August 25, 2020 • 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 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's us and we're here to talk to
you about get this our book. We have a Stuff
you Should Know book coming out this November and you're
going to love it and you can preorder it now.
That's right. It's called Stuff you Should Know Colon, an
incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things, and it's been a
lot of fun to work on and we're really, i
(00:20):
mean genuinely excited about how this thing has come together.
It's twenties six chunky Harry chapters that are just going
to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck, we
are indeed proud of this book. It is truly, indubitably
the first Stuff you Should note book and it's coming
out this November and you can order it now, pre
order everywhere you get books, so do that, and we
(00:43):
thank you in advice. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Ran over there. Jerry is a disembodied spirit, but
(01:03):
she's still with us, haunting us, and we are now
set up for achievement, which means this is Stuff you
Should Know. Set up for achievement. That sounds like very
eighties Reagan era campaign. It does, It definitely does. Uh
certainly not the kind of thing that would irritate you,
whether it be in your nose or your brain or anywhere.
(01:27):
Not not the best segue, huh. I'm surprised you didn't
try and work uh, stern mutation in there. Somehow. I
love that word. Are you Were you familiar with that
word before? I don't think you know. I'm forty nine
years old. I don't think I've ever heard sneezing being
called stern mutation. I got oh, man, I just remembered.
I'm forty four now, so you you got me beat.
(01:48):
But I'm in the same boat with you. Yeah, I've
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 your scientists that
wants to be friends with people, you'll still probably say sneezing.
And I mean, it sounds super clinical, but it's actually
really old. It's from I think the first appearance of
(02:10):
it is in a text from fifteen seventy six. Old.
To me, it sounds clinical but there's also a couple
of derivative words stern mutative or stern you too, Tori
are things that make you sneeze and Howard Stern bubba
booe right chewy. So we're talking sneezing obviously, because we
(02:32):
just discoursed on stern youitation, I'm adding an extra syllable.
There aren't I stern mutation. That's the Josh Clark way.
Why do I have to complicate? Why do I have
to complimentate things? Uh, we're talking about sneez sin. It's
the sneezing, and sneezing is a really sort of and
(02:54):
I hate it when people call things like this elegant,
so I'm gonna 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 into all the
ins and outs of how it all happens, but to
allow your nose and your nasal passage in your brain
(03:15):
to act as bouncers and just say get out of
my body. Fast, cut off pal like real fast, you're
cut off cigarettes, smoke, you're cut off Chanel number seven
that nobody likes, you know, Sure, Um, 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,
(03:37):
all mammals at least sneeze, some more than others. I
didn't realize this, but apparently iguanas um sneeze the most
because it's part of their digestion. Yeah. And then I
don't know what it's technically called, but you know when
dogs do what it's called the reverse knees. Yeah, Momo
has that bad. It's so scary, it is, it is.
(03:57):
And we finally got her checked out out and um,
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. Bracky a ceflick. Have you ever
had a dog that that has that? I mean I've
I've never had a dog that didn't do it occasionally. Um,
(04:19):
but Niko, 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? Yeah, it's terrible,
it's really bad. I think you're just supposed to leave
them alone. Too, right, just let him do it. Um, No,
we help her out. We'll we'll rub her throat um,
just kind of stroke it. It seems to help. Uh.
(04:40):
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,
so it's sad for her. Yeah, But it's really not
a sneeze, uh, actually, because a sneeze is when you
(05:00):
were you're trying to get something out of your nose,
and that nose is it's a pretty amazing little system.
It's uh, 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 narrow for a
very good reason, and that is to create turbulence inside
(05:22):
your nasal passages. And you know that turbulence shoves all
that air that you're inhaling to the sides of your
nasal passages, the nasal mucosa, and that's got tiny little
hairs called cilia and the sillia mainly is sort of
like a pre doorman, just saying like, yeah, your I
D S good. Why don't we just move you to
(05:44):
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 him the big bouncer to initiate that
sneeze response. Yeah, sometimes they're just like, no, I'm staying here,
I'm not leaving. You can't kick me out. I hate
the back of the throat. Super drunk. Yeah, yeah, so
I didn't realize that, But it makes sense that we
swallow a lot of the particles that we inhale through
(06:05):
our nose, which is gross but effective. We poop it
out eventually, right, But yeah, if they get if they
get stuck in the nose, then they do something magical,
almost as magical as soap. But um, 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 where. They actually like irritate
(06:27):
some specialized cells that are in that nasal mucosa mast
cells and uh erie nfls I think, 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,
(06:48):
basically where your nose is running and um. They also
simultaneously start sending signals to your brain saying, hey, we
we got one. We need some help. 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 but I can't remember. But the whole
(07:10):
thing takes about a second for the single sneeze. Uh.
And you know it's gonna send that message, like you said,
that chemical message to the sneeze center of the brain,
which is in the lateral medulla. And uh, you know,
the lateral medula gets like everything in the brain, it
gets at signal and says, you know, all I gotta
all I gotta do is react fast whenever the body
(07:31):
tells me to do something, and in this case, it's
to jet out whatever is in the nose as fast
as possible. 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 stern mutation instead
of sneezing, there's actually something called an afferent phase and
an efferent phase and an afferent phases when you get
(07:52):
ready to sneeze, like your your nerves have been um
tickled and are triggered and are itching, and they're sending
messages to your brain uh in your sneeze center. And
then that the efferent phases, when your sneeze center goes okay,
it's go time. And that's actually pretty interesting stuff. And
the way that that happens is basically, from what I
(08:13):
can tell, through a system of nerves olfactory nerve uh
ethmoidal nerve just a terrible word. And then um, your
triedgeminal nerve, which is basically 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
(08:35):
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. Yeah, I mean, like I said, the whole
thing takes place in less than a second. Um, 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. Uh. And once it
(08:58):
does reach that irra irritable point, which of which there's
no going back. He's had too much to drink. Everybody
in the bar knows it. That's when it finally sends uh,
that impulse down through the head and neck to initiate
that response. That involves a lot of muscle groups. Uh.
You know, if you when you sneeze, it's a and
(09:19):
especially with some people, can be a pretty violent um
action for the body. 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.
Um you you your face is all scrunched up, your
neck is tight. Uh. There's a lot of muscles involved
(09:43):
in the reason why is because you're taking in a
bunch of air and then you're expelling a bunch of
air with a lot of force to to get that
thing that won't leave out of your nose. Yeah, like
you can and I've seen professional athletes that have been
sidelined from sneezing h Uh. If you've got a bad
back or something like, it can it can really hurt. Luckily,
(10:04):
I don't have back problems, but occasionally I have, and
a sneeze can really tweak it to where you're like,
that's when you know you're an old man territory. You
have a sneeze and you're like, hold on, I can't
get up. Yeah, I'm gonna have to lay down this weekend.
But your abdomen, your chest, your diaphragm, uh, your vocal chords.
You know you mentioned that you take that deep inhalation,
(10:25):
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, right Yeah,
So you're sucking in a bunch of air holding it,
and so the pressure is building in your thorax um
and then when you release it, your your vocal cord
(10:47):
openings open up to allow the air out. But then
also your your diaphragm is pushing that air out really violently,
so that it's going out in your mouth and your nose.
I saw about a hundred miles an hour is the
the speed that that can hit yeah, easily, um, around
a hundred miles an hour. That is crazy to think
about your eyes closed. But you know, we can go
(11:09):
ahead and to spell the the old myth that, um,
you can pop your eyes out if you keep your
eyes open during a sneeze, 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. That's just that's just would
be impossible. Plus they usually close anyway, just shatically. Yeah. There,
(11:31):
it's a very small group of people who sneeze with
their eyes open. Most people just it's like involuntary. Um,
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. Yeah,
like you can't. I mean, you can try and trigger
a sneeze, and we'll talk about certain things that can
(11:52):
trigger a sneeze, but you definitely can't make yourself sneeze
like full stop. Yeah no, no, I mean, yeah, there's
funny 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. All right, Well,
we'll talk about my sneeze pattern later. I know I've
(12:13):
talked about it before, but okay, I find it fascinating
you you accidentally um, tap out, drink your ovaltine and
morse code to your sneezes. Is that your thing? Very nice? Thanks?
