get the one
(34:46):
hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Stat oh from that study.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, and other places. I mean, that's pretty common knowledge now.
But up to twenty five thirty feet you can blow
a sneeze. It can stay suspended in the air for
a few minutes. And they likened it too if you
would take a bucket of paint and just throw the
paint out out of the can into the airy sort
of as how a sneeze works. It's just they call
(35:11):
it sheets of fluids, and you know, you got these big,
big hunks of mucus and saliva that just sort of
come out together and then break apart little by little
until you get to the fine mist that sort of
can hang in the air.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah, it starts as a clump and then turns into
ropey filaments and then into increasingly smaller particles, and those
really small particles that aerosolize stuff.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
That's the scary stuff.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
I saw a Bristol study that said, and this wasn't
necessarily coronavirus, but that contagious germs can stay in the air,
suspended in the air for weeks. Possibly that would have
to be a very hearty contagious virus or bacteria.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah, with like an air flow, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
To just sit there. But the twenty seven feet which
is kind of common knowledge these days, in the air
of coronavirus, your sneeze can project those particles up to
like twenty seven feet. There's little pockets of gas and
turbulence that are in a room, even a room that
seems still but certainly one that has like the ac
(36:14):
on or air flowing through it, and those little particles
can hitch rides on those pockets and travel I saw
two hundred times further than you expel them with just
your sneeze. Yeah, so you know what prevents that, covering
yourself your mouth and your nose when you sneeze, and
or wearing a mask.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Yeah, I mean they teach I mean, this has nothing
to do with coronavirus, but it's especially important. But they
teach little kids from the moment they can even understand
things in preschool to always sneeze into your elbow and
cough into your elbow because that's something that kids can
you know, you can't always get to a tissue, right,
which is what they say is sort of the best
(36:56):
thing to do. But that elbow is pretty good, good system.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
I think it's really cute to see a little kid
do that too.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Yeah, because they're doing the right thing. It's it's uh,
it is adorable, I agree.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, but yeah. The the ideal is to to sneeze
into a tissue, throw your tissue away, and wash your
hands thoroughly. That's what you're supposed to do after you
sneeze every time, every single time.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Every single time. And I don't sneeze a lot. Emily
sneezes a lot. Oh yeah, yeah, because she's got the allergies.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Oh yeah, so she's.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Got a lifelong, persistent tickle in her nose. It's terrible.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Does she have what's it called that kind of sneezing
where it's a psychogenic, intractable sneezing.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Well, no, because she's not. She's not thirteen.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Man.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
No, it's just allergy related. But lots of sneezing. Uh.
When it's when it's really bad, it's it's it's pretty
tough to be around, not to not tough for me,
but you.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Know, right right, yeah, it's really stop. So I did
look up to find out where we stood as far
as knowledge on sneezing and contagion outdoors goes and from
what I can tell, there was some study that was
done by some engineers that sprayed an aerosol can running
(38:17):
walking and then on a bike, and the results showed
that this stuff spreads really far and wide, but they
didn't take into account a lot of different things, a
lot of different factors, so that if you are outdoors,
as long as somebody doesn't sneeze at you basically in
your face or in your direction within you know, twenty
or thirty feet directly towards you, you're probably not going
(38:41):
to catch enough of a viral load of something like
coronavirus to become sick from it, especially if you're not
in a crowded group. If you're just walking outside and
somebody else is walking, you know, fifteen feet ahead of
you and they're just breathing, and they're on the other
side of the street, you're probably going to be fine,
just because that's stuff. It's gonna dissipate so much because
(39:02):
of all the factors, the environmental factors that exist outdoors
rather as opposed to indoors. Indoors is a totally different ballgame. Outdoors,
you're much safer.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Yeah, I mean I haven't. I haven't been around a
human that sneezed aside from my wife in you know,
four or five months. Great, like I would, even when
I've gone to the store and like I'm on the
lookout for that stuff. Oh yeah, and like I think
we all are. But I haven't even been in a store,
like on an aisle where someone's like sneezed, because I
would and probably unreasonably, you know, freak out a little bit.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Sure, I think you're allowed to yell at that.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Person, but I haven't even seen anyone been around anyone
that sneezed. Yeah, so that's been a comfort.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah. You me went to the store and came back
and said, somebody sneezed twice, and the whole store just
started looking around like where they come from.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Oh yeah, it's weird. Huh.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah. Yeah, there's basically like a stampede or something to
get away from that thing. It's it's a weird, weird
time to be alive. We're all going to be very
very weird even after things go back to normal. I think, yeah,
you know.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
It's gonna I know I will be.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
So should we talk a little bit about culture and
you know, sort of what people say all around the world.
I know here in America it's sort of customed to
say God bless you or bless you and that. You know,
there's some different explanations, but one of them that seems
to hold water I think dates back to the Middle
Ages with the Black Plague, when Pope Gregory seven basically said, hey, everyone,
(40:35):
you know things are pretty bad. We should just we
should say God bless you if someone is sneezing because
they might be dying.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, which is a from what I saw, a big
departure from earlier Christian teachings, which taught people to just
totally ignore sneezes or say God is dead, which I write,
which I find very weird, like why would you teach
people to ignore sneeze I didn't get that. But I
found this really awesome article called Romance and Tragedy of
(41:05):
Sneezing by doctor Wilson D. Wallace in Scientific Monthly from
nineteen nineteen, and he cited that that earlier Christians were
like just ignored, just pretend it didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Yeah, I'm a I'm a bless you guy. I don't
do the gazoon tite or salute which is Spanish to
your health, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, it's also a toast.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Yeah I say that. I don't say that ever. Really.
Sometimes I'll say it when I toast, but it's been
I don't know. I don't remember what I do to
it with anyone anymore. You know, I forgot to deal
with people.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I always will raise my glass and say it's time
to get toe up from the flow up.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I say, made Jupiter bless you.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Right. I saw another one from the Greeks. Two. I
love that one. Live zeus, preserve you.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
I think you and I should bring back both of those. Okay,
that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Can't you imagine everyone in Greece just like being like,
don't sneeze, don't sneeze. Just everyone's all twitchy and shaky
from people yelling that at them.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah. I mean it's weird too because it's a it's
a very kind thing to do to a stranger. It's uh,
this one, I guess Dave just says an academic. But
they called it a micro affection, which is nice. You know.
