11 Surprising Sneezing Facts

11 Surprising Sneezing Facts

1. "Sneezes start in your nerves," says Neil Kao, MD, an allergy and asthma specialist at the Allergic Disease and Asthma Center in Greenville, S.C. Everyone's nervous system is basically wired in the same way, Kao explains. But signals traveling along nerves can take slightly different paths to and from the brain, resulting in different sneeze scenarios from person to person. "It's a nerve transmission that tells your brain something is in your nose that needs to come out," Kao tells WebMD.
2. Sneezing helps keep your body safe. "Sneezing is an important part of the immune process, helping to keep us healthy and sniffle-free" Kao says. Sneezes protect your body by clearing the nose of bacteria and viruses, Kao explains. When something enters your nose or you encounter a trigger that sets off your "sneeze center" in your brain, located in the lower brain stem, signals are rapidly sent to tightly close your throat, eyes, and mouth. Next, your chest muscles vigorously contract, and then your throat muscles quickly relax. As result, air -- along with saliva and mucus -- is forced out of your mouth and nose. Voila, you've sneezed.
3. Sneezes are speedy. "Sneezes travel at about 100 miles per hour," says Patti Wood, author of Success Signals: Understanding Body Language. She adds that a single sneeze can send 100,000 germs into the air.
4. Plucking your eyebrows may make you sneeze. Plucking may set off a nerve in your face that supplies your nasal passages. As a result, you sneeze.
5. You don't sneeze in your sleep. When you sleep, so do your sneezing nerves -- which means you usually don't sneeze when you doze.
6. Your workout may make you sneeze. "Exercise can make you sneeze," Kao says. "You hyperventilate when you're over-exerted, and as a result, your nose and mouth start to dry up. So your nose reacts by starting to drip, making you sneeze."
7. The longest sneezing spree: 978 days, a record set by Donna Griffiths of Worcestershire, England, according to background information on the Library of Congress' web site.
8. Sunshine may make you sneeze. "Bright sunlight causes one out of three people to sneeze," Wood says. "The light sneezers are called 'photics,' from the Greek meaning ‘of light.' And in fact, light sensitivity is an inherited trait -- just one more thing we can blame on our parents."
9. Sex can be a sneezing trigger. Have sex, must sneeze? It happens more often than you might think. Researchers believe that the stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system fires off signals in some people to not only enjoy the act of sex, but to sneeze when it's over.
10. The sneeziest animal: the iguana. Iguanas sneeze more often and more productively than any other animal, according to Wood's research. Sneezing is how they rid their bodies of certain salts that are the normal byproduct of their digestive process, Woods says.
    
11. How do you stop a sneeze? While it's not foolproof, "Try breathing through your mouth and pinching the end of your nose," Kao says.

Sneezing Superstition
Strange sneezing facts aside, there are some beliefs about sneezing that just aren't true. For instance, it's not true that your heart stops when you sneeze. When your chest contracts because of a sneeze, your blood flow is momentarily constricted as well. As a result, the rhythm of your heart may change, but it definitely doesn't stop. And your eyeballs cannot pop out of your head when you sneeze. Most people naturally close their eyes when they sneeze, but if they are able to keep them open, their eyes stay firmly planted in their heads where they belong. "While a person's blood pressure behind the eyes may increase slightly when he sneezes, it's not enough force to dislodge the eyeballs from the head," Kao says.

Wood has heard of other sneezing folklore, including the notion that if you sneeze, company is coming over, and if your cat sneezes, it's going to rain. As for the blessing many people say after someone sneezes, Wood explains that the Greek word for sneeze is "pneuma," which means "soul or spirit." "A post-sneeze blessing stems from the ancient belief that sneezing is a near-death experience, and that a blessing will prevent your soul or sneeze from escaping your body and will deter the devil from entering in," Wood says.

Source webmd

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Whooping Cough (Pertussis)

Whooping cough — or pertussis — is an infection of the respiratory system caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis (or B. pertussis). It's characterized by severe coughing spells that end in a "whooping" sound when the person breathes in. Before a vaccine was available, pertussis killed 5,000 to 10,000 people in the United States each year. Now, the pertussis vaccine has reduced the annual number of deaths to less than 30.

But in recent years, the number of cases has started to rise. By 2004, the number of whooping cough cases spiked past 25,000, the highest level it's been since the 1950s. It's mainly affected infants younger than 6 months old before they're adequately protected by immunizations, and kids 11 to 18 years old whose immunity has faded.

Signs and Symptoms

The first symptoms of whooping cough are similar to those of a common cold:

• runny nose
• sneezing
• mild cough
• low-grade fever

After about 1 to 2 weeks, the dry, irritating cough evolves into coughing spells. During a coughing spell, which can last for more than a minute, the child may turn red or purple. At the end of a spell, the child may make a characteristic whooping sound when breathing in or may vomit. Between spells, the child usually feels well.

