Out of all the wild things evolution came up with—inflammation, the Achilles tendon, teeth—the strangest might be the sneeze. Sneezing is nuts. Brief, involuntary incapacitation, for some reason hastened by light? An expulsion centered on the nose but verbal in its sound? A booger-laden spasm capable of throwing out your back, yet oddly pleasurable?
We have questions about sneezing.
Primarily, how the hell it works.
Thankfully, Wikipedia confronts the issue directly:
A sneeze (also known as sternutation) is a semi-autonomous, convulsive expulsion of air from the lungs through the nose and mouth, usually caused by foreign particles irritating the nasal mucosa. A sneeze expels air forcibly from the mouth and nose in an explosive, spasmodic involuntary action.
Sternutation!
When Wikipedia breaks out the medical term, you know it’s not going to treat this issue with a shrug.
How it works:
During a sneeze, the soft palate and palatine uvula depress while the back of the tongue elevates to partially close the passage to the mouth, creating a venturi (similar to a carburetor) due to Bernoulli’s principle so that air ejected from the lungs is accelerated through the mouth and thus creating a low pressure point at the back of the nose. This way air is forced in through the front of the nose and the expelled mucus and contaminants are launched out the mouth.
I have to admit, I feel like less of a man because of that carburetor reference. “Oh, you know. It’s like a carburetor.” Sorry, Wikipedia. I don’t know how carburetors work. I don’t even really know their purpose. They’re mixing something with the gas, right? Air, maybe? What else could they be mixing. Doesn’t seem like it would be water, and with lawnmowers, you mix in your own oil.
Regardless of the carburetor comparison, it sounds like what’s happening is almost like a vacuum? The lungs send a lot of air through the mouth. The back of the nose has lower pressure, so air moves in from the front of the nose to even the pressure out. As the air moves in, it pushes the boogers and snot down into the mouth, where the continuing air from the lungs shoots them out?
There’s a contradiction here. That first quote, above, says air comes out the mouth and the nose. But here in the second quote, it says air is moving in from the front of the nose. Does air go through the nose in both directions during a sneeze?
My guess here is that there are multiple kinds of sneezes. Sometimes, air goes out the mouth and nose. Sometimes, it only goes out the mouth. I obviously don’t know for sure. It’s amazing to think of all of that happening so quickly. I do have a hard time knowing which sneezes are going to be messy and which are going to be clean, but I don’t know how that applies to this. I wonder if sneezes also pull down junk from the sinuses? I would like a map of the sinuses. I feel like that could be helpful.