It's just a little quick, nice thing to say to
a stranger. If and I'll always do it. We've we've
done it during our live shows. When someone sneezes, it's
(42:30):
and not to be funny, it gets a laugh, but
it's just sort of a it's almost like an involuntary
micro affection, I think for most you know, non monsters
for sure.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, where people just kind of have a brief connection,
right yeah, and unless you know, they don't know each other.
But now it's like human being. You're a human being.
What is it now?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Well, just bless you and get pleased, get very far
away from me again.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Bless you over there. So there's also a very common
understanding that people thought that a demon was trying to
get in or your soul was trying to get out.
And I kept seeing like other cultures or old ancient
cultures that kind of thing. The closest one I could
find that seemed like that was in Persia. Zoro Asters
(43:14):
believed that your body was fighting off a fiend that
had invaded, like an invading demon or spirit, and that
a sneeze was basically your body signaling that it had
been victorious in fighting this fiend and getting this fiend out,
and that deserved a prayer, and that if you overheard
somebody sneeze, you would say the same prayer with them.
(43:34):
I couldn't find what prayer though.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah, it seems to be a good luck thing, and
a lot of cultures throughout the years, according to the Talmud,
it's a good omen if you sneeze when you're praying.
In China and Japan, if you sneeze, it means someone's
sort of like your ears are burning, someone's talking about you. Yeah,
and one sneeze means they're saying nice things. Two means
their spreading gossip. I don't know what they would think
(43:59):
about me with my three. Three means you die?
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Right? What would three mean?
Speaker 3 (44:06):
I don't know. I mean, because there's only two ways
people can talk about you.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Right exactly. They might be saying something like Chuck has
a beard. Okay, you know, it's as neutral as it gets, exactly.
So there's there's folklore, and then there's what we think
as true, which is a kind of folklore, but it's
actually it's just folklore too. Urban legends is what we
(44:30):
call them. R old wives tales. And we talked about
one where that your your eyes will pop out of
your head if you sneeze with your eyes open. We
debunk that one pretty clearly. I think, don't.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
You can't do it.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
And then there's some other ones too. There's one that
you me told me about that I had no idea
until she said this. But apparently some people believe that
you basically die for a second while you're sneezing, like
your body just shuts down, including your heart, and that
you're technically dead for that half second while the sneeze
is going on.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
I've heard stops it.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
I had never heard that before until a couple days ago,
and yeah, I looked it up and it's a thing.
But no, it's that's not at all true. Like your
heart rhythm might actually change and the volume of blood
and your heart might decrease or increase because of the
pressure of the air in your chest or the release
of pressure, but the electrical activity remains the same, and
(45:25):
that's the key to whether your heart's you know, alive
or not.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Yeah, yeah, your heart does not stop. No, that's like playground.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Stuff, it is. I thought it was very cute. Yeah,
what about sneezing after sex preventing pregnancy? Did you see
this one?
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Well, I mean, what are you sneezing out of?
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Right? So I mean that like that's the idea that
if you sneeze, you're expelling well there's really no other
way to put its seeman, and that that would keep
you from getting pregnant. Wow, it seems a little rediict. Yeah,
that's another playground thing, I guess. So what playground have
you been hanging out to me?
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Pretty advanced playground activity.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
You got anything else? Oh, I've got one more thing, chuck,
you got anything else?
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I got nothing else.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
In twenty sixteen or eighteen, a man in Lester in
the UK ruptured his throat from trying to stifle a sneeze.
The pressure was so great it broke open his throat.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah, internally he didn't break through the skin, but his
intern his throat internally was rupturing.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Because that's what I pictured right, like a throat explosion.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
It just blew his head completely off, like that guy
in Scanners. Well, I guess that's it for sneezing everybody.
I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks again to Wes for
the idea. And since I said that, it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
We call this Atlanta, Texas. Hey, guys, name's Ben Lee,
local Atlanta, Georgia, and my wife and are a huge
longtime fans. In your recent episode on Pirate Radio, y'all
briefly brought up Radio Atlanta, which was named after Atlanta, Texas,
and you joke that no one knew that town exists,
even the people that live there. And that's pretty much true.
(47:07):
My family is originally from Atlanta, Texas. It's pretty small,
just about five thousand residents, so it's totally understandable. I
was born in Texasarcana, Texas, not too far from there,
which is basically famous for being in the Smoking in
the Bandit movie.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
I thought that was the town that dreaded sundown too,
wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
I don't know about that. I definitely remember from Smoking
the Bandit, okay, because they were driving that beer from
Texarcana to Atlanta. Oh and Benjamin here says, I don't
know why they didn't do Atlanta to Atlanta. Wasted opportunity,
it really is.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
It sounds like Benjamin moved from Atlanta to Atlanta, though,
huh maybe kind of.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
I mean he's in Atlanta, right. He teaches at Georgia State.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
That's pretty awesome. Hey, hats off to you for teaching
these days, Benjamin.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yeah, he says, there's a lot of towns in Texas
though name that are also Georgian names. There's in Athens, Texas,
at Douglasville, a Columbus, Dallas, Georgia, and Texas. And he
said there's even a Georgia, Texas.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Well, that's just confusing.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
And he said, thanks for all the great stuff, and
that is from Benjamin boden Lee.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Thanks a lot, Benjamin boden Lee. That was a great email.
We appreciate it. Any email references Smoking the Bandit, we're
all right with yep. Well, if you want to email
us about Smoking the Bandit or anything else we'd love
to hear from you, you can send it to Stuff
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of Iheartradios. How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Spring is so many wonderful things, trees, budding, flowers, blooming,
getting to wear straw hats. But for a lot of
people it also means a miserable season of allergies, and
sneezing is the poster child for allergies. Let's just admit it.
So we chose our episode on sneezing so we can
at least help you understand what the heck is going
(00:25):
on with your face. Even if we can't cure you,
we wish we could so seal all the doors in
the windows and kick back with this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of Iheartradios
How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryan over there. Jerry is a disembodied spirit,
but she's still with us, haunting us. And we are
now set up for achievement, which means this is stuff you.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Should know, set up for achievement. That sounds like very
eighties Reagan era campaign.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
It does, It definitely does. Certainly not the kind of
thing that would irritate you, whether it be in your
nose or your brain or anywhere.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Not the best segue, huh, I'm surprised you didn't try
and work sternutation in there. Somehow.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I love that word. Were you familiar with that word before?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I don't think you know, I'm forty nine years old.