Should we take a break. Let's take a break, Chuck,
and then we'll come back and talk more about sneezing,
(12:37):
Josh and Shock. So well, now we're on the road,
driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
two from Josh Camp Chuck. It's stuff you should know.
(12:59):
All right, 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. Yeah,
Dr Todd g sneeze a lot um No. One of
my neighbor friends, Wesley Uh was like, hey man, he
(13:20):
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. It'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.
You know, Yeah, that seems like it would be an
early stuff you should know for sure, and like it.
(13:42):
It kind of feels like one of those right now
as we're doing it. But um, you know, my neighbors
think of unemployed. It's great. Yeah, but hats off to
West for coming up with that one. Thanks Wes. Yeah,
I leave Josh alone. He's one. He's the one that
we got the the Love your Mama dot com stuff
for and he's like halfway done with our room spray.
(14:05):
We need some more because we're using it so fast,
and you're you're the pusherman. Yeah. I was like, first
of one's on me, the next you're gonna cost you. Yeah,
I don't correct my neighbors. They think I'm I'm down
on my luck, so that's all good, Yeah, opinion, No,
that's definitely the way to go. He's very nosy, so
he um he found out I had to finally just
stop lying, Oh, that's good stuff. So we're we're back
(14:29):
to sneezing. We're talking sneezing and UM. 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 um causes us to sneeze, that
coordinates this involuntary response because you're not like your brain
is not consciously saying like, okay, now, diaphragm, expel the air,
(14:52):
like this is all like we said, involuntary um that
every time you wanted to sneeze, right, expel air. UM.
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 in cats. Don't ask how we knew
where it is in cats, but in cats it's in
the medulla, and so it was hypothesized that it was
(15:14):
in the lateral medulla in humans too. And finally, I
think around two thousand five, there's basically incontrovertible evidence that
came in the form of this fisherman. I believe he
might have been Spanish UM who had the sneezing fit
one day of like about twenty really violent sneezes in
a few minutes, and then all of a sudden he
(15:35):
stops sneezing and couldn't walk right like he his gait
was affected, almost like he had a stroke. And apparently
either he caused a lesion on his lateral medulla from
the sneezing, or that violent sneezing was like an initial
symptom of a lesion, kind of like here's your last
sneeze as ever, And he went to the doctor and
(15:56):
they started testing them, and they would do things like
put cap sasan in his nose, like red hot chili
pepper in his nose, which makes everybody sneeze. It's like
a universal um stern to Tori, right, makes everyone sneeze,
And it wouldn't make this guy sneeze. It would burn
his nose and it would make his nose running, but
(16:17):
it wouldn't make him sneeze. On the other side, it
would make him sneeze the other nostril, but not the
not the right, I think. And so they found this
lesion on his lateral medula, and they said, sneezing center,
welcome to our understanding. At such a bad red hut
Chili Pepper's joke that is sat on through the whole spield.
That's a very grown up of you. Should I say it? Sure?
(16:41):
Whoever said we were grown ups? I was just thinking
the doctor would did the capsasan 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,
you know, than fight like a brave. I don't know.
I'm trying to think of Chili Pepper songs. What if
the doctor came in wearing nothing but one of those
(17:03):
reflector headbands in a sock on his penis. I saw
that coming and that was it. Oh, that'd be great
that that. You know, you got the right doctor. Yeah,
you do the party duck. 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. That the most common cause
(17:28):
of sneeze is and that the collective term is rhinitis
r H I and I T I S. And that
is just your sort of standard inflammation and swelling of
your mucous membrane when you got allergies when pollens in
the air, when you have a cold. But they are
all kinds of other things that can cause a sneeze too,
that are all different types of rhinitis. Yeah, speaking of
(17:51):
rhinitis too, I ran across a term. This the clinical
term for a running nose is rhin a rhea. Yeah
didn't that crody Like that makes it at least twelve
or fifteen times worse than running nose, you know. Yeah,
So there's um occupational rhinitis, which is basically when stuff
you're working around makes you sneeze or irritate your nose. Um,
(18:15):
things like cleaning supplies or you know, flower I saw
was a pretty common occupational rhinitis. Uh, sternitatory or sternitative,
depending on your preference. Um. Cigarette smoke, if you're work
in a place where they let you smoke, like maybe
a cigarette factory, although I heard that they don't allow
(18:37):
smoking inside some cigarette factories now in like North Carolina.
Isn't that just the end all be all? You think
they would allow you to do that while you're working.
They used to up until very recently. Oh yeah, I
have the impression you can just puck one off the
line and light it up. Wow, I guess if you're smoker,
that's a big perk. It is. But then now they're
(19:00):
like no smoking inside, which leads you to the follow
up question why why would what very dangerous you dummy? Uh,
let me see. You've also got the hormonal rhinitis, which
is women might experience that when they have high estrogen levels.
(19:21):
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. Sure, Um, there's drug induced rhinitis.
There's certain drugs that are have been identified. Um, what
do you say the hippis kun right, Yeah, mushrooms will
make you sneeze. Um. Apparently I'm guessing that I didn't
(19:42):
see this anywhere, but this is an educated guest. Tell
me if you think it sounds convincing. Um, those drugs
probably stimulate your masts cells to release histamines, and that
that just basically almost like a phantom um allergen. Okay,
that's I'm going with. But apparently end SAIDs beta blockers
(20:04):
and some anti hypertensive drugs are the ones that are known.
Um drug induced rynitis. Stern tutores. Uh. If you are
of advanced age, you might have what's called geri attic
rhye rhinitis, which is that's when those uh submucoastal glands atrophy,
(20:26):
and that means your nose can get really irritated and
you might sneeze a lot. Right. Um. That is very
sad to me if you think about it, because there's
not much that can be done. I'm sure you're there's there.
You just put like maybe vaseline or something in your nose.
That's got to be the cure for that. But that's
just that because it's like your your little bodies, you know,
(20:47):
running down. We should have a cure for that. Yeah,
Like our medicine is not far enough along in my opinion,
for too for this to be. It's kind of a
disappointing everybody, am I Right? Yeah? So we've talked before,
Chuck multiple times about photic sneezing, which I am a
(21:08):
photo sneezer, and I don't remember if you are or not.
I feel like I have, but I don't. It's not
like roundly something that happens to me. I don't think. So, Okay,
I am a photo sneezer more than I'm a native
born Toledo and even maybe they're tied. So how does
it get you? Like, any time you like turn on
a light, very rarely light, it's almost always sunlight, and
(21:33):
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 come out and then nice and
I come out and it's very sunny, it is guaranteed
three sneezes in a row? Is that every usual pattern? Yeah? Usually?
And I looked into that, like why do we sneeze
(21:54):
multiple times? Apparently there's a very simple answer for it,
and that's that your your brain has to turn mean
that that the irritant hasn't been ejected yet. But with
photo sneezing, it's it's almost like it's mistaken identity, right. Yeah.
I actually did see some other things too about the patterns,
because that's always fascinated me because I always sneeze in threes.
(22:16):
And um, I did see where sometime some places said
that just once isn't enough, so it's like a setup.
Get it to the front of your nose and then
it get out. But I also saw where it could
be genetic. Yeah, like that you inherit a sneeze pattern,
and that like double sneezers beget to double sneezers. It
makes sense because there are like photos. Sneezing is one
(22:39):
of a couple ways that you can inherit a genetic
sneezing traits, So that would make sense. Yeah, that's right. Photo.
I'm sorry, photic sneeze reflexes passed on by autosomal dominant inheritance.
And it's and I love this, uh this acronym because
this is one of those reverse engineered ones that we
(23:00):
like so much. Do you like this one? I like
this one. I hated the other one. Yeah, man, with
a passion like I wouldn't even I wasn't gonna bring
that one up to be Okay, we'll just pass it
by and let everybody wonder for the rest of their lives.
But autosamial dominant compelling helio up uphthalmic outburst syndrome at you,
(23:22):
it's a little rough, it is. I mean, there's a
whole d, a whole dominant in there that's missing. But okay, fine,
we'll go We'll go with that. But that's the that
is a term for photo sneezing that was um coined
at some some point by Someone's right for acronyms is
when they just sneak a word in there and don't
use it for a letter. Yeah, it's lazy, although I
(23:45):
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 got to figure it out,
you know, I mean, just take dominant out, just go
with autosomal. You know. Yeah, no one who would know.