Although it's likely that infants and younger children who become infected with B. pertussis will develop the characteristic coughing episodes with their accompanying whoop, not everyone will. However, sometimes infants don't cough or whoop as older kids do. They may look as if they're gasping for air with a reddened face and may actually stop breathing for a few seconds during particularly bad spells.

Adults and adolescents with whooping cough may have milder or atypical symptoms, such as a prolonged cough without the coughing spells or the whoop.

Contagiousness

Pertussis is highly contagious. The bacteria spread from person to person through tiny drops of fluid from an infected person's nose or mouth. These may become airborne when the person sneezes, coughs, or laughs. Others then can become infected by inhaling the drops or getting the drops on their hands and then touching their mouths or noses.

Infected people are most contagious during the earliest stages of the illness up to about 2 weeks after the cough begins. Antibiotics shorten the period of contagiousness to 5 days following the start of antibiotic treatment.

Prevention

Whooping cough can be prevented with the pertussis vaccine, which is part of the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis) immunization. DTaP immunizations are routinely given in five doses before a child's sixth birthday. To give additional protection in case immunity fades, the AAP now recommends that kids ages 11-18 get a booster shot of the new combination vaccine (called Tdap), ideally when they're 11 or 12 years old, instead of the Td booster routinely given at this age. As is the case with all immunization schedules, there are important exceptions and special circumstances. Your doctor will have the most current information.

Experts believe that up to 80% of nonimmunized family members will develop whooping cough if they live in the same house as someone who has the infection. For this reason, anyone who comes into close contact with someone who has pertussis should receive antibiotics to prevent spread of the disease. Young kids who have not received all five doses of the vaccine may require a booster dose if exposed to an infected family member.

Incubation

The incubation period (the time between infection and the onset of symptoms) for whooping cough is usually 7 to 10 days, but can be as long as 21 days.

Duration

Pertussis can cause prolonged symptoms. The child usually has 1 to 2 weeks of common cold symptoms, followed by approximately 2 to 4 weeks of severe coughing, though the coughing spells can sometimes last even longer. The last stage consists of another several weeks of recovery with gradual resolution of symptoms. In some children, the recovery period may last for months.

Professional Treatment

Call the doctor if you suspect that your child has whooping cough. To make a diagnosis, the doctor will take a medical history, do a thorough physical exam, and take nose and throat mucus samples that will be examined and cultured for B. pertussis bacteria. Blood tests and a chest X-ray may also be done.

If your child has whooping cough, it will be treated with antibiotics, usually for 2 weeks. Many experts believe that the medication is most effective in shortening the infection when it's given in the first stage of the illness, before coughing spells begin. But even if antibiotics are started later, they're still important because they can stop the spread of the pertussis infection to others. Ask your doctor whether preventive antibiotics or vaccine boosters for other family members are needed.

Some kids with whooping cough need to be treated in a hospital. Infants and younger children are more likely to be hospitalized because they're at greater risk for complications such as pneumonia, which occurs in about 1 in 5 children under the age of 1 year who have pertussis. Up to 75% of infants younger than 6 months old with whooping cough will receive hospital treatment. In infants younger than 6 months of age, whooping cough can even be life-threatening.

While in the hospital, a child may need suctioning of thick respiratory secretions. Breathing will be monitored and oxygen given, if needed. Intravenous (IV) fluids might be required if the child shows signs of dehydration or has difficulty eating. Precautions will be taken to prevent the infection from spreading to other patients, hospital staff, and visitors.

Home Treatment

If your child is being treated for pertussis at home, follow the schedule for giving antibiotics exactly as your doctor prescribed. Giving cough medicine probably will not help, as even the strongest usually can't relieve the coughing spells of whooping cough.

During recovery, let your child rest in bed and use a cool-mist vaporizer to help loosen respiratory secretions and soothe irritated lungs and breathing passages. (Be sure to follow directions for keeping it clean and mold-free.) In addition, keep your home free of irritants that can trigger coughing spells, such as aerosol sprays, tobacco smoke, and smoke from cooking, fireplaces, and wood-burning stoves.

Kids with whooping cough may vomit or not eat or drink much because of frequent coughing. So offer smaller, more frequent meals and encourage your child to drink lots of fluids. Watch for signs of dehydration, too, including thirst, irritability, restlessness, lethargy, sunken eyes, a dry mouth and tongue, dry skin, crying without tears, and fewer trips to the bathroom to urinate (or in infants, fewer wet diapers).

When to Call the Doctor

Call the doctor if you suspect that your child has whooping cough or has been exposed to someone with whooping cough, even if your child has already received all scheduled pertussis immunizations.

Your child should be examined by a doctor if he or she has prolonged coughing spells, especially if these spells:

• make your child turn red or purple
• are followed by vomiting
• are accompanied by a whooping sound when your child breathes in after coughing

If your child has been diagnosed with whooping cough and is being treated at home, seek immediate medical care if he or she has difficulty breathing or shows signs of dehydration.

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