I don't think i'd ever heard sneezing being called sternutation.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I got oh, man, I just remembered. I'm forty four now,
So you got me beat. But I'm in the same
boat with you.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, I never heard that, But that is what if
you're a scientist. Well, if you're a scientist and you
want to be a real stuff, you probably say sternutation.
If you're a scientist that wants to be friends with people,
you'll still probably say sneezing.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And I mean, it sounds super clinical, but it's actually
really old. It's from I think the first appearance of
it is in a text from fifteen seventy six.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
It sounds old to me.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
It sounds clinical, but there's also a couple derivative words.
Sternutative or stern utatory are things that make you sneeze,
and Howard stern bubba buoe right chewy. So we're talking
sneezing obviously, because we just discoursed on stern neuitation imagining
(02:30):
an extra syllable there are and I stern mutation.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
That's the Josh Clark way.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Why do I have to complicate? Why do I have
to complimicate things?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
We're talking about sneezing, and sneezing is a really sort
of and I hate it when people call things like
this elegant, so I'm going to refrain. But it's just
a very efficient system that the human body has worked
out to basically allow your your nose and we'll get
(03:02):
into all the ins and outs of how it all happens,
but to allow your nose and your nasal passage and
your brain to act as bouncers and just say, get
out of my body. Fast.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Cut off pal like real fast, you're cut off cigarette smoke,
You're cut off Chanel number seven that nobody likes, you know. Sure,
that's uh yeah, that's a pretty pretty good way to
put it. I mean, and it's an ancient, ancient reflex too.
I mean, basically, all mammals at least sneeze some more
(03:33):
than others. I didn't realize this, but apparently iguanas sneeze
the most because it's part of their digestion.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, and then I don't know what it's technically called,
but you know when dogs do what it's called the
reverse sneeze.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, Momo has that bad.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
It's so scary.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It is, it is. And we finally got her checked
out and they verified she doesn't have a collapse trachia,
which is when it really is threatening. It's just something
to do with her nasal passages. Yeah, she's bracky as cephalic.
You ever had a dog that that has that.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I mean, I've I've never had a dog that didn't
do it occasionally, but Nico, I feel like goes and
it's not often, but it's it's like a you know,
it's like can be prolonged like for like a minute,
and it just seems like are you about to die?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, it's terrible, it's really bad.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I think you're just supposed to leave them alone too, right,
just let him do it.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
No, we help her out. We'll we'll rub her throat,
just kind of stroke it. It seems to help, uh,
And then sometimes we'll just lightly plug her nostrils to
kind of give her like a hitch to it, and
that that frequently cures it too sometimes though. Yeah, she
just has to work it out. But she gets it
every time she gets excited, and she gets excited a lot,
(04:47):
so it's sad for her.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Yeah, but it's really not a sneeze actually, because a
sneeze is when you were you're trying to get something
out of your nose, and that nose is is a
pretty amazing little system. It's it's an amazing filtration system.
How it's designed with those narrow nasal passages. It's not
like we have these big face holes like that. They're
(05:10):
narrow for a very good reason, and that is to
create turbulence inside your nasal passages. And you know that
turbulence shoves all that air that you're inhaling to the
sides of your nasal passages. Yeah, the nasal mucosa and
that's got tiny little hairs called cilia, and the cilia
(05:31):
mainly is sort of like a pre door man just
saying like, yeah, your ID is good, Why don't we
just move you to the back of the throat and
we'll flush you out that way. But if it's too much,
that's when you need to call in the big bouncer
to initiate that sneeze response.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah, sometimes it's just like no, I'm staying here, I'm
not leaving. You can't kick me out. They hate the
back of the throat super drunk, right, yeah, yeah, so
I didn't realize that, but it makes sense that we
swallow a lot of the particles that we inhale through
our nose, which is great but effective or tough it up,
we poop it out eventually, right yeah. But yeah, if
they get if they get stuck in the nose, then
(06:08):
they do something magical, almost as magical as soap. But
when it's when they're sticking to the sides and they're
they're not going anywhere, it's clear they're not going anywhere.
They actually like irritate some specialized cells that are in
that nasal mucosa mass cells and uh ireena fills I think,
(06:29):
But basically they're they're there to look out for little
particles that decide they don't want to leave, and when
those things get irritated, they release histamines which trigger this
reaction like an allergic reaction, basically where your nose is runny,
and they also simultaneously start sending signals to your brain saying, hey,
we we got one. We need some help.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, And I know we talked about this a little
bit with I know the pollen episode and I feel
like we did another allergy centric one I can't remember,
but the whole thing takes about a second for the
single sneeze, and you know it's going to send that message,
like you said, that chemical message to the sneeze center
(07:11):
of the brain, which is in the lateral medulla. Yeah,
and you know, the lateral medulla gets like everything in
the brain, it gets that signal and says, you know,
all I gotta do is react fast whenever the body
tells me to do something, and in this case, it's
to jet out whatever is in the nose as fast
as possible.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Right, So, and I was looking this up if you
want to get super clinical, if you're the kind of
person who uses words like ster mutation instead of sneezing,
there's actually something called an afferent phase and an efferent phase.
And an afferent phase is when you get ready to sneeze,
like your your nerves have been tickled and are triggered
and are itching and they're sending messages to your brain
(07:55):
in your sneeze center. And then that the efferent phase
is when your sneeze goes okay, it's go time, and
that's actually pretty interesting stuff. And the way that that
happens is, basically, from what I can tell, through a
system of nerves olfactory nerve, ethmoidal nerve, which is a
terrible word, and then your trigeminal nerve, which is basically
(08:17):
responsible for most of the sensation in your face and
your ability to bite and chew. And when these nerves
spring into action, they hit that message or the sneezing
center in your brain, and your sneezing center sends it
back over these this kind of same switchboard of nerves
in your face and all this is happening and just
you know, a very short amount of time.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, I mean, like I said, the whole thing takes
place in less than a second. And it's got to
reach you know, in order for it to reach that
sneeze center, it's got to be past a certain threshold
of irritation, basically, right. And once it does reach that
irt irritable point, of which there's no going back. He's
had too much to drink. Everybody in the bar knows it.
(09:00):
That's when it finally sends that impulse down through the
head and neck to initiate that response that involves a
lot of muscle groups. You know, when you sneeze, it's
a and especially with some people, it can be a
pretty violent action for the body.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, Like if you stop and take stock of what
you're doing right, then you might find that you're hunched over.