I wouldn't have noticed. So um you were saying, Uh,
(24:05):
was that it for the patterns and sneezing patterns. 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
if it feels ingrained somehow, Yeah, like if you only
(24:26):
do two, you notice and it does it feel incomplete?
It does, but it that almost never happens. Occasionally I'll
do a forebanger, but I don't I don't know that
I ever sneeze once or twice, it's almost always three. Yeah,
And speaking of incomplete, if you actually go if you
experience the afferent phase, but the efferent phase isn't triggered,
(24:50):
but it's enough to drive you nuts. Um, there's things
you can do, and one of those things that's recommended
is to look at a bright light er look kind
of don't look directly at this on, but look towards
the sun um and that should help jump start that
efferent phase. The second part where the actual sneeze takes place, Okay,
that makes sense, But they think what's going on is
(25:12):
that there's a crossover between um, the sneeze reflex arc
and the pupillary light reflex arc, which basically is one
nerve becoming so um stimulated that it it um it
stimulates by proxy the the other nerve, the sneeze nerve.
(25:33):
So you're getting so overloaded with bright light when you
see that sunlight that it it accidentally jumps on over
to your sneeze reflection as well and makes you sneeze.
It's like, are you getting all this light? Are you
getting get a load of this? And I think they've
landed on about between twenty. Generally people have this photic
(25:54):
sneeze reflex, right, So that's I mean, that's pretty substantial.
There are some other, like small all identity groups of
sneezers that are far smaller than that. Um. Apparently there
are people who, um, there's a four families, not one
in four people, four families, as far as anyone knows,
(26:15):
who have something called um snatiation, which is where you
if they eat too much and they feel overly full,
it will trigger a sneezing attack. Yeah, I would call
that rare. Yeah, four families for sure, and we're just
gonna pass right on by, right chuck uh yes, acronym um.
(26:36):
Getting back to the photo 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 um they can't pick their nose.
They can't they can't use any implement at all to
(26:58):
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 it a
little device, yeah, which is no fun but necessary. Or
you hold them on their side and you blow in
their ear usually clears up in noo. But I should
probably just go ahead and say I don't do that.
(27:19):
That was a joke. You can whisper sweet nothings, sure,
but don't Yeah, don't do that. Um. But babies are
are pretty sensitive to that photoclight reflex, and they think
that maybe a reason that basically we that's just sort
of a holdover from when we were babies. It makes sense.
It also makes sense to me that babies might have
um more active or kind of raw or nerve pathways,
(27:44):
So maybe they're just more sensitive to that that jump
over that crossover. Maybe UM plucking nose hairs that ever
happened to you every time? So it doesn't make me sneeze,
but it makes my eyes water like I've just seen
every UM long distance commercial from the nineties all at once. Yeah.
And it's interesting because those you talked earlier about the
(28:07):
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
either watering of eyes or or definitely sneezing. Even if
(28:30):
you like pluck a hair out of your head, that
could do it. 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.
I've never plucked an eyebrow hair. Oh. Every once in
a while I'll get one. Um, that's a big, fat,
long goat hair. It's just suddenly comes up overnight. I've
(28:52):
seen I've got those two. Okay, well I pluck those.
Just trim those, you know, is um, maybe I should
trim them. That's a good idea. Um. But have you
ever noticed if you get one and there's almost invariably
one on the other side too, like they come up
in pairs. Has does that happen to you? I have
not noticed that when you pull on one, does the
other one get shorter? That that was wonderful, that'd be great. Yeah,
(29:20):
it's like pulling that spaghetti through your nose. And out
your mouth. Don't do that either, Can you do that? Uh? No,
I've never tried to do I've never tried either. I
don't want to. Um. There's also a group of people
who sneeze when they become sexually aroused. Yeah, that's the
thing apparently, or if your orgasm, like after your orgasm,
it could trigger a sneezing fit. Yeah, it's an apparently
(29:42):
a bigger group than than you would expect. Some researcher
went around the 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 ay more than I would expect from just
going around on internet chat rooms and asking people, you know.
(30:04):
And also, we should point out way not scientific, 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 uh journal. Coincidentally enough,
(30:26):
they suggest that it's because the nose contains erectile tissue,
which it does. Which erectile tissues just tissue that can
become larger engorged by blood flow. And yes, you have
erectile tissue and your genitalia. Um, yes you have it
in your nose, but they're not they're not in any
(30:46):
way related as far as anyone's ever even thought, aside
from the people in this journal. And that the most
bizarre thing you've ever heard. It's pretty bizarre. Like your
nose is becoming aroused, is basically what they're saying. And
so you sneeze fantastic. Uh. There's also intractable sneezing or psychogenic,
(31:07):
and that is something that's almost exclusive to young women, um, girls,
adolescents basically going through puberty. And these are girls who
may not suffer from allergies, they're not sick with a
cold or anything, but can go in these big sneezing
binges for days and days at a time. Yes, and
(31:28):
apparently the world, 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 nine eight one, and her sneezing fit
ended nine hundred and seventy seven days later in September
of nineteen eighty three. I remember hearing about this one
(31:49):
and as it I mean as it went on, I
was way too young for this. But you know, had
I had I been more aware, I would have felt
very bad for this girl, um, 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, a
(32:11):
million sneezes in the first three d and sixty five days,
which is basically a sneeze a minute on average. And
chuck an 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 means this
(32:32):
girl was averaging a sneeze a minute, um, just during
waking hours, but a sneeze a minute over twenty four
hours compressed into say ten or twelve hours that she
was awake that day or would she wake herself up sneezing.
I don't know if. If that's the case, then she
had a really, really rough year because she was sneezing
every minute and not getting any sleep. Yeah, I mean
(32:54):
it's disruptive no matter what, no one. I mean, you
can't hold on a job if you're sneezing every minute. Well,
luckily she was twelve, and this is after child labor
laws were passed. I'm hoping she did have that cigarette factory.
That's right. She has nimble little fingers for sorting cigarettes. Perfect.
Should we take another break, Yeah, I think so. All right,
we'll talk about these the traveling Droplets right after this
(33:16):
great band Josh and Shock. Well, now we're on the road,
driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
(33:37):
two from Josh Damp Chuck. 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? I think it was during? Was during? Ok?
(34:00):
And this is a Dave helped us out. Dave Russ
helped us out with this one. Yeah, so and uh
and I think we've all seen these videos by now,
um with everything that's going on. But in two thousand
sixteen and a researcher from m I T named Lydia.
Uh oh boy, goodness me Bubia sure bariba, I'm going
(34:22):
with buru buruba. It is. There's a couple of sounds
in there that follow one another. It makes it very difficult. Yeah,
whenever you pack three vowels in a row, it's always
sort of a dealer's choice. So she published some SloMo
two thousand frame per second uh film images of people
(34:44):
sneezing and what that looks like. That's where we get
and other people have done this too, and and measured
the sneeze. But that's one place where we get the
hundred miles per hour stat oh from that study. Yeah,
and other places. I mean that's pretty common knowledge now.
But um up Tott. You can blow a sneeze. It
(35:04):
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 air sort of as how
a sneeze works. It's as they call it, sheets of fluids,
and you know, you've got these big, big hunks of
mucus and saliva that just sort of come out together
(35:25):
and then break apart little by little until you get
to the fine mists that sort of can hang in
the air. Yeah, it starts as a clump and then
turns into ropey filaments and then into increasingly smaller particles.
And those really small particles the air sulized stuff. That's
the scary stuff. I saw a Bristol study that said,
and this wasn't necessarily coronavirus, but that contagious germs can
(35:47):
stay in the air, suspended in the air for weeks possibly. Um,
that would have to be a very hardy contagious virus
or bacteria with the air flow, yeah, to just sit there.
