Sneezing

Yesterday I started to sneeze in class, but half-way through the sneeze, it just expired, and it ended up sounding like a sort of yelp. The class turned to look at me, and my prof said, "You shouldn't hold in your sneeze. You can die that way."

"I heard that if you hold your nose when you sneeze, your eyeballs will explode," a classmate added.

Apparently this little discussion mesmerized another one of my classmates, because he did a google search during lunch to find out what exactly happens when you hold in a sneeze. He told me about his finds, which I thought I'd pass along to you all, because they're fun facts.

It seems that you cannot die or injure yourself seriously by holding in a sneeze; those are all myths. However, one reputable medical school website said that there is one danger, which is that when you hold in a sneeze, the mucus gets diverted to the passage that connects the sinus and the ear canals. Thus, if you don't get rid of the mucus as a sneeze properly would, you could be setting yourself up for an ear infection.