Thursday, December 10, 2009
When your nose starts to tingle and you feel the pressure of a big sneeze coming on, all you want to do is let out a loud aaa-choo! But that intense conversation you’re having or the quiet classroom you’re sitting in makes you feel the need to suppress the sneeze.
Photo illustration by Kirsten Hudson
Keeping it to yourself: Holding in a sneeze may help avoid an awkward or inconvenient situation, but could it harm you?
Although holding back a sneeze may feel unpleasant and even make your eyes water a little, it won’t hurt you, says Robert Dinsdale, an ear, nose and throat doctor at Lawrence Otolaryngology, 1112 West 6th St.
The urge to sneeze is caused by an irritant in the nose — usually dust or pollen — that the body wants to get rid of. The reflex action to the irritant is to draw in a deep breath and forcefully push air out of the nose — at an average of 90 to 100 miles per hour — driving the irritant out and mucus along with it.
Suppressing that forceful column of air could temporarily cause stress to the heart because it impairs blood outflow from the heart, but if you’re healthy overall it won’t hurt you, Dinsdale says.
Although some say that stifling a sneeze can harm your eardrums, this isn’t true, Dinsdale says. When you breathe in to sneeze then hold it back, you do it with your vocal cords. Stifling a sneeze with your vocal cords keeps the air in your lungs and doesn’t let the air travel to the eardrums and cause a pressure change, Dinsdale says.
Verdict: OK for you.
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