But um, that the twenty seven feet which is kind
of common knowledge these days in the era of coronavirus,
that your sneeze can can project those particles up to
(36:10):
like twenty seven ft. There's little pockets of gas and
turbulence that are in a in a room, even a
room that seems still but certainly one that has like
the a c on or air flowing through it, and
those little particles can hitch rides on those pockets and travel. Um,
I saw two hundred times further than you expel them
(36:31):
with just your sneeze. So you know what prevents that
covering yourself, your mouth and your nose when you sneeze,
and or wearing a mask. 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
(36:53):
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, which is what they say is
sort of the best thing to do. But that elbow
is pretty good. Uh, it's a pretty good system. I
think it's really cute to see a little kid do
that too, Yeah, because they're doing the right thing. It's
it's uh, it is adorable. I agree. Um, but yeah,
(37:16):
the the ideal is to to sneeze into a tissue. Um,
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, every single time. And I don't sneeze
a lot. Emily sneeze is a lot. Oh yeah, yeah,
because she's got the allergies. Oh yeah, she's got a lifelong,
(37:37):
persistent tickle in her nose. It's terrible. Does she have um,
what's it called the kind of sneezing where it's oh, psychogenic,
intractable sneezing. Well, no, because she's not, she's not thirteen man. 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
(38:00):
to be around, not to not tough for me, but
you know, right right yeah stop. Um. So that I
did look up to find out where we stood as
far as knowledge on sneezing and um contagion outdoors goes.
And from what I can tell, there was some study
that was done by some engineers that sprayed an aerosol
(38:22):
can running walking and then on a bike, and the
results showed that the 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
(38:44):
or thirty feet um directly toward you. You're probably not
going to catch enough of a viral load of something
like coronavirus to become sick from it. Um, especially if
you're not in a crowded group. If you're just walking
outside and somebody else is walking, you know, fifteen ft
ahead of you and they're just breathing and they're on
the other side of the street, you're probably going to
(39:05):
be fine just because that stuff is gonna dissipate so
much because 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. Yeah, I mean
I haven't, uh, I haven't been around a human that sneezed,
aside from my wife and you know, four or five months,
(39:27):
like I would, even when I've gone to the store
and like I'm on the lookout for that stuff. Oh yeah,
and um, 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. Sure, I think
you're allowed to yell at that person. But I haven't
(39:48):
even seen anyone been around anyone that sneezed. Uh, so
that's been a comfort. Yeah, you mean you me went
to the store and came back and said, somebody sneezed
twice in the whole store. Just started looking around like
where that come from. Yeah, it's weird. Huh. Yeah. Yeah,
there's basically like a stampede or something to get away
from that thing. It's it is. It's a weird, weird
time to be alive. We're all going to be very
(40:09):
very weird even after things go back to normal. I think, yeah,
you know it's gonna I know I will be. Yeah.
So should we talk a little bit about a 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, uh
(40:29):
and that. You know. There's some different explanations, but um
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, you know,
things are pretty bad. We should just we should say
God bless you if someone is sneezing because they might
be dying. Yeah, which is a from what I saw,
(40:52):
A big departure from um earlier Christian teachings which taught
people to just totally ignore these or say God is dead,
which I right, which I find very weird, Like why
would you teach people to ignore sneezes? I didn't get that.
But I found this really awesome article called Romance and
Tragedy of Sneezing by Dr Wilson D. Wallace in Scientific
(41:16):
Monthly from nineteen nine, and he cited that that earlier
Christians were like just ignored it, just pretend it didn't happen. Yeah,
i'm a i'm a i'm ana. Bless you guy. Um,
and don't do the gazoom tight or salute which is
Spanish to your health, that kind of thing. It's also
a toast, Yeah I say that. I don't. I don't
(41:37):
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 did it with anyone anymore, you know, it's I
don't I forgot to deal with people. I always raise
my glass and say it's time to get toe up
from the flow up, I say, made Jupiter bless you, right.
I saw another one from the Greeks too. I love
(41:58):
that one. Um, live zeus, preserve you. I think you
and I should bring back both of those. That's fantastic.
Can't you imagine everyone in greased just like being like,
don't sneeze, don't sneeze? If everyone's all twitchy and shaky
from people yelling that at them. Yeah, I mean it's
weird too because it's a it's a very kind thing
(42:19):
to do to a stranger. It's uh, this one, um,
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 uh, and
not to be funny, it gets a laugh, but it's
(42:39):
just sort of a it's almost like an involuntary micro
affection I think for most you know, non monsters for sure. Yeah,
where people just kind of have a brief connection, right
and you know they don't know each other. But now
it's like you're a human being. What is it now? Well,
just bless you and get pleased, get very far away
from again, bless you over there. Um. So there's also
(43:03):
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 um
in Persia. Um zoro asters believed that your body was
fighting off a fiend that had invaded, like an invading
(43:26):
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 that that
deserved a prayer, and that if you ever heard somebody sneeze,
you would say the same prayer with him. I couldn't
find what prayer though. Yeah, it seems to be a
good luck thing, and a lot of cultures throughout the years,
(43:48):
according to the Talmud, it's a good omen if you
sneeze when you're praying. Uh. In China and Japan, if
you sneeze, it means someone's sort of like your ears
are burning, someone's talking about you, and one sneeze means
they're saying nice things to two means they're spreading gossip.
I don't know what they would think about me with
my three. Three means you die, right? What would three mean?
(44:13):
I don't know. I mean, because there's only two ways
people can talk about you, right, they might be saying
something like Chuck has a beard. Okay, you know that's
as neutral as it gets, exactly. Um. So there's there's folklore,
and then there's what we think is true, which is
a kind of folklore, but it's actually it's just folklore
(44:35):
to urban legends. Is what we call them our 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 debunked that one pretty clearly,
I think, don't you can't do it? Um. And then
there's some other ones too. There's one that you told
me about that I had no idea until she said this,
But apparently some people believe that you basically die for
(45:00):
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 it. I
had never heard that before until a couple of days ago,
and um 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
(45:22):
in 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
that's the key to whether your hearts you know, alive
or not. Yeah, yeah, your heart does not stop. No,
that's like playground stuff, it is. I thought it was
very cute. What about sneezing after sex preventing pregnancy? Did
(45:45):
you see this one? Well, I mean, what are you
sneezing out of? Right? So? I mean that like, that's
the idea that if you sneeze, you're expelling um well,
there's really no other way to put its semen, and
that that would keep you from getting pregnant. Wow, it
seems a little ridic Yeah, that's another playground thing, I guess.
(46:07):
So what's what playground have you been hanging out? Pretty
advanced playground at Uh? You got anything else? Oh, I've
got one more thing, Chuck, you anything else, I got
nothing else. In two thousand and 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. Wow. Yeah, internally didn't break
(46:31):
through the skin, but his his his throat internally was
up because that's what I pictured, like a throat explosion.
It just blew his head completely off, like that guy
in Scanners. Well like I guess that's it for sneezing everybody.
Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks again to West for the idea.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
(46:53):
we call this Atlanta, Texas. Hey guys, my name's ben Ley,
local atlantin Georgia and my life 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. Uh,
and you joke that no one knew that town exists,
even the people that live there. And that's pretty much true.
(47:14):
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 Texarkana, Texas, not too far from there,
which is basically famous for being in the Smoky in
the Bandit movie. I thought that was the town that
dreaded Sundown too, wasn't it. M I don't know about that.
I definitely remember from Smoking in the Bandit because they're
(47:36):
driving that beer from Texarkana to Atlanta, and uh, Benjamin
here says, I don't know why they didn't do Atlanta
to Atlanta. Wasted opportunity, it really is. It sounds like
Benjamin moved from Atlanta to Atlanta though, huh maybe kinda.
I mean he's in Atlanta right. He teaches at Georgia State.
That's pretty awesome. Hey, hats off to you for teaching
(47:58):
these days, Benjamin. Yeah, he says, there's a lot of
towns in Texas, oh name that are also Georgian names.
There's an Athens, Texas at Douglasville, Columbus, Dallas, Georgia in Texas.
And he said there's even a Georgia, Texas. Well. That's
just confusing. And he said, thanks for all the great stuff,
and that is from Benjamin Boden Lee. Thanks a lot.
(48:20):
Benjamin Boden Lee, that was a great email. We appreciate it.
