A good sneeze brings a host of benefits and, as hay fever sweeps the nation, many of us will be in need of one.
Medically speaking, a sneeze is a powerful expulsion of air that removes all sorts of irritants from your nose.
Usually it’s triggered when a foreign substance be in a pathogen like a virus or irritant like pollen or a chemical enters your nostrils.
While a natural reaction, they can cause a range of terrifying and gruesome injuries including, in extreme circumstances, your bowels popping out of your abdomen.
From breaking ribs, bursting lungs and even tearing delicate brain tissue, there are many ways you could end up in hospital after a simple sneeze, reveals Professor Adam Taylor, an expert in Anatomy at Lancaster University.
A sneeze is a powerful expulsion of air that removes all sorts of irritants from your nose, not just snot
Exploding bowels
One gruesome case study revealed how a man’s bowels exploded after he sneezed.
The 63-year-old from Florida was eating breakfast with his wife at a diner when a seemingly harmless sneeze caused his parts of his lower digestive system to burst through his body.
The man, who had a history of prostate cancer, had recently undergone abdominal surgery after a surgical scar did not heal properly.
On the morning of the horrific event, he went to the urology clinic where they assessed his wound as well-healed and removed some surgical staples.
To celebrate, he and his wife went to breakfast at a diner, according to the account of events written in the American Journal of Medical Case Reports in 2024.
While eating breakfast, the man first sneezed, then began coughing.
He then noticed pain and a ‘wet sensation’ on his lower abdomen.
When he looked down, he discovered several ‘loops of pink bowel’ protruding from his recent surgical site.
He was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery where his insides were placed back in his abdomen.
But Professor Taylor warned anyone who had undergone surgery potentially risked a similarly gruesome injury all from a simple sneeze.
‘There is an increase in pressure in your chest and your abdomen when you sneeze. If you’ve got an open wound, you do run the risk of something popping out through it because of the pressure that is generated,’ he added.
‘Once the scar has closed up and healed that risk reduces drastically. But if they have a wound that is not fully joined up together, then it is a real risk.’
You could break a rib
Just a single sneeze can even be enough to break a rib.
Although it’s rare in young and healthy people, Professor Taylor said the ‘sheer force’ of a sneeze can break the bone.
‘We typically see rib fractures in elderly people or those with a specific medical illness,’ he said.
People with a lower bone density as a result of osteoporosis are one group who are at increased risk of bone fractures generally, including from sneezing.
Professor Taylor added: ‘When you sneeze your muscles of your chest brace against the ribs and pull the ribs in with a very sharp and quick contracting force, the air is forced out, it catches on the rib and it literally causes it to crack.’
Experts say terrifying and gruesome injuries can occur from an innocent sneeze after one case report revealed a man’s bowels popped out of his abdomen
Bursting ear drums
Even holding in a sneeze might not be safe.
Professor Taylor said because the increased pressure that drives a sneeze needs to escape in some way, it can damage sensitive tissue on its way out.
He said: ‘When you sneeze that pressure is driven out through your nose and out through your mouth.
Everything you need to know about hay fever
What exactly is hay fever?
Hay fever is an allergic reaction to pollen, a fine powder which comes from plants.
There is more pollen in the air in the spring and summer when plants are flowering.
The reaction usually happens when pollen comes into contact with someone’s eyes, nose, mouth or throat.
Symptoms include coughing and sneezing; a runny or blocked nose; itchy, red or watery eyes; an itchy throat, nose, mouth or ears; headaches and tiredness.
The graphic explains how you get an allergic reaction, such as sneezing and coughing, from pollen
Is it getting worse every year?
The severity of hay fever depends on the weather.
Wet and rainy conditions wash pollen away, reducing the number of people suffering from symptoms and their severity.
However, dry weather blows pollen into the air, where it can easily get into the eyes and nose.
The pollen season also seems to be getting longer, with a US study finding that it has been extended by 30 days between 1990 and 2018.
When are symptoms worst?
Hay fever symptoms tend to be worst around 11am and 6pm, and this is because pollen is at nose level.
Pollen is on the ground at the start of the day and rises through as grass warms up.
During the course of the day, the pollen then goes very high up into the atmosphere.
As the temperature cools down during the course of the day, the pollen grains come down to earth again and at about 6pm they tend to be back at nose level.
‘If you hold in your sneeze and close your mouth, and you hold your nose, the tube of your inner ear connects through from the inside of your throat all the way to the outside ear.
‘So you are more likely to burst your ear drums when you hold in a sneeze because that pressure has to escape somewhere.’
Tear delicate lung tissue
A particularly violent sneeze could even cause tears in your lungs.
In some cases the lung can herniate through the intercostal muscles between the ribs, if there are weak spots.
This is usually a side effect of other health problems such as obesity, lung disease, diabetes or smoking, according to Professor Taylor.
There have also been cases where a sneeze tears the delicate tissue of the lungs.
This can happen when air escapes into the space between the chest an the lungs, causing air to compress the lung on one or both sides.
‘Our lungs, when we get down to the level that we’re exchanging gas during breathing, those layers are very thin,’ Professor Taylor said.
He added: ‘That increase in pressure as the muscle contracts when you sneeze to drive the air out, they can tear those layers, causing air to escape out of the lungs into the chest cavity.’
However, those with lung conditions such as Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or scarring on the lungs from previous injuries are more at risk because they already weak areas in the organ.
Tear the lining of your brain
It’s not just the lungs that can tear, the brain is also at risk.
There have been reports of people tearing the delicate lining of the brain from sneezing, which can lead to a subarachnoid haemorrhage, which is a type of stroke.
Professor Taylor explains: ‘Our brain is surrounded by some very thin delicate layers of tissue. Some of those layers have blood sat between them.’
‘Because some of these layers are involved in returning blood to the veins and back to the heart an increase in blood pressure can cause them to rupture.’
And such an increase in blood pressure occurs when we sneeze, he explained.
‘So, if you have a particularly violent sneeze or if you have a weakness in those linings of the brain, they can potentially tear. This can cause blood to leak out and cause instantaneous issues, such as a stroke,’ he said.
Will your eyes will pop out?
While it’s myth that sneezing with your eyes open will make them pop out their sockets, that doesn’t mean their completely safe from a sneeze.
Professor Taylor explains that because your eyes are held in place by muscles and nerves and the airways have no connection to your eye sockets, sneezing can’t make them pop out.
However, closing your eyes when you sneeze is an automatic reflex, and its thought the body does this to stop germs expelled from getting in your eyes.
So, you could fight the reflex and keep your eyes open, but it’s probably not a great idea.
Source: Mail Online