One of your legs is in the air, like, your
knees kind of pulled up, your face is all scrunched up,
your neck is tight. There's a lot of muscles involved.
And the reason why is because you're taking in a
bunch of air and then you're expelling a bunch of
(09:41):
air with a lot of force to get that thing
that won't leave out of your nose.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, like you can. And I've seen professional athletes that
have been sidelined from sneezing. If you've got a bat
back or something like, it can really hurt. Luckily, I
don't have back problems, but occasionally I have, and a
sneeze can really tweak it to where you're right. That's
when you know you're an old man's territory. You have
a sneeze and you're like, hold on, I can't get up.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, I'm gonna have to lay down this weekend.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
But your abdomen, your chest, your diaphragm, your vocal cords.
You know, you mentioned that you take that deep inhalation,
that's that like right before you go, and that builds
up a lot of pressure in your chest. And that
happens because your vocal cords just initially clamp shut.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Right, Yeah, So you're sucking in a bunch of holding it,
and so the pressure is building in your thorax and
then when you release it, your vocal cord openings open
up to allow the air out. But then also your
diaphragm is pushing that air out really violently, so that
(10:48):
it's going out your mouth and your nose. I saw
about one hundred miles an hour is the speed that
that can hit.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, easily around one hundred miles an hour. That is
crazy to think about. Yeah, your eyes close, But you know,
we can go ahead and dispel the old myth that
you can pop your eyes out if you keep your
eyes open during a sneeze.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Right, Yeah, not true. And apparently there are some people
who do keep their eyes open when they sneeze, and
they show quite clearly that your eyes don't pop out.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
That's just would be impossible. Plus they usually close anyway,
just automatically.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, it's a very small group of people who sneeze
with their eyes open. Most people just it's like involuntary.
It's part of the involuntary process of sneezing. I don't
know if we said that or not. Sneezing is an
involuntary reaction to an external stimuli in your nose.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, like you can't. I mean, you can try and
trigger a sneeze, and we'll talk about certain things that
can trigger sneeze, but huh, you definitely can't make yourself
sneeze like full stop.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, no, no, I mean, yeah, there's definitely things you
can do to make yourself sneeze, like you're saying, but
there are things you can do to keep yourself from sneezing.
Whether you want to or not is a different question,
because you know, sneezing can feel pretty good if you
don't throw your back out.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Well, we'll talk about my sneeze pattern later. I know
I've talked about it before, but okay, I find it fascinating.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
You you accidentally tap out, drink your ovaltine and morse
code through your sneezes. Is that your thing?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Very nice?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Thanks?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Should we take a break.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Let's take a break, Chuck, and then we'll come back
and talk more about sneezing.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Josh and Chuck shot, well, now we're on the road,
driving in your Chuck, I want to learn a thing
or two from Josh.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Chuck.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
It's stuff you should know, all right.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Hey man, before we get back into it too far,
I realized I didn't give a shout out to the
guy who gave me the idea for this episode. Doctor
Sneeze a lot, Yeah, Doctor Todd g sneeze a lot.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
No.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
One of my neighbor friends, Wesley, was like, hey man,
he actually listens and he's like, hey man, have you
guys ever done one on sneezing? And I'm like, sure,
of course we have. He's like, oh, because if you haven't,
you know, you really should. That's a great one. And
I went back and looked into my astoundment. We had
never done one on sneezing, Like never. I just can't
believe that that wasn't like one of the first ten.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
You know, Yeah, that seems like it would be an
early stuff you should.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Know for sure, And like it kind of feels like
one of those right now as we're doing it.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
But you know, my neighbors think I'm unemployed. It's great.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, but hats off to Wes for coming up with
that one.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Thanks Wes. Yeah, I leave Josh alone.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
He's he's the one that we got the the love
your Mama dot com stuff for and he's like, oh,
halfway done with our room spray. We need some more
because we're using it so far fast.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
And you're you're the pusherman.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah. I was like, first one's on me, the next
are gonna cost you.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah. I don't correct my neighbors. They think I'm down
on my luck. So that's all good. Yeah, opinion.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
No, that's definitely the way to go. He's very nosy.
So he he found out I had to finally just
stop lying.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Oh that's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
So we're back to sneezing. We're talking sneezing, and one
of the things we mentioned was the sneezing center, which
is this, up until not too many years ago, a
theoretical part of the brain that causes us to sneeze,
that coordinates this involuntary response because you're not like your
brain's not consciously saying like okay, now, diaphragm expel the air.
(14:45):
I guess is all like we said, involuntary.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
That every time you wanted to sneeze right expel air.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So it makes sense that there would be a region
that was responsible for this. And because we've already we'd
already seen it, don't ask how we know where it
isn't cats, but in cats it's in the medulla, and
so it was hypothesized that it was in the lateral
medulla in humans too. And finally, I think around two
thousand and five, there's basically incontrovertible evidence that came in
(15:17):
the form of this fisherman I believe he might have
been Spanish who had this sneezing fit one day of
like about twenty really violent sneezes in a few minutes,
and then all of a sudden he stopped sneezing and
couldn't walk right, like his gait was affected, almost like
he'd had a stroke. And apparently either he caused alesion
(15:39):
on his lateral medulla from the sneezing, or that violent
sneezing was like an initial symptom of alesion, kind of
like here's your last sneeze as ever, and he went
to the doctor and they started testing them, and they
would do things like put capsaicin in his nose, like
red hot chili pepper in his nose, which makes everybody sneeze.
It's like a universal stern toutry right, makes everyone sneeze,
(16:06):
And it wouldn't make this guy sneeze. It would burn
his nose and it would make his nose running, but
it wouldn't make him sneeze. On the other side, it
would make him sneeze the other nostril, but not the
right I think. And so they found this lesion on
his lateral medulla and they said, sneezing center. Welcome to
our understanding.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
That's such a bad red hut chili Pepper's joke that
I just sat on through the whole spiel.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
That's a very grown up of you.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Should I say it?
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Sure? Whoever said we were grown ups?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
I was just thinking the doctor would do the capsation
and ask him how he feels, and he'd say, well,
I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I don't have
a partner. That's pretty good, yeah, you know, it's better
than fight like a brave. I don't know. I'm trying
to think of chili pepper songs.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
What if the doctor came in wearing nothing but one
of those reflector headbands and a sock on his Penis
that coming? That was it?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Oh, that'd be great that you know, you got the
right doctor.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, you do the party dog.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
So things that can make you sneeze, I know you
kind of rattle off some jokes about perfume and smoke earlier. Oh,
I wasn't joking, but those are all realities. The most
common cause of a sneeze is and that the collective
term is rhinitis r HI and I T I S.