Any email at references smoking in the Bandit we're all
right with 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 podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(48:41):
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listened to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's us and we're here to talk to
you about get this our book. We have a Stuff
you Should Know book coming out this November and you're
going to love it and you can preorder it now.
That's right. It's called Stuff you Should Know Colon, an
incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things, and it's been a
lot of fun to work on and we're really, i
(00:20):
mean genuinely excited about how this thing has come together.
It's twenties six chunky Harry chapters that are just going
to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck, we
are indeed proud of this book. It is truly, indubitably
the first Stuff you Should note book and it's coming
out this November and you can order it now, pre
order everywhere you get books, so do that, and we
(00:43):
thank you in advice. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Ran over there. Jerry is a disembodied spirit, but
(01:03):
she's still with us, haunting us, and we are now
set up for achievement, which means this is Stuff you
Should Know. Set up for achievement. That sounds like very
eighties Reagan era campaign. It does, It definitely does. Uh
certainly not the kind of thing that would irritate you,
whether it be in your nose or your brain or anywhere.
(01:27):
Not not the best segue, huh. I'm surprised you didn't
try and work uh, stern mutation in there. Somehow. I
love that word. Are you Were you familiar with that
word before? I don't think you know. I'm forty nine
years old. I don't think I've ever heard sneezing being
called stern mutation. I got oh, man, I just remembered.
I'm forty four now, so you you got me beat.
(01:48):
But I'm in the same boat with you. Yeah, I've
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 your scientists that
wants to be friends with people, you'll still probably say sneezing.
And I mean, it sounds super clinical, but it's actually
really old. It's from I think the first appearance of
(02:10):
it is in a text from fifteen seventy six. Old.
To me, it sounds clinical but there's also a couple
of derivative words stern mutative or stern you too, Tori
are things that make you sneeze and Howard Stern bubba
booe right chewy. So we're talking sneezing obviously, because we
(02:32):
just discoursed on stern youitation, I'm adding an extra syllable.
There aren't I stern mutation. That's the Josh Clark way.
Why do I have to complicate? Why do I have
to complimentate things? Uh, we're talking about sneez sin. It's
the sneezing, and sneezing is a really sort of and
(02:54):
I hate it when people call things like this elegant,
so I'm gonna 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 into all the
ins and outs of how it all happens, but to
allow your nose and your nasal passage in your brain
(03:15):
to act as bouncers and just say get out of
my body. Fast, cut off pal like real fast, you're
cut off cigarettes, smoke, you're cut off Chanel number seven
that nobody likes, you know, Sure, Um, 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,
(03:37):
all mammals at least sneeze, some more than others. I
didn't realize this, but apparently iguanas um sneeze the most
because it's part of their digestion. Yeah. And then I
don't know what it's technically called, but you know when
dogs do what it's called the reverse knees. Yeah, Momo
has that bad. It's so scary, it is, it is.
(03:57):
And we finally got her checked out out and um,
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. Bracky a ceflick. Have you ever
had a dog that that has that? I mean I've
I've never had a dog that didn't do it occasionally. Um,
(04:19):
but Niko, 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? Yeah, it's terrible,
it's really bad. I think you're just supposed to leave
them alone. Too, right, just let him do it. Um, No,
we help her out. We'll we'll rub her throat um,
just kind of stroke it. It seems to help. Uh.
(04:40):
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,
so it's sad for her. Yeah, But it's really not
a sneeze, uh, actually, because a sneeze is when you
(05:00):
were you're trying to get something out of your nose,
and that nose is it's a pretty amazing little system.
It's uh, 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 narrow for a
very good reason, and that is to create turbulence inside
(05:22):
your nasal passages. And you know that turbulence shoves all
that air that you're inhaling to the sides of your
nasal passages, the nasal mucosa, and that's got tiny little
hairs called cilia and the sillia mainly is sort of
like a pre doorman, just saying like, yeah, your I
D S good. Why don't we just move you to
(05:44):
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 him the big bouncer to initiate that
sneeze response. Yeah, sometimes they're just like, no, I'm staying here,
I'm not leaving. You can't kick me out. I hate
the back of the throat. Super drunk. Yeah, yeah, so
I didn't realize that, But it makes sense that we
swallow a lot of the particles that we inhale through
(06:05):
our nose, which is gross but effective. We poop it
out eventually, right, But yeah, if they get if they
get stuck in the nose, then they do something magical,
almost as magical as soap. But um, 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 where. They actually like irritate
(06:27):
some specialized cells that are in that nasal mucosa mast
cells and uh erie nfls I think, 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,
(06:48):
basically where your nose is running and um. They also
simultaneously start sending signals to your brain saying, hey, we
we got one. We need some help. 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 but I can't remember. But the whole
(07:10):
thing takes about a second for the single sneeze. Uh.
And you know it's gonna send that message, like you said,
that chemical message to the sneeze center of the brain,
which is in the lateral medulla. And uh, you know,
the lateral medula gets like everything in the brain, it
gets at signal and says, you know, all I gotta
all I gotta do is react fast whenever the body
(07:31):
tells me to do something, and in this case, it's
to jet out whatever is in the nose as fast
as possible. 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 stern mutation instead
of sneezing, there's actually something called an afferent phase and
an efferent phase and an afferent phases when you get
(07:52):
ready to sneeze, like your your nerves have been um
tickled and are triggered and are itching, and they're sending
messages to your brain uh in your sneeze center. And
then that the efferent phases, when your sneeze center goes okay,
it's go time. And that's actually pretty interesting stuff. And
the way that that happens is basically, from what I
(08:13):
can tell, through a system of nerves olfactory nerve uh
ethmoidal nerve just a terrible word. And then um, your
triedgeminal nerve, which is basically 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
(08:35):
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. Yeah, I mean, like I said, the whole
thing takes place in less than a second. Um, 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. Uh. And once it
(08:58):
does reach that irra irritable point, which of which there's
no going back. He's had too much to drink. Everybody
in the bar knows it. That's when it finally sends uh,
that impulse down through the head and neck to initiate
that response. That involves a lot of muscle groups. Uh.
You know, if you when you sneeze, it's a and
(09:19):
especially with some people, can be a pretty violent um
action for the body. 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.
Um you you your face is all scrunched up, your
neck is tight. Uh. There's a lot of muscles involved
(09:43):
in the reason why is because you're taking in a
bunch of air and then you're expelling a bunch of
air with a lot of force to to get that
thing that won't leave out of your nose. Yeah, like
you can and I've seen professional athletes that have been
sidelined from sneezing h Uh. If you've got a bad
back or something like, it can it can really hurt. Luckily,
(10:04):
I don't have back problems, but occasionally I have, and
a sneeze can really tweak it to where you're like,
that's when you know you're an old man territory. You
have a sneeze and you're like, hold on, I can't
get up. Yeah, I'm gonna have to lay down this weekend.
But your abdomen, your chest, your diaphragm, uh, your vocal chords.
You know you mentioned that you take that deep inhalation,
(10:25):
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, right Yeah,
So you're sucking in a bunch of air holding it,
and so the pressure is building in your thorax um
and then when you release it, your your vocal cord
(10:47):
openings open up to allow the air out. But then
also your your diaphragm is pushing that air out really violently,
so that it's going out in your mouth and your nose.
I saw about a hundred miles an hour is the
the speed that that can hit yeah, easily, um, around
a hundred miles an hour. That is crazy to think
about your eyes closed. But you know, we can go
(11:09):
ahead and to spell the the old myth that, um,
you can pop your eyes out if you keep your
eyes open during a sneeze, 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. That's just that's just would
be impossible. Plus they usually close anyway, just shatically. Yeah. There,
(11:31):
it's a very small group of people who sneeze with
their eyes open. Most people just it's like involuntary. Um,
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. Yeah,
like you can't. I mean, you can try and trigger
a sneeze, and we'll talk about certain things that can
(11:52):
trigger a sneeze, but you definitely can't make yourself sneeze
like full stop. Yeah no, no, I mean, yeah, there's
funny 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. All right, Well,
we'll talk about my sneeze pattern later. I know I've
(12:13):
talked about it before, but okay, I find it fascinating
you you accidentally um, tap out, drink your ovaltine and
morse code to your sneezes. Is that your thing? Very nice? Thanks?
