Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here with another classic episode from our archives
Speaker 1: and from previous host, Christian Sagar. This one, Okay, it
Speaker 1: gets a little bit gross, and if you're sensitive to
Speaker 1: medical discussions, maybe skip it. But we love mythbusting here
Speaker 1: and so we couldn't help but answer the pervasive playground question.
Speaker 1: If you sneeze hard enough and keep your eyes open
Speaker 1: while you do it, could your eyes pop out of
Speaker 1: their sockets? Hey there, brain Stuff, it's Christian Segar. If
Speaker 1: you're a person who has a nose and eyeballs, you've
Speaker 1: probably noticed that when you sneeze, your eyelids naturally snap shut.
Speaker 1: It's the reason that sneezing while driving is a terrifying
Speaker 1: roulette game of death. But I've got a question for you.
Speaker 1: When you were a kid, did you hear the story
Speaker 1: that if you manage to resist this reflex and hold
Speaker 1: your eyes open during a sneeze, that they would pop
Speaker 1: out of your head? I did. In fact, my ninth
Speaker 1: grade science teacher, Mrs Abraham told me this is it true? Though?
Speaker 1: Well short answer, almost definitely not. But unfortunately we can't
Speaker 1: be as perfectly certain as we would all like to
Speaker 1: be about this particular topic. So here are the facts.
Speaker 1: Fact one. Your eyes can pop out of their sockets.
Speaker 1: It's not very common, but it can happen. Doctors call
Speaker 1: anterior bulging of the eye beyond its normal orbit a
Speaker 1: case of exophthalamus. If the eyeball gets dislocated from its
Speaker 1: socket enough that's equator is literally outside your retracted eyelids,
Speaker 1: This is known as globe luxation. Fact number two. If
Speaker 1: you want to sleep soundly tonight and really every other
Speaker 1: night for the rest of your life, you should not
Speaker 1: search the web for images of globe luxation. Fact number three.
Speaker 1: Globe luxation is rare, but it can be caused by
Speaker 1: a number of conditions. Of course, gouging at an eyeball
Speaker 1: with a finger or another instrument that will do it.
Speaker 1: Some various types of traumatic head injury can cause the
Speaker 1: eyeballs to pop out of their sockets. Many cases of
Speaker 1: spontaneous globe luxation in the medical literature have happened while
Speaker 1: the eye was being messed with in some ways, such
Speaker 1: as during the application of a contact lens or eye drops,
Speaker 1: or when a doctor was manipulating the eyelids during an exam.
Speaker 1: Violent vomiting has also been cited as a cause of
Speaker 1: eyeball dislocation. And I might add that whoever this refers
Speaker 1: to has my sympathies, because that sounds like the worst
Speaker 1: day ever. Now, if we are to believe our historical sources,
Speaker 1: there may have been a few cases where a sneeze
Speaker 1: knocked somebody's eyeball out. For example, in April of two,
Speaker 1: a US newspaper reported that a woman on a street
Speaker 1: car in Indianapolis burst one of her eyeballs in the
Speaker 1: middle of a sneezing fit. Whether this means she suffered
Speaker 1: globe luxation, or that our eyeball just up and exploded,
Speaker 1: or that journalists in the eighties sometimes reported rather dubious stories, look,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say, but if we look at the
Speaker 1: more recent sources. A two thousand two ophthalmology study reviewed
Speaker 1: the twenty six cases of spontaneous globe luxation then known
Speaker 1: to the medical world. While most of the cases they
Speaker 1: found were triggered by manipulation of the eyelids, the authors
Speaker 1: did also claim that a small number were brought on
Speaker 1: by other triggers, including things like crying, coughing, nose blowing,
Speaker 1: bending over, and yes, sneezing, So sneezing might have caused
Speaker 1: the dislocation of the eyeball in a very very small
Speaker 1: number of known cases. But does keeping your eyes open
Speaker 1: during the sneeze have anything to do with it? As
Speaker 1: I said before, almost definitely not. And it's certainly true
Speaker 1: that eyeball dislocation doesn't happen every time you sneeze with
Speaker 1: your eyes open, because you can go to YouTube right
Speaker 1: now and look at the yeos of people sneezing with
Speaker 1: their eyes open. It's not easy, but some people can
Speaker 1: do it, and their eyeballs are They're fine, and they
Speaker 1: seem to enjoy showing off this disgusting trick. But the
Speaker 1: complete lack of correlation between open eyes and eyeball poppage
Speaker 1: is a combination of the fact that sneezing almost never,
Speaker 1: if ever, causes the eyes to pop out, and the
Speaker 1: fact that your eyelids don't really do any of the
Speaker 1: work of keeping your eyeballs in their sockets to begin with. Instead,
Speaker 1: your eyeballs are primarily held in place by a combination
Speaker 1: of six muscles known as the extra ocular muscles. They
Speaker 1: control the movements of the eyes and are much stronger
Speaker 1: than the eyelids, so whether or not you can manage
Speaker 1: to keep your eyes open during a sneeze probably has
Speaker 1: little to no effect on the chances that your eyes
Speaker 1: will pop out, and those chances are very very slim
Speaker 1: in the first place, though possibly not zero. Take that,
Speaker 1: Mrs Abraham. Today's episode was written by Joe McCormick and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots
Speaker 1: of other popping topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of my Heart Radio. For more
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