(17:29):
And that is just your sort of standard inflammation and
swelling of your mucous membrane when you got allergies, when
pollen's in the air, when you have a cold. But
there are all kinds of other things that can cause
a sneeze too, that are all different types of rhinitis.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, speaking of rhinitis too, I ran across a term. This.
The clinical term for a running nose is rhyino rhea.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Gross.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, isn't that crody Like? That makes it at least
twelve or fifteen times worse than running nose?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
You know, yeah, weird.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah. So there's occupational rhinitis, which is basically when stuff
you're working around makes you sneeze or irritate your nose,
things like cleaning supplies or you know, flower I saw
was a pretty common occupational rhinitis sternatatory or sternatative, depending
(18:22):
on your preference. Cigarette smoke, if you're working a place
where they let you smoke, like maybe a cigarette factory,
although I heard that they don't allow smoking inside some
cigarette factories now in like North Carolina. Isn't that just
the end all be all?
Speaker 3 (18:39):
You think they would allow you to do that while
you're working?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
They used to up until very recently. Really, Oh yeah,
I have the impression you could just puck one off
the line and light it up.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Wow. I guess if you're a smoker, that's a big perk.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
It is. But then now they're like, no smoking inside,
which leads you to the follow up question why why
would why can we make because it kills you? And
they go, what very dangerous, dummy.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Uh, let me see. You've also got the hormonal rhinitis,
which is women might experience that when they have high
estrogen levels. Maybe if you're pregnant, or you're on the pill,
or you're going through puberty, you might have some sort
of run on sneezing episodes.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Sure, there's a drug induced drnitis. There's certain drugs that
are been identified. What'd you say the hippis kind right, Yeah,
mushrooms will make you sneeze. Apparently I'm guessing that I
didn't see this anywhere, but this is an educated guest.
Tell me if you think it sounds convincing, those drugs
(19:42):
probably stimulate your mass cells to release histamines, and then
that's just basically almost like a phantom allergen. Okay, that's
what I'm going with, all right, But apparently end said's
beta blockers and some anti hypertensive drugs are the ones
that are known drug inducedrinis sternatories.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
If you are of advanced age, you might have what's
called jerryatic rhinitis, which is that's when those sub mucosal
glands atrophy, and that means your nose can get really
irritated and you might sneeze a lot. Right.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
That is very sad to me if you think about it,
because there's not much that can be done. I'm sure
you just put like maybe basoline or something in your nose.
That's got to be the cure for that. But let's
just say it. Because it's like your little body's you know,
running down. We should have a cure for that. Yeah,
Like our medicine is not far enough along in my
(20:47):
opinion for this to be twenty twenty. It's kind of
a disappointing twenty twenty everybody, am I right?
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
So we've talked before, Chuck multiple times about photic sneezing,
which I am a photic sneezer, and I don't remember
if you are or not.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
I feel like I have, but I don't. It's not
like roundly something that happens to me. I don't think.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
So, Okay, I am a photic sneezer more than I'm
a native born Toledo win even maybe they're tied.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So how does it get you? Like, any time you
like turn on a light.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Very rarely light, it's almost always sunlight, and I think
it's just because the intensity of it. But yeah, like
if I walk out, say, like if I go see
a movie in the middle of the day because it's
a slacker and I come out in that nice and
I come out and it's very sunny, sure it is
guaranteed three sneezes in a row?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Is that every usual pattern?
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah? Usually and I looked into that, like why do
we sneeze multiple times? Apparently there's a very simple answer
for it, and that's that your your brain has determined
that the irritant hasn't been ejected yet. But with photo sneezing,
it's it's almost like it's a mistaken identity, right.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah. I actually did see some other things too about
the patterns, because that's always fascinated me because I always
sneeze in threes. Oh yeah, okay, And I did see
where some places said that just once isn't enough, so
it's like a setup a get it to the front
of your nose and then get out. But I also
saw where it could be genetic. Yeah, like that you
(22:23):
inherit a sneeze pattern. Oh really, and that like double
sneezers beget to double sneezers.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It makes sense because there are like photic sneezing is
one of a couple ways that you can inherit a
genetic sneezing trait, So that would make sense.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yeah, that's right, photo, I'm sorry, photic sneeze reflexes passed
on by autosomal dominant inheritance. And and I love this,
this acronym because this is one of those reverse engineered
ones that we like so much.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Do you like this one?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I like this one. I hated the other one.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, man with a passion.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I wouldn't even I wasn't eve gonna bring that one
up to be.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Okay, we'll just pass it by and let everybody wonder
for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
But autosomal dominant compelling helio ophthalmic outburst syndrome A CHU,
it's a little rough.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
It is. I mean, there's a whole d, a whole
dominant in there that's missing. But okay, fine, we'll go
with that. But that's the that is a term for
photic sneezing that was coined at some point by someone.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
That's your biggest pet peeve, right for acronyms is when
they just sneak a word in there and don't use
it for a letter.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, it's lazy, although I mean I get where they
were coming from. You don't want to be ad chew.
It's like why even why even do it? But but
you gotta figure it out, you know, I mean, just
take dominant out, just go with autosomal, you.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Know, Yeah, no, wouldn't who would know?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
I wouldn't have noticed. So you were saying, was that
it for the patterns sneezing patterns.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah, I mean they're just a couple of theories, either
hereditary or that it just takes that much. But I'm
not sure. I just don't know if I buy that
for myself, because it's always threes and it's not like
I have a weak sneeze, so it takes three. I
don't know. It feels ingrained somehow.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, like if you only do two, you notice, and
it does it feel incomplete.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
It does, but that almost never happens. Occasionally I'll do
a forebanger, but I don't know that I ever sneeze
once or twice. It's almost always three.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, And speaking of incomplete, if you actually go, if
you experience the afferent phase, but the efferent phase isn't triggered,
but it's enough to drive you nuts, there's things you
can do. And one of those things that's recommended is
to look at a bright light or look kind of
don't look directly at the sun, but look toward the sun,
(24:56):
and that should help jumpstart that efferent phase. The second
part where the actual sneeze takes place.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Oh okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
But they think what's going on is that there's a
crossover between the sneeze reflex arc and the pupillary light
reflex arc, which basically is one nerve becoming so stimulated
that it stimulates by proxy. Yeah, the other nerve, the
(25:25):
sneeze nerve. So you're getting so overloaded with bright light
when you see that sunlight that it accidentally jumps on
over to your sneeze reflex as well and makes you sneeze.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
It's like, are you getting all this light?
