Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren vog Obam. Here, medical science continues to drive
Speaker 1: home the risks of holding in an explosive sneeze, this
Speaker 1: time in a b m J case reports discussion of
Speaker 1: spontaneous throat rupture and deep tissue air bubbles. Here's what happened,
Speaker 1: according to the papers authors. At the University Hospitals of Lester,
Speaker 1: a thirty four year old man entered the emergency room
Speaker 1: with reports of painful swallowing and curious popping sounds at
Speaker 1: his neck, all following a suppressed sneeze. Upon closer examination,
Speaker 1: doctors observed swelling and tenderness in the neck tissue, and
Speaker 1: the popping sound proved to be crepitus. Crepitus is the
Speaker 1: medical term for popping and crackling sounds under the skin
Speaker 1: or in the joints. This is the creaking and cracking
Speaker 1: of joints that becomes especially noticeable in older age. Crepitus
Speaker 1: maybe due to several different causes, such as grating bones
Speaker 1: and snapping tendons, but it's most famously summoned every time
Speaker 1: you crack your knuckle. This causes gas suspended in the
Speaker 1: joint snowvial fluid to form bubbles and burst. Unsurprisingly, Crepitus
Speaker 1: is also the name of a California based death metal band.
Speaker 1: But how does this relate to the thirty four year
Speaker 1: old patients neck. The doctors identified crepitus from his neck
Speaker 1: all the way down into his rib cage. These findings
Speaker 1: suggested air bubbles lodged in the deep tissue and muscles
Speaker 1: of the chest. Indeed, X rays revealed streaks of air
Speaker 1: like the shrapnel of a detonated explosive. The hand grenade
Speaker 1: in this case was the suppressed sneeze, which resulted in
Speaker 1: spontaneous pharyngeal rupture. Doctors successfully treated the patient with antibiotics
Speaker 1: and tube feeding, But as how Stuff Works has reported
Speaker 1: in the past, a stifled sneeze can cause a host
Speaker 1: of undesirable symptoms, including the rupture of blood vessels in
Speaker 1: the brain. It seems ridiculous. A sneeze, after all, is
Speaker 1: such a natural thing. It's just an expulsion of air
Speaker 1: and mucus from the nostrils due to irritation. Children especially
Speaker 1: sneeze boldly into their surrounding world, often with little consideration
Speaker 1: of decorum, superstition, or the fact that Grandma's face is
Speaker 1: right there in front of them. It's only as they
Speaker 1: become adults that they learned to cover their sneezes and
Speaker 1: in some cases attempt to stifle them by blocking both
Speaker 1: mouth and nostrils. For certain, no one wants to unleash
Speaker 1: a full blown sneeze at the theater or in a
Speaker 1: crowded train car. It's a high velocity burst of mucus
Speaker 1: and other particles, after all, and exhibits the very lack
Speaker 1: of control we despise in our bodies. But as the
Speaker 1: medical science illustrates, such a force is not contained without risk.
Speaker 1: As Arthur Stanley P's explored in his nineteen eleven classical
Speaker 1: philosophy paper The Open of Sneezing, beliefs in the ominous
Speaker 1: or prophetic aspects of sneezing date back to ancient times.
Speaker 1: These notions were well developed by the time of the
Speaker 1: Greek poet Homer in the eighth or seventh century b c.
Speaker 1: And subsequent thinkers and philosophers continued to pour over the
Speaker 1: idea that while a sneeze might mean nothing, it could
Speaker 1: also indicate the temporary presence of a divine force in
Speaker 1: the sneezer. God bless you indeed. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Robert Lamb and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
Speaker 1: on this and lots of other explosive topics, visit our
Speaker 1: home planet, how Stuff Works dot com