What Happens When You Sneeze?
Knowing what happens when you sneeze is important, because sneezes have a special function. Designed with remarkable precision and detail, the human body goes to great lengths to keep it functioning at optimal level, healthy, and free from foreign bodies. If you know what happens when you sneeze, you may also know that the sneeze is one of the body's important infection fighting tools.
Your body's defense mechanisms are incredibly powerful. This is why rejection medications are given to transplant patients to keep the body from interpreting the organ as a foreign object (otherwise, the body would destroy the new organ).
To protect your body, white blood cells congregate to attack unwelcome germs, bacteria, and viruses. Lungs involuntarily fill with air in preparation for a 100 mph sneeze to expel foreign substances. It takes all of these things to help keep you germ free. Staying germ free also requires you to sneeze.
Sneezing, medically referred to as sternutation, is a reflex used to help expel micro-objects and relieve irritation. When you sneeze, you get rid of objects causing irritation. These irritating elements are part of the "sneeze substance," along with a combination of environmental elements, saliva, mucous, bacteria, and germs, all of which can yield the product of disease and illness. So, what happens when you sneeze is, you are getting rid of all of the bad stuff your body doesn't want.
Why People Sneeze
In every breeze and breath you take, there are billions of tiny dust particles, pollen, smoke, and everything else imaginable. All of this stuff enters your body, which may lead you to ask why you aren't sneezing all day to get it out.
Fortunately, your nose is an anatomically structured air filter that is composed of an outstanding catch-and-expel system, sort of like the air filters you place in a central air-conditioning unit.
Your nose hairs are like the air filters, as they are hard at work setting traps for anything that enters your nostrils. The mucous is on standby waiting for anything that gets past the nose hairs. Dried nose mucous that is filled with debris, dust, and shed nose hairs makes up the "boogers" you commonly find in your nose (which are medically referred to as “rhinolith.”)
When the catch-and-expel system goes into overdrive, sneezing takes place, even when mucous has done its job by manufacturing tons of rhinoliths.
The Brain’s “Sneeze Center”
The body is an outstanding network of various systems that work in unison to accomplish a common goal. Before you take that full breath of air to prepare for that prevailing sneeze, a tickle in the nostril has sent a message to your brain which in turn sends urgent messages to your abdominal and chest muscles, lungs, face, mouth, and nose to pull together to create a sneeze.
Scientists have not yet determined for sure where the sneeze center is located in the human brain. However, it is believed to be very close to the spinal trigeminal tract and nucleus.
Covering Your Mouth
The act of expelling is the body’s most popular method of cleansing. As a result, for generations, the “concealed sneeze” subject has been of great concern and continues to be so in a generation marked by advanced medical discoveries. In other words, how do you cover your mouth when you sneeze?
Since almost everyone has had a sneeze attack at some point, all that mucous mist has to go somewhere once it exits the nose and mouth. It’s safe to say that some of it promptly evaporates into thin air, but the rest is not disposed of so neatly.
Although the human body is loyal to keeping itself healthy and free from evaders, rarely is there any thought given to how poor it is at disposing of its waste products.
When a sneeze is expelled, the contents is a mixture of saliva, mucous, and germs that that person has (which just might be a head or chest cold or flu, H1N1, tuberculosis, or some other airborne disease).
If the mouth is not covered, anyone standing nearby may be affected. Many sneeze particles are so small that they are light enough to travel through the air where they land on objects, clothing, hair, food, or where they are transmitted directly from one mucous member to another without delay.
In recent years, in addition to covering, emphasis has been on how to cover (within the inner part of the elbow, not the hand). So please, be ‘sneeze-smart’ and cover your mouth!