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Are you getting get a load of this?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
And I think they've landed on about between twenty three
and generally of people have this photic sneeze reflex.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Right, So that's I mean, that's pretty substantial. There are
some other small identity groups of sneezers that are far
smaller than that. Apparently there are people who there's four families,
not one in four people, four families, as far as
anyone knows, who have something called natiation, which is where
(26:13):
you if they eat too much and they feel overly full,
it will trigger a sneezing attack.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, I would call that rare.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, four families for sure, and we're just going to
pass right on by right chuck.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Yes, okay, that acronym getting back to the photic sneezing though,
they think it also could be a holdover and an
evolutionary advantage from when we were little babies. Because little
babies don't have they can't blow their nose. They don't
know what that even is. So the only they can't
pick their nose, they can't they can't use any implement
(26:50):
at all to clear out their nose except the sneeze.
They rely on the sneeze to get that mucus out,
or of course parents who will suck that stuff out
through a little device yeah, which is no fun but necessary.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Or you hold them on their side and you blow
in their ear. It usually clears out thanenos. But I
should probably just go ahead and say, yeah, don't do that.
That was a joke.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
You can whisper sweet nothings, sure, but don't Yeah, don't
do that. But babies are pretty sensitive to that photoic
light reflex, and they think that may be a reason
that basically we that's just sort of a holdover from
when we were babies.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
It makes sense. It also makes sense to me that
babies might have more active or kind of raw or
nerve pathways, So maybe they're just more sensitive to that
jump over that crossover. Maybe plucking nose hair has that
ever happened to you every time? So it doesn't make
me sneeze, but it makes my eyes water like I've
(27:51):
just seen every long distance commercial from the nineties all
at once.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Yeah, And it's interesting because those you talked earlier about
the trigeminal nerves that are all through the face. I
think it's just all related. Like you pluck, you could
pluck an eyebrow and it could make you sneeze and
your eyes are watering, and that's part of your face. Like,
it's just all sort of one big nerve bundle that's
all interrelated, and it could any of those could trigger
(28:19):
either watering of eyes or or definitely sneezing. Even if
you'd like pluck a hair out of your head, that
could do it.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
That's never happened to me. But my nose hair and
my eyebrow hair, oh man, my eyes will start watering.
It's not a pleasant experience, for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
I've never plucked an eyebrow hair.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Oh, every once in a while I'll get one that's
a big, fat, long goat hair. It just suddenly comes
up overnight.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
No, I've seen I've got those two.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Okay, well I pluck those.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I just trim those.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
You know, it's maybe I should trim them. That's a
good idea. But have you ever noticed if you get
one and there's almost invariably one on the other, like
they come up in pairs. Does that happen to you?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
I have not noticed that. When you pull on one,
does the other one get shorter? That was wonderful, that'd
be great.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, it's like pulling that spaghetti through your nose and
out of your mouth.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Don't do that either, Can you do that? No, I've
never tried to do so.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I've never tried either. I don't want to. There's also
a group of people who sneeze when they become sexually aroused.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah, that's a thing apparently, or if you orgasm, like
after you orgasm, it could trigger a sneezing fit.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, it's apparently a bigger group than you would expect.
Some researcher went around to internet chat rooms and said, hey,
does anybody sneeze when they become aroused or when they
have an orgasm? And she found seventeen people who sneeze
from sexual ideation. And three, who sneeze from orgasm? Which
is that is way more than I would expect from
(29:54):
just going around on internet chatrooms and asking people, you know.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Yeah, and also we should point out way not scientific.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
No, not at all, but yeah, anecdotally, it's still impressive.
But I read an explanation for this. It's a terrible explanation,
but it's an explanation by the Journal of the Association
of Physicians of India. It's an Indian journal. Coincidentally enough.
They suggest that it's because the nose contains a rectile tissue,
(30:25):
which it does, which a rectile tissue is just tissue
that can become larger and gorged by blood flow. And yes,
you have a rectile tissue in your genitalia, Yes you
have it in your nose, but they're not in any
way related as far as anyone's ever even thought, aside
from the people in this journal. And that the most
(30:46):
bizarre thing you've ever heard.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It's pretty bizarre.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Like your nose is becoming aroused, is basically what they're saying.
And so you sneeze, Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
There's also intractable sneezing or psychogen and that is something
that's almost exclusive to young women, girls, adolescents basically going
through puberty. And these are girls who may not suffer
from allergies, They are not sick with a cold or anything,
but can go on these big sneezing binges for days
(31:17):
and days at a time.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Yes, and apparently the world, the world, oh my goodness.
The world record holder is a girl named Donna Griffiths,
who was twelve when she started. She started in nineteen
eighty one January of nineteen eighty one, and her sneezing
fit ended nine hundred and seventy seven days later in
September of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
I remember hearing about this one.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And as it I mean as it went on, I
was way too young for this. But you know, had
had I been more aware, I would have felt very
bad for this girl, because as it went on she
could if she sneezed once in a day, it was
considered part of the record. And I think that that
was kind of how it was towards the end. But
that first year sounds like a bear yeah, no good.
(32:05):
A million sneezes in the first three hundred and sixty
five days, which is basically a sneeze a minute on average,
and Chuck ann it's impossible to sneeze in your sleep.
You cannot sneeze in your sleep. If you sneeze while
you're sleeping, you wake up to sneeze. Your brain just
isn't functioning correctly to sneeze while you're sleeping. So that
(32:25):
means this girl was averaging a sneeze a minute just
during waking hours, but sneeze a minute over twenty four
hours compressed into say ten or twelve hours that she
was awake that day.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Or would she wake herself up sneezing.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
I don't know. If that's the case, then she had
a really, really rough year because she was sneezing every
minute and not getting any sleep.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yeah, I mean, it's disruptive no matter what, no one.
