I’m one of those weirdos that enjoys a good sneeze, but I don’t understand what happens when you sneeze. Why does our body react in such a way? And why do we have it built into our systems? And why do they often come in multiples?
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Sneezing is the body’s way of clearing out debris in your airways. It’s why when you tickle someone’s nose with a feather, they sneeze, to get rid of the foreign matter.
It’s your nose ejecting unwanted material. A [good sneeze](https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2020/04/see-how-a-sneeze-can-launch-germs-much-farther-than-6-feet) can blast whatever pathogen is up your nose up to 27 feet away. I can’t find a link now (sad face) but a bunch of researchers simulating a house party, dropping blue dye in their nostrils and irritating their noses to create sneezes covered the whole room in “germs” in a frighteningly quick time.
Two things puzzle me:
1. Why do I always sneeze twice?
2. Why are women’s sneezes so comparatively mild?
A sneeze is like diarrhoea for your nose, an attempt t clear out the bad things.
Or if youre like me and walk outside into sunlight you sneeze 3 times in a row,
If I feel a sneeze coming on, I look at any bright light and all hell breaks loose, for a good minute or more.
Sneezing clears debris out of your nose. Your trigeminal nerve (a nerve in your nose) picks up irritation and tells the whole sneeze procedure to start up, like running a prewritten computer program. Your body builds up air pressure and then releases it all at once, blasting stuff out. In addition, you can’t feel it, but a bunch of tiny hairs in your nose called cilia start a sweeping motion that pushes the matter toward your nostrils, so you can blow it out more easily. Imagine a shag carpet whose fibers can all swish in the same direction.
The cilia are key: many people who sneeze more and have more nasal debris, don’t have functioning cilia along that route. It makes your nose less self-cleaning and so you have more issues with clogs.
I love a good sneeze so I guess I’m one of those weirdos too. Basically, the purpose of sneezing is to protect our respiratory systems from potentially dangerous things we might have breathed in. When you feel that tickle inside your nose, it usually means there’s a foreign particle like dust, dirt, or a pet hair touching the inner lining of of your nasal passages. To protect your body from possible harm, your sneeze reflex is triggered. When you sneeze, a powerful blast of air is sent rushing out of your mouth and nose in order to expel any irritating particles or blockages from your breathing passages. Whatever was irritating your nose ends up getting dislodged and expelled by the blast of air. Sneezes often come in multiples because the first sneeze wasn’t able to expel the irritant, so you keep sneezing until the irritation is no longer present.
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