Should we take a break. Let's take a break, Chuck,
and then we'll come back and talk more about sneezing,
(12:37):
Josh and Shock. So well, now we're on the road,
driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
two from Josh Camp Chuck. It's stuff you should know.
(12:59):
All right, 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. Yeah,
Dr Todd g sneeze a lot um No. One of
my neighbor friends, Wesley Uh was like, hey man, he
(13:20):
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. It'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.
You know, Yeah, that seems like it would be an
early stuff you should know for sure, and like it.
(13:42):
It kind of feels like one of those right now
as we're doing it. But um, you know, my neighbors
think of unemployed. It's great. Yeah, but hats off to
West for coming up with that one. Thanks Wes. Yeah,
I leave Josh alone. He's one. He's the one that
we got the the Love your Mama dot com stuff
for and he's like halfway done with our room spray.
(14:05):
We need some more because we're using it so fast,
and you're you're the pusherman. Yeah. I was like, first
of one's on me, the next you're gonna cost you. Yeah,
I don't correct my neighbors. They think I'm I'm down
on my luck, so that's all good, Yeah, opinion, No,
that's definitely the way to go. He's very nosy, so
he um he found out I had to finally just
stop lying, Oh, that's good stuff. So we're we're back
(14:29):
to sneezing. We're talking sneezing and UM. 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 um causes us to sneeze, that
coordinates this involuntary response because you're not like your brain
is not consciously saying like, okay, now, diaphragm, expel the air,
(14:52):
like this is all like we said, involuntary um that
every time you wanted to sneeze, right, expel air. UM.
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 in cats. Don't ask how we knew
where it is in cats, but in cats it's in
the medulla, and so it was hypothesized that it was
(15:14):
in the lateral medulla in humans too. And finally, I
think around two thousand five, there's basically incontrovertible evidence that
came in the form of this fisherman. I believe he
might have been Spanish UM who had the sneezing fit
one day of like about twenty really violent sneezes in
a few minutes, and then all of a sudden he
(15:35):
stops sneezing and couldn't walk right like he his gait
was affected, almost like he had a stroke. And apparently
either he caused a lesion on his lateral medulla from
the sneezing, or that violent sneezing was like an initial
symptom of a lesion, kind of like here's your last
sneeze as ever, And he went to the doctor and
(15:56):
they started testing them, and they would do things like
put cap sasan in his nose, like red hot chili
pepper in his nose, which makes everybody sneeze. It's like
a universal um stern to Tori, right, makes everyone sneeze,
And it wouldn't make this guy sneeze. It would burn
his nose and it would make his nose running, but
(16:17):
it wouldn't make him sneeze. On the other side, it
would make him sneeze the other nostril, but not the
not the right, I think. And so they found this
lesion on his lateral medula, and they said, sneezing center,
welcome to our understanding. At such a bad red hut
Chili Pepper's joke that is sat on through the whole spield.
That's a very grown up of you. Should I say it? Sure?
(16:41):
Whoever said we were grown ups? I was just thinking
the doctor would did the capsasan 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,
you know, than fight like a brave. I don't know.
I'm trying to think of Chili Pepper songs. What if
the doctor came in wearing nothing but one of those
(17:03):
reflector headbands in a sock on his penis. I saw
that coming and that was it. Oh, that'd be great
that that. You know, you got the right doctor. Yeah,
you do the party duck. 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. That the most common cause
(17:28):
of sneeze is and that the collective term is rhinitis
r H I and I T I S. And that
is just your sort of standard inflammation and swelling of
your mucous membrane when you got allergies when pollens in
the air, when you have a cold. But they are
all kinds of other things that can cause a sneeze too,
that are all different types of rhinitis. Yeah, speaking of
(17:51):
rhinitis too, I ran across a term. This the clinical
term for a running nose is rhin a rhea. Yeah
didn't that crody Like that makes it at least twelve
or fifteen times worse than running nose, you know. Yeah,
So there's um occupational rhinitis, which is basically when stuff
you're working around makes you sneeze or irritate your nose. Um,
(18:15):
things like cleaning supplies or you know, flower I saw
was a pretty common occupational rhinitis. Uh, sternitatory or sternitative,
depending on your preference. Um. Cigarette smoke, if you're work
in a place where they let you smoke, like maybe
a cigarette factory, although I heard that they don't allow
(18:37):
smoking inside some cigarette factories now in like North Carolina.
Isn't that just the end all be all? You think
they would allow you to do that while you're working.
They used to up until very recently. Oh yeah, I
have the impression you can just puck one off the
line and light it up. Wow, I guess if you're smoker,
that's a big perk. It is. But then now they're
(19:00):
like no smoking inside, which leads you to the follow
up question why why would what very dangerous you dummy? Uh,
let me see. You've also got the hormonal rhinitis, which
is women might experience that when they have high estrogen levels.
(19:21):
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. Sure, Um, there's drug induced rhinitis.
There's certain drugs that are have been identified. Um, what
do you say the hippis kun right, Yeah, mushrooms will
make you sneeze. Um. Apparently I'm guessing that I didn't
(19:42):
see this anywhere, but this is an educated guest. Tell
me if you think it sounds convincing. Um, those drugs
probably stimulate your masts cells to release histamines, and that
that just basically almost like a phantom um allergen. Okay,
that's I'm going with. But apparently end SAIDs beta blockers
(20:04):
and some anti hypertensive drugs are the ones that are known.
Um drug induced rynitis. Stern tutores. Uh. If you are
of advanced age, you might have what's called geri attic
rhye rhinitis, which is that's when those uh submucoastal glands atrophy,
(20:26):
and that means your nose can get really irritated and
you might sneeze a lot. Right. Um. That is very
sad to me if you think about it, because there's
not much that can be done. I'm sure you're there's there.
You just put like maybe vaseline or something in your nose.
That's got to be the cure for that. But that's
just that because it's like your your little bodies, you know,
(20:47):
running down. We should have a cure for that. Yeah,
Like our medicine is not far enough along in my opinion,
for too for this to be. It's kind of a
disappointing everybody, am I Right? Yeah? So we've talked before,
Chuck multiple times about photic sneezing, which I am a
(21:08):
photo sneezer, and I don't remember if you are or not.
I feel like I have, but I don't. It's not
like roundly something that happens to me. I don't think. So, Okay,
I am a photo sneezer more than I'm a native
born Toledo and even maybe they're tied. So how does
it get you? Like, any time you like turn on
a light, very rarely light, it's almost always sunlight, and
(21:33):
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 come out and then nice and
I come out and it's very sunny, it is guaranteed
three sneezes in a row? Is that every usual pattern? Yeah? Usually?
And I looked into that, like why do we sneeze
(21:54):
multiple times? Apparently there's a very simple answer for it,
and that's that your your brain has to turn mean
that that the irritant hasn't been ejected yet. But with
photo sneezing, it's it's almost like it's mistaken identity, right. Yeah.
I actually did see some other things too about the patterns,
because that's always fascinated me because I always sneeze in threes.
(22:16):
And um, I did see where sometime some places said
that just once isn't enough, so it's like a setup.
Get it to the front of your nose and then
it get out. But I also saw where it could
be genetic. Yeah, like that you inherit a sneeze pattern,
and that like double sneezers beget to double sneezers. It
makes sense because there are like photos. Sneezing is one
(22:39):
of a couple ways that you can inherit a genetic
sneezing traits, So that would make sense. Yeah, that's right. Photo.
I'm sorry, photic sneeze reflexes passed on by autosomal dominant inheritance.
And it's and I love this, uh this acronym because
this is one of those reverse engineered ones that we
(23:00):
like so much. Do you like this one? I like
this one. I hated the other one. Yeah, man, with
a passion like I wouldn't even I wasn't gonna bring
that one up to be Okay, we'll just pass it
by and let everybody wonder for the rest of their lives.
But autosamial dominant compelling helio up uphthalmic outburst syndrome at you,
(23:22):
it's a little rough, it is. I mean, there's a
whole d, a whole dominant in there that's missing. But okay, fine,
we'll go We'll go with that. But that's the that
is a term for photo sneezing that was um coined
at some some point by Someone's right for acronyms is
when they just sneak a word in there and don't
use it for a letter. Yeah, it's lazy, although I
(23:45):
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 got to figure it out,
you know, I mean, just take dominant out, just go
with autosomal. You know. Yeah, no one who would know.