I mean, you can't hold on a job if you're
sneezing every minute.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Well, luckily she was twelve, and this is after child
labor laws were passed. I'm hoping she did out of
cigarette factory, right, she has nimble little fingers for sorting cigarette.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Perfect. Should we take another break?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
All right, we'll talk about these the travel and droplets
right after this great band.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Josh and shot shot.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
I want to learn a thing or two from Josh
camp Chuck.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
It's stuff you should know, all right, all right, so
this is pretty relevant now. And I know and I
think this was put together before. I feel like we've
been sitting on this one. Was this before coronavirus? No?
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I think it was daring?
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Was it during? Okay?
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, and this is a Dave helped us out. Dave's
helped us out with this one.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yeah. So uh and I think we've all seen these
videos by now with everything that's going on. But in
two twenty sixteen, and a researcher from MIT named Lydia,
Oh boy, goodness me Barubia, Sure, Bariba.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
I'm going with Rubaba. There's a couple of the oh
sounds in there that follow one another. It makes it
very difficult.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, whenever you pack three vowels in a row, it's
always sort of a dealer's choice. So she published some
slow mo two thousand frame per second film images of
people sneezing and what that look like. That's where we
get and other people have done this too, and measured
the sneeze but that's one place where we get the one
(34:46):
hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Stat oh from that study.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, and other places. I mean, that's pretty common knowledge now.
But up to twenty five thirty feet you can blow
a sneeze. It can stay suspended in the air for
a few minutes. And they likened it too if you
would take a bucket of paint and just throw the
paint out out of the can into the airy sort
of as how a sneeze works. It's just they call
(35:11):
it sheets of fluids, and you know, you got these big,
big hunks of mucus and saliva that just sort of
come out together and then break apart little by little
until you get to the fine mist that sort of
can hang in the air.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah, it starts as a clump and then turns into
ropey filaments and then into increasingly smaller particles, and those
really small particles that aerosolize stuff.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
That's the scary stuff.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
I saw a Bristol study that said, and this wasn't
necessarily coronavirus, but that contagious germs can stay in the air,
suspended in the air for weeks. Possibly that would have
to be a very hearty contagious virus or bacteria.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah, with like an air flow, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
To just sit there. But the twenty seven feet which
is kind of common knowledge these days, in the air
of coronavirus, your sneeze can project those particles up to
like twenty seven feet. There's little pockets of gas and
turbulence that are in a room, even a room that
seems still but certainly one that has like the ac
(36:14):
on or air flowing through it, and those little particles
can hitch rides on those pockets and travel I saw
two hundred times further than you expel them with just
your sneeze. Yeah, so you know what prevents that, covering
yourself your mouth and your nose when you sneeze, and
or wearing a mask.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Yeah, I mean they teach I mean, this has nothing
to do with coronavirus, but it's especially important. But they
teach little kids from the moment they can even understand
things in preschool to always sneeze into your elbow and
cough into your elbow because that's something that kids can
you know, you can't always get to a tissue, right,
which is what they say is sort of the best
(36:56):
thing to do. But that elbow is pretty good, good system.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
I think it's really cute to see a little kid
do that too.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Yeah, because they're doing the right thing. It's it's uh,
it is adorable, I agree.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, but yeah. The the ideal is to to sneeze
into a tissue, throw your tissue away, and wash your
hands thoroughly. That's what you're supposed to do after you
sneeze every time, every single time.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Every single time. And I don't sneeze a lot. Emily
sneezes a lot. Oh yeah, yeah, because she's got the allergies.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Oh yeah, so she's.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Got a lifelong, persistent tickle in her nose. It's terrible.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Does she have what's it called that kind of sneezing
where it's a psychogenic, intractable sneezing.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Well, no, because she's not. She's not thirteen.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Man.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
No, it's just allergy related. But lots of sneezing. Uh.
When it's when it's really bad, it's it's it's pretty
tough to be around, not to not tough for me,
but you.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Know, right right, yeah, it's really stop. So I did
look up to find out where we stood as far
as knowledge on sneezing and contagion outdoors goes and from
what I can tell, there was some study that was
done by some engineers that sprayed an aerosol can running
(38:17):
walking and then on a bike, and the results showed
that this stuff spreads really far and wide, but they
didn't take into account a lot of different things, a
lot of different factors, so that if you are outdoors,
as long as somebody doesn't sneeze at you basically in
your face or in your direction within you know, twenty
or thirty feet directly towards you, you're probably not going
(38:41):
to catch enough of a viral load of something like
coronavirus to become sick from it, especially if you're not
in a crowded group. If you're just walking outside and
somebody else is walking, you know, fifteen feet ahead of
you and they're just breathing, and they're on the other
side of the street, you're probably going to be fine,
just because that's stuff. It's gonna dissipate so much because
(39:02):
of all the factors, the environmental factors that exist outdoors
rather as opposed to indoors. Indoors is a totally different ballgame. Outdoors,
you're much safer.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Yeah, I mean I haven't. I haven't been around a
human that sneezed aside from my wife in you know,
four or five months. Great, like I would, even when
I've gone to the store and like I'm on the
lookout for that stuff. Oh yeah, and like I think
we all are. But I haven't even been in a store,
like on an aisle where someone's like sneezed, because I
would and probably unreasonably, you know, freak out a little bit.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Sure, I think you're allowed to yell at that.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Person, but I haven't even seen anyone been around anyone
that sneezed. Yeah, so that's been a comfort.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah. You me went to the store and came back
and said, somebody sneezed twice, and the whole store just
started looking around like where they come from.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Oh yeah, it's weird. Huh.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah. Yeah, there's basically like a stampede or something to
get away from that thing. It's it's a weird, weird
time to be alive. We're all going to be very
very weird even after things go back to normal. I think, yeah,
you know.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
It's gonna I know I will be.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
So should we talk a little bit about culture and
you know, sort of what people say all around the world.
I know here in America it's sort of customed to
say God bless you or bless you and that. You know,
there's some different explanations, but one of them that seems
to hold water I think dates back to the Middle
Ages with the Black Plague, when Pope Gregory seven basically said, hey, everyone,
(40:35):
you know things are pretty bad. We should just we
should say God bless you if someone is sneezing because
they might be dying.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, which is a from what I saw, a big
departure from earlier Christian teachings, which taught people to just
totally ignore sneezes or say God is dead, which I write,
which I find very weird, like why would you teach
people to ignore sneeze I didn't get that. But I
found this really awesome article called Romance and Tragedy of
(41:05):
Sneezing by doctor Wilson D. Wallace in Scientific Monthly from
nineteen nineteen, and he cited that that earlier Christians were
like just ignored, just pretend it didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Yeah, I'm a I'm a bless you guy. I don't
do the gazoon tite or salute which is Spanish to
your health, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, it's also a toast.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Yeah I say that. I don't say that ever. Really.
