Why Shouldn't You Hold in a Sneeze?

Better out than in. Learn why a politely covered sneeze beats holding one back in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain
Stuff Lauren vog Obam. Here, medical science continues to drive
home the risks of holding in an explosive sneeze, this
time in a b m J case reports discussion of
spontaneous throat rupture and deep tissue air bubbles. Here's what happened,
according to the papers authors. At the University Hospitals of Lester,

(00:24):
a thirty four year old man entered the emergency room
with reports of painful swallowing and curious popping sounds at
his neck, all following a suppressed sneeze. Upon closer examination,
doctors observed swelling and tenderness in the neck tissue, and
the popping sound proved to be crepitus. Crepitus is the
medical term for popping and crackling sounds under the skin

(00:45):
or in the joints. This is the creaking and cracking
of joints that becomes especially noticeable in older age. Crepitus
maybe due to several different causes, such as grating bones
and snapping tendons, but it's most famously summoned every time
you crack your knuckle. This causes gas suspended in the
joint snowvial fluid to form bubbles and burst. Unsurprisingly, Crepitus

(01:07):
is also the name of a California based death metal band.
But how does this relate to the thirty four year
old patients neck. The doctors identified crepitus from his neck
all the way down into his rib cage. These findings
suggested air bubbles lodged in the deep tissue and muscles
of the chest. Indeed, X rays revealed streaks of air
like the shrapnel of a detonated explosive. The hand grenade

(01:30):
in this case was the suppressed sneeze, which resulted in
spontaneous pharyngeal rupture. Doctors successfully treated the patient with antibiotics
and tube feeding, But as how Stuff Works has reported
in the past, a stifled sneeze can cause a host
of undesirable symptoms, including the rupture of blood vessels in
the brain. It seems ridiculous. A sneeze, after all, is

(01:52):
such a natural thing. It's just an expulsion of air
and mucus from the nostrils due to irritation. Children especially
sneeze boldly into their surrounding world, often with little consideration
of decorum, superstition, or the fact that Grandma's face is
right there in front of them. It's only as they
become adults that they learned to cover their sneezes and
in some cases attempt to stifle them by blocking both

(02:15):
mouth and nostrils. For certain, no one wants to unleash
a full blown sneeze at the theater or in a
crowded train car. It's a high velocity burst of mucus
and other particles, after all, and exhibits the very lack
of control we despise in our bodies. But as the
medical science illustrates, such a force is not contained without risk.

(02:35):
As Arthur Stanley P's explored in his nineteen eleven classical
philosophy paper The Open of Sneezing, beliefs in the ominous
or prophetic aspects of sneezing date back to ancient times.
These notions were well developed by the time of the
Greek poet Homer in the eighth or seventh century b c.
And subsequent thinkers and philosophers continued to pour over the

(02:56):
idea that while a sneeze might mean nothing, it could
also indicate the temporary presence of a divine force in
the sneezer. God bless you indeed. Today's episode was written
by Robert Lamb and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
on this and lots of other explosive topics, visit our
home planet, how Stuff Works dot com