- Hope your nose isn’t itching.
Have you ever wondered why people bless each other after sneezing? It might have something to do with how dangerous sneezing can be.
Case in point, a man recently literally sneezed his guts out.
Although sneezing is an important reaction for clearing debris and dust out of our windpipes, it can lead to serious injuries. After all, when sneezing, your body ejects air from your lungs at up to 35 miles per hour, generating one PSI of pressure.
Here are seven awful injuries a single sneeze might cause, together with a bonus myth about sneeze-related terror.
1. Pulled Muscles
On the milder end of the scale, sneezing can lead to pulled muscles. After all, your muscles have to contract quite a bit to produce the force required for a sneeze, so it’s so wonder they might get hurt.
The most common sneezing-related muscle injuries are those of the diaphragm and the back, which are the primary muscles responsible for producing sneezes. That said, the bodily jerk a sneeze causes could lead you to pull a leg or arm muscle as well.
The muscle contractions could cause other injuries as well. A strong back muscle spasm, for example, could lead to a slipped disc in your spine.
2. Collapsed Lung
Your lungs are designed to withstand sneezes, but a particularly powerful one could still lead to a collapsed lung. A collapsed lung, called pneumothorax in medical lingo, is a condition where air manages to get into the cavity between your lungs and ribcage.
But how does the air get there? Well, in the case of sneezes, usually from a ruptured lung.
The pressure of a strong sneeze can tear a lung and allow air to seep into the chest cavity. The good news is that in most cases, a collapsed lung will heal itself and requires no medical intervention (although it will be painful and irritating).
3. Herniated Lung
Your ribcage is made to expand as you breathe, but it has its limits. Your chest cavity is particularly weak in the fleshy segments between each rib.
During sneezing, you may generate enough pressure to tear open the inter-rib space. Consequently, your lungs might try to escape from your chest through that newly-made hole.
Congratulations, you now have a herniated lung.
The lung hernia might be small enough that you will recover on your own while a doctor keeps an eye on you. If the tear is big enough, though, you’ll need surgery so they can stuff your lungs back in your chest and sew the hole shut.
4. Bone Fractures
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but sneezes… Well, they can do it too.
The most common reason for sneeze-related broken bones is people smacking their limbs on something while they sneeze. That said, you might sustain much more exotic fractures as well.
For instance, the pressure of a sneeze could shatter the small bones in your ears, leading to hearing loss. In the most severe cases, however, you could fracture your skull.
We’re not joking. You can break your eye socket by sneezing too hard.
5. Aortic Dissection
Sneezing is not for those weak of heart. That’s because it can lead to literal heartbreak.
If you suffer an aortic dissection, it means you just managed to rupture your aorta enough for blood to seep out of it. Considering your aorta is your body’s largest artery, that’s not particularly good news.
In fact, if you don’t realize it has happened, aortic dissection has a 50% mortality rate within 48 hours. And yes, sneezing can and has torn peoples’ hearts apart.
6. Brain Hemorrhage
Finally, sneezing can rip your brain apart. A forceful sneeze may tear the lining that surrounds your brain, leading to subarachnoid hemorrhaging.
That’s doctor-ese for saying your brain is bleeding from between its linings. The oozing blood is not going where it needs to go, which will lead to parts of your brain becoming blood- and oxygen-deprived.
In other words, you’ll have a stroke. We probably don’t need to tell you why that’s not healthy.
7. Torn Windpipe
Alright, sneezing can just kill you. But what if you clamp your mouth and nose shut and hold the sneeze in?
Yeah, you might not want to do that. Remember that one PSI of pressure a sneeze generates?
Well, holding a sneeze in can increase the pressure up to five PSI. And now it’s all trapped in your trachea with nowhere to go.
And that, children, is how you tear a gaping hole in your windpipe.
Myth: Dislodged Eyeballs
That was a lot of unpleasantness, so let’s end things on a positive note. We’re all familiar with that schoolyard rumor that sneezing with your eyes open will force your eyeballs from their sockets.
Well, that’s not true. Although you might shatter the eye socket, your eyeballs are firmly anchored in place with muscle and nerves.
Of course, you should never say that freak incidents can’t happen. But the thing is, if a sneeze makes your eyeballs fly off, they were going fall out of your skull somehow in any case.
It’s not the sneeze’s fault.