I wouldn't have noticed. So um you were saying, Uh,
(24:05):
was that it for the patterns and sneezing patterns. 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
if it feels ingrained somehow, Yeah, like if you only
(24:26):
do two, you notice and it does it feel incomplete?
It does, but it that almost never happens. Occasionally I'll
do a forebanger, but I don't I don't know that
I ever sneeze once or twice, it's almost always three. Yeah,
And speaking of incomplete, if you actually go if you
experience the afferent phase, but the efferent phase isn't triggered,
(24:50):
but it's enough to drive you nuts. Um, there's things
you can do, and one of those things that's recommended
is to look at a bright light er look kind
of don't look directly at this on, but look towards
the sun um and that should help jump start that
efferent phase. The second part where the actual sneeze takes place, Okay,
that makes sense, But they think what's going on is
(25:12):
that there's a crossover between um, the sneeze reflex arc
and the pupillary light reflex arc, which basically is one
nerve becoming so um stimulated that it it um it
stimulates by proxy the the other nerve, the sneeze nerve.
(25:33):
So you're getting so overloaded with bright light when you
see that sunlight that it it accidentally jumps on over
to your sneeze reflection as well and makes you sneeze.
It's like, are you getting all this light? Are you
getting get a load of this? And I think they've
landed on about between twenty. Generally people have this photic
(25:54):
sneeze reflex, right, So that's I mean, that's pretty substantial.
There are some other, like small all identity groups of
sneezers that are far smaller than that. Um. Apparently there
are people who, um, there's a four families, not one
in four people, four families, as far as anyone knows,
(26:15):
who have something called um snatiation, which is where you
if they eat too much and they feel overly full,
it will trigger a sneezing attack. Yeah, I would call
that rare. Yeah, four families for sure, and we're just
gonna pass right on by, right chuck uh yes, acronym um.
(26:36):
Getting back to the photo 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 um they can't pick their nose.
They can't they can't use any implement at all to
(26:58):
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 it a
little device, yeah, which is no fun but necessary. Or
you hold them on their side and you blow in
their ear usually clears up in noo. But I should
probably just go ahead and say I don't do that.
(27:19):
That was a joke. You can whisper sweet nothings, sure,
but don't Yeah, don't do that. Um. But babies are
are pretty sensitive to that photoclight reflex, and they think
that maybe a reason that basically we that's just sort
of a holdover from when we were babies. It makes sense.
It also makes sense to me that babies might have
um more active or kind of raw or nerve pathways,
(27:44):
So maybe they're just more sensitive to that that jump
over that crossover. Maybe UM plucking nose hairs that ever
happened to you every time? So it doesn't make me sneeze,
but it makes my eyes water like I've just seen
every UM long distance commercial from the nineties all at once. Yeah.
And it's interesting because those you talked earlier about the
(28:07):
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
either watering of eyes or or definitely sneezing. Even if
(28:30):
you like pluck a hair out of your head, that
could do it. 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.
I've never plucked an eyebrow hair. Oh. Every once in
a while I'll get one. Um, that's a big, fat,
long goat hair. It's just suddenly comes up overnight. I've
(28:52):
seen I've got those two. Okay, well I pluck those.
Just trim those, you know, is um, maybe I should
trim them. That's a good idea. Um. But have you
ever noticed if you get one and there's almost invariably
one on the other side too, like they come up
in pairs. Has does that happen to you? I have
not noticed that when you pull on one, does the
other one get shorter? That that was wonderful, that'd be great. Yeah,
(29:20):
it's like pulling that spaghetti through your nose. And out
your mouth. Don't do that either, Can you do that? Uh? No,
I've never tried to do I've never tried either. I
don't want to. Um. There's also a group of people
who sneeze when they become sexually aroused. Yeah, that's the
thing apparently, or if your orgasm, like after your orgasm,
it could trigger a sneezing fit. Yeah, it's an apparently
(29:42):
a bigger group than than you would expect. Some researcher
went around the 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 ay more than I would expect from just
going around on internet chat rooms and asking people, you know.
(30:04):
And also, we should point out way not scientific, 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 uh journal. Coincidentally enough,
(30:26):
they suggest that it's because the nose contains erectile tissue,
which it does. Which erectile tissues just tissue that can
become larger engorged by blood flow. And yes, you have
erectile tissue and your genitalia. Um, yes you have it
in your nose, but they're not they're not in any
(30:46):
way related as far as anyone's ever even thought, aside
from the people in this journal. And that the most
bizarre thing you've ever heard. It's pretty bizarre. Like your
nose is becoming aroused, is basically what they're saying. And
so you sneeze fantastic. Uh. There's also intractable sneezing or psychogenic,
(31:07):
and that is something that's almost exclusive to young women, um, girls,
adolescents basically going through puberty. And these are girls who
may not suffer from allergies, they're not sick with a
cold or anything, but can go in these big sneezing
binges for days and days at a time. Yes, and
(31:28):
apparently the world, 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 nine eight one, and her sneezing fit
ended nine hundred and seventy seven days later in September
of nineteen eighty three. I remember hearing about this one
(31:49):
and as it I mean as it went on, I
was way too young for this. But you know, had
I had I been more aware, I would have felt
very bad for this girl, um, 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, a
(32:11):
million sneezes in the first three d and sixty five days,
which is basically a sneeze a minute on average. And
chuck an 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 means this
(32:32):
girl was averaging a sneeze a minute, um, just during
waking hours, but a sneeze a minute over twenty four
hours compressed into say ten or twelve hours that she
was awake that day or would she wake herself up sneezing.
I don't know if. If that's the case, then she
had a really, really rough year because she was sneezing
every minute and not getting any sleep. Yeah, I mean
(32:54):
it's disruptive no matter what, no one. I mean, you
can't hold on a job if you're sneezing every minute. Well,
luckily she was twelve, and this is after child labor
laws were passed. I'm hoping she did have that cigarette factory.
That's right. She has nimble little fingers for sorting cigarettes. Perfect.
Should we take another break, Yeah, I think so. All right,
we'll talk about these the traveling Droplets right after this
(33:16):
great band Josh and Shock. Well, now we're on the road,
driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
(33:37):
two from Josh Damp Chuck. 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? I think it was during? Was during? Ok?
(34:00):
And this is a Dave helped us out. Dave Russ
helped us out with this one. Yeah, so and uh
and I think we've all seen these videos by now,
um with everything that's going on. But in two thousand
sixteen and a researcher from m I T named Lydia.
Uh oh boy, goodness me Bubia sure bariba, I'm going
(34:22):
with buru buruba. It is. There's a couple of sounds
in there that follow one another. It makes it very difficult. Yeah,
whenever you pack three vowels in a row, it's always
sort of a dealer's choice. So she published some SloMo
two thousand frame per second uh film images of people
(34:44):
sneezing and what that looks like. That's where we get
and other people have done this too, and and measured
the sneeze. But that's one place where we get the
hundred miles per hour stat oh from that study. Yeah,
and other places. I mean that's pretty common knowledge now.
But um up Tott. You can blow a sneeze. It
(35:04):
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 air sort of as how
a sneeze works. It's as they call it, sheets of fluids,
and you know, you've got these big, big hunks of
mucus and saliva that just sort of come out together
(35:25):
and then break apart little by little until you get
to the fine mists that sort of can hang in
the air. Yeah, it starts as a clump and then
turns into ropey filaments and then into increasingly smaller particles.
And those really small particles the air sulized stuff. That's
the scary stuff. I saw a Bristol study that said,
and this wasn't necessarily coronavirus, but that contagious germs can
(35:47):
stay in the air, suspended in the air for weeks possibly. Um,
that would have to be a very hardy contagious virus
or bacteria with the air flow, yeah, to just sit there.
