Medical Mysteries LET US ALL JOIN FOR A MOMENT OF SILENT PRA…AH-CHOO!

Many of us have been in this awkward situation.

You have to sneeze, and it’s not going to be one of those polite dainty types of sneezes. You’re ready for a monster sneeze—the rip-roaring kind that will rattle the windows, awaken sleeping babies, and terrify cats.

The problem is you’re in one of those situations that demands total quiet. Maybe you’re at a funeral or at a wedding and the “I Do’s” are about to start. Or you’re in church during a silent prayer.

What to do? One choice is to let that huge sneeze fly and become a social pariah for the rest of your life. The other option is to attempt to stifle the sneeze. You’re afraid, though, that your head will balloon up to double its normal size and your eyes will bug out four inches like in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

Sorry to disappoint you Daffy Duck fans but nothing that dramatic will happen. Holding in a sneeze, however, can create problems.

“Occasionally, people will cause some damage to their eardrums or their sinuses if they stifle a very violent sneeze,” says Dr. Rachael Szekely, an immunologist in the Department of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine at Cleveland Clinic.

“Your nose connects to your Eustachian tube, which connects to your middle-ear and so, you could also push things through the Eustachian tube and back into the middle ear—mucus that’s infected and you can get middle ear infections because of that,” Dr. Szekely added.

A whopper sneeze can blast air out of your nose at speeds between 100 and 500 miles per hour, depending on which expert you believe. That has the potential to cause some major problems.

“I’ve seen patients with a ruptured eardrum or pulled back muscle and you hear about cracked ribs,” says Dr. Michael Benninger an eye, ear and nose specialist and chairman of the Head and Neck Institute at Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Alan Wild, a head and neck surgeon at Saint Louis School of Medicine School of Medicine, says that suppressing a sneeze also has the potential to cause an injury to the diaphragm, break a blood vessel in your eye or weaken a blood vessel in your brain.

Injuries of this type, Dr.

Wild says, “are flukes or are related to some underlying anatomical oddity.” Still, he says, “I wouldn’t recommend suppressing a sneeze by any method.”

So sneeze away to your heart’s content. You’ll get another chance to pray silently.

Sources:

“You Asked: Is It Bad to Hold in a Sneeze?” by Markham Held, Time Magazine, July 29, 2015, http://time.com/3975363/sneezing/

“Can holding in a sneeze cause hearing damage?” UAMS Audiology Clinic, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences http://uamshealth. com/healthlibrary2/medicalmyths/holdinginasneeze/ “Is It Safe to Hold in a Sneeze?” by Corey Binns, livescience.com, August 19, 2010, http://www.livescience.com/32776-is-it-safe-tohold-in-a-sneeze.html

“Dangers If You Try to Hold Your Sneeze, by Dr. Sapna Parikh and ABC7NY Eyewitness News, WABC-TV, May 12, 2014, http://abc7ny.com/health/ dangers-if-you-try-to-hold-your-sneeze/55388/ “Don’t Stifle That Sneeze! You Could Get Hurt,” by Lungs, Breathing & Allergy Team, Cleveland Clinic, April 23, 2014, https://health.clevelandclinic. org/2014/04/dont-stifle-that-sneeze-you-couldget-hurt/