Sometimes I'll say it when I toast, but it's been
I don't know. I don't remember what I do to
it with anyone anymore. You know, I forgot to deal
with people.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I always will raise my glass and say it's time
to get toe up from the flow up.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I say, made Jupiter bless you.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Right. I saw another one from the Greeks. Two. I
love that one. Live zeus, preserve you.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
I think you and I should bring back both of those. Okay,
that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Can't you imagine everyone in Greece just like being like,
don't sneeze, don't sneeze. Just everyone's all twitchy and shaky
from people yelling that at them.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah. I mean it's weird too because it's a it's
a very kind thing to do to a stranger. It's uh,
this one, I guess Dave just says an academic. But
they called it a micro affection, which is nice. You know.
It's just a little quick, nice thing to say to
a stranger. If and I'll always do it. We've we've
done it during our live shows. When someone sneezes, it's
(42:30):
and not to be funny, it gets a laugh, but
it's just sort of a it's almost like an involuntary
micro affection, I think for most you know, non monsters
for sure.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, where people just kind of have a brief connection,
right yeah, and unless you know, they don't know each other.
But now it's like human being. You're a human being.
What is it now?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Well, just bless you and get pleased, get very far
away from me again.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Bless you over there. So there's also a very common
understanding that people thought that a demon was trying to
get in or your soul was trying to get out.
And I kept seeing like other cultures or old ancient
cultures that kind of thing. The closest one I could
find that seemed like that was in Persia. Zoro Asters
(43:14):
believed that your body was fighting off a fiend that
had invaded, like an invading demon or spirit, and that
a sneeze was basically your body signaling that it had
been victorious in fighting this fiend and getting this fiend out,
and that deserved a prayer, and that if you overheard
somebody sneeze, you would say the same prayer with them.
(43:34):
I couldn't find what prayer though.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah, it seems to be a good luck thing, and
a lot of cultures throughout the years, according to the Talmud,
it's a good omen if you sneeze when you're praying.
In China and Japan, if you sneeze, it means someone's
sort of like your ears are burning, someone's talking about you. Yeah,
and one sneeze means they're saying nice things. Two means
their spreading gossip. I don't know what they would think
(43:59):
about me with my three. Three means you die?
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Right? What would three mean?
Speaker 3 (44:06):
I don't know. I mean, because there's only two ways
people can talk about you.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Right exactly. They might be saying something like Chuck has
a beard. Okay, you know, it's as neutral as it gets, exactly.
So there's there's folklore, and then there's what we think
as true, which is a kind of folklore, but it's
actually it's just folklore too. Urban legends is what we
(44:30):
call them. R old wives tales. And we talked about
one where that your your eyes will pop out of
your head if you sneeze with your eyes open. We
debunk that one pretty clearly. I think, don't.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
You can't do it.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
And then there's some other ones too. There's one that
you me told me about that I had no idea
until she said this. But apparently some people believe that
you basically die for a second while you're sneezing, like
your body just shuts down, including your heart, and that
you're technically dead for that half second while the sneeze
is going on.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
I've heard stops it.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
I had never heard that before until a couple days ago,
and yeah, I looked it up and it's a thing.
But no, it's that's not at all true. Like your
heart rhythm might actually change and the volume of blood
and your heart might decrease or increase because of the
pressure of the air in your chest or the release
of pressure, but the electrical activity remains the same, and
(45:25):
that's the key to whether your heart's you know, alive
or not.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Yeah, yeah, your heart does not stop. No, that's like playground.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Stuff, it is. I thought it was very cute. Yeah,
what about sneezing after sex preventing pregnancy? Did you see
this one?
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Well, I mean, what are you sneezing out of?
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Right? So I mean that like that's the idea that
if you sneeze, you're expelling well there's really no other
way to put its seeman, and that that would keep
you from getting pregnant. Wow, it seems a little rediict. Yeah,
that's another playground thing, I guess. So what playground have
you been hanging out to me?
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Pretty advanced playground activity.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
You got anything else? Oh, I've got one more thing, chuck,
you got anything else?
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I got nothing else.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
In twenty sixteen or eighteen, a man in Lester in
the UK ruptured his throat from trying to stifle a sneeze.
The pressure was so great it broke open his throat.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah, internally he didn't break through the skin, but his
intern his throat internally was rupturing.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Because that's what I pictured right, like a throat explosion.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
It just blew his head completely off, like that guy
in Scanners. Well, I guess that's it for sneezing everybody.
I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks again to Wes for
the idea. And since I said that, it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
We call this Atlanta, Texas. Hey, guys, name's Ben Lee,
local Atlanta, Georgia, and my wife and are a huge
longtime fans. In your recent episode on Pirate Radio, y'all
briefly brought up Radio Atlanta, which was named after Atlanta, Texas,
and you joke that no one knew that town exists,
even the people that live there. And that's pretty much true.
(47:07):
My family is originally from Atlanta, Texas. It's pretty small,
just about five thousand residents, so it's totally understandable. I
was born in Texasarcana, Texas, not too far from there,
which is basically famous for being in the Smoking in
the Bandit movie.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
I thought that was the town that dreaded sundown too,
wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
I don't know about that. I definitely remember from Smoking
the Bandit, okay, because they were driving that beer from
Texarcana to Atlanta. Oh and Benjamin here says, I don't
know why they didn't do Atlanta to Atlanta. Wasted opportunity,
it really is.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
It sounds like Benjamin moved from Atlanta to Atlanta, though,
huh maybe kind of.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
I mean he's in Atlanta, right. He teaches at Georgia State.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
That's pretty awesome. Hey, hats off to you for teaching
these days, Benjamin.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yeah, he says, there's a lot of towns in Texas
though name that are also Georgian names. There's in Athens, Texas,
at Douglasville, a Columbus, Dallas, Georgia, and Texas. And he
said there's even a Georgia, Texas.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Well, that's just confusing.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
And he said, thanks for all the great stuff, and
that is from Benjamin boden Lee.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Thanks a lot, Benjamin boden Lee. That was a great email.
We appreciate it. Any email references Smoking the Bandit, we're
all right with yep. Well, if you want to email
us about Smoking the Bandit or anything else we'd love
to hear from you, you can send it to Stuff
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of Iheartradios. How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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