Natural Sneezasters

Every now and then, a sudden, violent event will occur, causing everyone to stop what they’re doing and take a look.

Sometimes it’s a powerful earthquake that seems to come out of nowhere, tearing apart the very fabric of the ground. Other times, a cosmic rock will smash into the earth’s surface, creating a massive explosion and shaking the surrounding area to its core.

These events are almost always unexpected, and there seems to be little or nothing we can do to stop them.

A sneeze is your body’s version of an event like this.

Here’s what happens: something irritates the lining of your nose.

The irritated cells in your nose send a signal to your brain.

Your brain then interprets the signals, and decides whether or not to trigger the sneeze reflex. When the reflex is triggered, your diaphragm, abdominal muscles, and intercostal muscles all contract forcefully, pushing air out of your lungs. Meanwhile, your throat and nasal passages open wide.

The result is a forceful blast of air that helps to clear any irritants from your nose and throat. Mucus, which traps dust and debris, is also expelled during this process.

Maybe a better analogy for the type of sudden, violent event that emanates from your body is: a sneeze is like a shotgun blast that emanates from your face.

Sometimes, you smell something potent, and that can cause you to sneeze.

Just as our bodies have this dramatic way of expelling irritants, they also possess a sophisticated mechanism for detecting them in the first place.

Our noses are designed to detect a very small amount of whatever our brains might consider dangerous. If you want to learn more about how our sense of smell is really just a sophisticated molecule detector, I wrote about that not too long ago:

Not all sneezes are smell-related! Bright light can certainly make me sneeze, and I’ve known folks whose sneeze reflex is triggered by a trauma to the nose, or cotton swabs for covid testing, for instance. Even a full (or empty) stomach can sometimes trigger a sneeze!

The next time you sneeze, think about how you’re blasting particles out into the world. You are a biological shotgun.

Or, if you prefer, your face is the landscape on which your natural disaster occurs.

Wonder is out there everywhere in the world, even in the things we do every day that seem boring to us. I want to share just a little of this with you every day.

What makes you sneeze?