But um, that the twenty seven feet which is kind
of common knowledge these days in the era of coronavirus,
that your sneeze can can project those particles up to
(36:10):
like twenty seven ft. There's little pockets of gas and
turbulence that are in a in a room, even a
room that seems still but certainly one that has like
the a c on or air flowing through it, and
those little particles can hitch rides on those pockets and travel. Um,
I saw two hundred times further than you expel them
(36:31):
with just your sneeze. So you know what prevents that
covering yourself, your mouth and your nose when you sneeze,
and or wearing a mask. 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
(36:53):
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, which is what they say is
sort of the best thing to do. But that elbow
is pretty good. Uh, it's a pretty good system. I
think it's really cute to see a little kid do
that too, Yeah, because they're doing the right thing. It's
it's uh, it is adorable. I agree. Um, but yeah,
(37:16):
the the ideal is to to sneeze into a tissue. Um,
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, every single time. And I don't sneeze
a lot. Emily sneeze is a lot. Oh yeah, yeah,
because she's got the allergies. Oh yeah, she's got a lifelong,
(37:37):
persistent tickle in her nose. It's terrible. Does she have um,
what's it called the kind of sneezing where it's oh, psychogenic,
intractable sneezing. Well, no, because she's not, she's not thirteen man. 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
(38:00):
to be around, not to not tough for me, but
you know, right right yeah stop. Um. So that I
did look up to find out where we stood as
far as knowledge on sneezing and um contagion outdoors goes.
And from what I can tell, there was some study
that was done by some engineers that sprayed an aerosol
(38:22):
can running walking and then on a bike, and the
results showed that the 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
(38:44):
or thirty feet um directly toward you. You're probably not
going to catch enough of a viral load of something
like coronavirus to become sick from it. Um, especially if
you're not in a crowded group. If you're just walking
outside and somebody else is walking, you know, fifteen ft
ahead of you and they're just breathing and they're on
the other side of the street, you're probably going to
(39:05):
be fine just because that stuff is gonna dissipate so
much because 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. Yeah, I mean
I haven't, uh, I haven't been around a human that sneezed,
aside from my wife and you know, four or five months,
(39:27):
like I would, even when I've gone to the store
and like I'm on the lookout for that stuff. Oh yeah,
and um, 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. Sure, I think
you're allowed to yell at that person. But I haven't
(39:48):
even seen anyone been around anyone that sneezed. Uh, so
that's been a comfort. Yeah, you mean you me went
to the store and came back and said, somebody sneezed
twice in the whole store. Just started looking around like
where that come from. Yeah, it's weird. Huh. Yeah. Yeah,
there's basically like a stampede or something to get away
from that thing. It's it is. It's a weird, weird
time to be alive. We're all going to be very
(40:09):
very weird even after things go back to normal. I think, yeah,
you know it's gonna I know I will be. Yeah.
So should we talk a little bit about a 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, uh
(40:29):
and that. You know. There's some different explanations, but um
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, you know,
things are pretty bad. We should just we should say
God bless you if someone is sneezing because they might
be dying. Yeah, which is a from what I saw,
(40:52):
A big departure from um earlier Christian teachings which taught
people to just totally ignore these or say God is dead,
which I right, which I find very weird, Like why
would you teach people to ignore sneezes? I didn't get that.
But I found this really awesome article called Romance and
Tragedy of Sneezing by Dr Wilson D. Wallace in Scientific
(41:16):
Monthly from nineteen nine, and he cited that that earlier
Christians were like just ignored it, just pretend it didn't happen. Yeah,
i'm a i'm a i'm ana. Bless you guy. Um,
and don't do the gazoom tight or salute which is
Spanish to your health, that kind of thing. It's also
a toast, Yeah I say that. I don't. I don't
(41:37):
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 did it with anyone anymore, you know, it's I
don't I forgot to deal with people. I always raise
my glass and say it's time to get toe up
from the flow up, I say, made Jupiter bless you, right.
I saw another one from the Greeks too. I love
(41:58):
that one. Um, live zeus, preserve you. I think you
and I should bring back both of those. That's fantastic.
Can't you imagine everyone in greased just like being like,
don't sneeze, don't sneeze? If everyone's all twitchy and shaky
from people yelling that at them. Yeah, I mean it's
weird too because it's a it's a very kind thing
(42:19):
to do to a stranger. It's uh, this one, um,
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 uh, and
not to be funny, it gets a laugh, but it's
(42:39):
just sort of a it's almost like an involuntary micro
affection I think for most you know, non monsters for sure. Yeah,
where people just kind of have a brief connection, right
and you know they don't know each other. But now
it's like you're a human being. What is it now? Well,
just bless you and get pleased, get very far away
from again, bless you over there. Um. So there's also
(43:03):
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 um
in Persia. Um zoro asters believed that your body was
fighting off a fiend that had invaded, like an invading
(43:26):
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 that that
deserved a prayer, and that if you ever heard somebody sneeze,
you would say the same prayer with him. I couldn't
find what prayer though. Yeah, it seems to be a
good luck thing, and a lot of cultures throughout the years,
(43:48):
according to the Talmud, it's a good omen if you
sneeze when you're praying. Uh. In China and Japan, if
you sneeze, it means someone's sort of like your ears
are burning, someone's talking about you, and one sneeze means
they're saying nice things to two means they're spreading gossip.
I don't know what they would think about me with
my three. Three means you die, right? What would three mean?
(44:13):
I don't know. I mean, because there's only two ways
people can talk about you, right, they might be saying
something like Chuck has a beard. Okay, you know that's
as neutral as it gets, exactly. Um. So there's there's folklore,
and then there's what we think is true, which is
a kind of folklore, but it's actually it's just folklore
(44:35):
to urban legends. Is what we call them our 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 debunked that one pretty clearly,
I think, don't you can't do it? Um. And then
there's some other ones too. There's one that you told
me about that I had no idea until she said this,
But apparently some people believe that you basically die for
(45:00):
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 it. I
had never heard that before until a couple of days ago,
and um 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
(45:22):
in 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
that's the key to whether your hearts you know, alive
or not. Yeah, yeah, your heart does not stop. No,
that's like playground stuff, it is. I thought it was
very cute. What about sneezing after sex preventing pregnancy? Did
(45:45):
you see this one? Well, I mean, what are you
sneezing out of? Right? So? I mean that like, that's
the idea that if you sneeze, you're expelling um well,
there's really no other way to put its semen, and
that that would keep you from getting pregnant. Wow, it
seems a little ridic Yeah, that's another playground thing, I guess.
(46:07):
So what's what playground have you been hanging out? Pretty
advanced playground at Uh? You got anything else? Oh, I've
got one more thing, Chuck, you anything else, I got
nothing else. In two thousand and 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. Wow. Yeah, internally didn't break
(46:31):
through the skin, but his his his throat internally was
up because that's what I pictured, like a throat explosion.
It just blew his head completely off, like that guy
in Scanners. Well like I guess that's it for sneezing everybody.
Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks again to West for the idea.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
(46:53):
we call this Atlanta, Texas. Hey guys, my name's ben Ley,
local atlantin Georgia and my life 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. Uh,
and you joke that no one knew that town exists,
even the people that live there. And that's pretty much true.
(47:14):
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 Texarkana, Texas, not too far from there,
which is basically famous for being in the Smoky in
the Bandit movie. I thought that was the town that
dreaded Sundown too, wasn't it. M I don't know about that.
I definitely remember from Smoking in the Bandit because they're
(47:36):
driving that beer from Texarkana to Atlanta, and uh, Benjamin
here says, I don't know why they didn't do Atlanta
to Atlanta. Wasted opportunity, it really is. It sounds like
Benjamin moved from Atlanta to Atlanta though, huh maybe kinda.
I mean he's in Atlanta right. He teaches at Georgia State.
That's pretty awesome. Hey, hats off to you for teaching
(47:58):
these days, Benjamin. Yeah, he says, there's a lot of
towns in Texas, oh name that are also Georgian names.
There's an Athens, Texas at Douglasville, Columbus, Dallas, Georgia in Texas.
And he said there's even a Georgia, Texas. Well. That's
just confusing. And he said, thanks for all the great stuff,
and that is from Benjamin Boden Lee. Thanks a lot.
(48:20):
Benjamin Boden Lee, that was a great email. We appreciate it.
Any email at references smoking in the Bandit we're all
right with 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 podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(48:41):
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listened to your favorite shows.
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