Stuff You Should Know - How Sneezing Works

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Unless you have an arcane disorder from a lesion on a very specific spot on our medulla, the chances are you sneeze. Turns out most animals do it, even lizards! Learn the whys and hows of this most interesting involuntary reflex. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's us, and we're here to talk to you about Get This, our book. We have a Stuff You Should Know book coming out this November, and you're going to love it, and you can pre-order it now.

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It's a very interesting book, and we love it. So let's go! Let's go, let's go! Hey and welcome to the Podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, Jerry is a disembodied spirit, but she's still with us, haunting us,

and we are now set up for achievement, which means this is Stuff You Should Know. Set up for achievement? It sounds like a very 80s Reagan era campaign. certainly not the kind of thing that would irritate you, whether it be in your nose or your brain or anywhere. Not the best segue, huh? I'm surprised you didn't try and work sternutation in there somehow.

I love that word. Were you familiar with that word before? I don't think, you know, I'm 49 years old, I don't think I'd ever heard sneezing being called sternutation. Oh, man, I just remembered I'm 44 now, so you got me beat, but I'm in the same boat with you. Yeah, I'd never heard that, but that is what, if you're a scientist, well, if you're a scientist and you want to be a real stiff, you'll probably say sternutation if you're a scientist that

wants to be friends with people, you'll still probably say sneezing. I mean, it sounds super clinical, but it's actually really old, it's from, I think the first appearance of it is in a text from 1576. It sounds old. To me, it sounds clinical, but there's also a couple of derivative words, sternutative or sternutatory are things that make you sneeze. And Howard Stern, bubba-booey. Right, hachooey.

So we're talking sneezing, obviously, because we just discoursed on sternutation. I'm adding an extra syllable there, aren't I? St sternutation. That's the Josh Clark way. Why do I have to complicate, why do I have to complicate things? We're talking about sneezing, and sneezing is a really sort of, and I hate it when people call things like this elegant, so I'm going to refrain, but it's just a very efficient system that the human body has worked out to basically allow your nose, and we'll get

into all the ins and outs of how it all happens, but to allow your nose and your nasal passage and your brain to act as bouncers and just say, get out of my body fast. Cut off, pal. Like real fast. You're cut off cigarette smoke. You're cut off Chanel number seven that nobody likes, you know? Sure. Yeah, that's a pretty good way to put it.

And it's an ancient reflex too, I mean, basically all mammals at least sneeze. Some more than others. I didn't realize this, but apparently iguanas sneeze the most because it's part of their digestion. Yeah, and then I don't know what it's technically called, but you know, when dogs do what is called the reverse sneeze. Yeah, Momo has that bad. It's so scary.

It is. And we finally got her checked out and they verified she doesn't have a collapsed trachea, which is when it really is threatening. It's just something to do with her nasal passages. Yeah. Brachycephalic. Yeah. You ever had a dog that has that?

I mean, I've never had a dog that didn't do it occasionally, but Niko, I feel like goes, and it's not often, but it's like a, you know, it's like can be prolonged for like a minute and it just seems like, are you about to die? Yeah. It's terrible. It's really bad. I think you're just supposed to leave him alone too, right? Just let him do it.

No. We help her out. We'll rubber throat, just kind of stroke it. It seems to help. And then sometimes we'll just lightly plug her nostrils to kind of give her like a hitch to it and that frequently cures it too. Sometimes though, yeah, she just has to work it out, but she gets it every time she gets excited and she gets excited a lot.

So it's sad for her. Yeah. But it's really not a sneeze, actually, because a sneeze is when you're trying to get something out of your nose and that nose is a pretty amazing little system. It's an amazing filtration system, how it's designed with those narrow nasal passages. It's not like we have these big face holes, like they're narrow for a very good reason and that is to create turbulence inside your nasal passages and that turbulence shoves all that air that you're inhaling to the sides of your nasal passages, the nasal mucosa.

And that's got tiny little hairs called cilia and the cilia mainly is sort of like a pre-doorman just saying like, yeah, your ID is good, why don't we just move you to the back of the throat and we'll flush you out that way. But if it's too much, that's when you need to call in the big bouncer to initiate that sneeze response. Yeah. Sometimes they're just like, no, I'm staying here. I'm not leaving.

You can't kick me out. I hate the back of the throat. Super drunk, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't realize that, but it makes sense that we swallow a lot of the particles that we inhale through our nose, which is gross, but effective. Or cough it up.

We poop it out eventually, right? Yeah. But yeah, if they get stuck in the nose, then they do something magical. Just as magical as soap. But when they're sticking to the sides and they're not going anywhere, it's clear they're not going anywhere. They actually like irritate some specialized cells that are in that nasal mucosa, mast cells and eryhenophils, I think, but basically they're there to look out for little particles

that decide they don't want to leave. And when those things get irritated, they release histamines, which trigger this reaction like an allergic reaction, basically, where your nose is runny, and they also simultaneously start sending signals to your brain saying, hey, we got one. We need some help. Yeah. And I know we talked about this a little bit with another pollen episode. And I feel like we did another allergy-centric one, but I can't remember.

But the whole thing takes about a second for the single sneeze, and it's going to send that message, like you said, that chemical message to the sneeze center of the brain, which is in the lateral medulla. And the lateral medulla gets like everything in the brain, it gets that signal and says, you know, all I got to do is react fast whenever the body tells me to do something. And in this case, it's to jet out whatever is in the nose as fast as possible. Right. So, and I was looking this up, if you want to get super clinical, if you're the kind

of person who uses words like sternutation instead of sneezing, there's actually something called an afferent phase and an efferent phase, and an afferent phase is when you get ready to sneeze. Like your nerves have been tickled and are triggered and are itching, and they're sending messages to your brain in your sneeze center. And then the efferent phase is when your sneeze center goes, okay, it's go time. And that's actually pretty interesting stuff. And the way that that happens is basically from what I can tell through a system of nerves,

olfactory nerve, ethmoidal nerve, which is a terrible word. And then your trigeminal nerve, which is basically responsible for most of the sensation in your face and your ability to bite and chew. And when these nerves spring into action, they hit that message or the sneezing center in your brain and your sneezing center sends it back over these, this kind of same switchboard of nerves in your face. And all this is happening in just a very short amount of time. Yeah.

I mean, like I said, the whole thing takes place in less than a second. And it's got to reach, in order for it to reach that sneeze center, it's got to be past a certain threshold of irritation basically. And once it does reach that irritable point of which there's no going back, he's had too much to drink, everybody in the bar knows it. That's when it finally sends that impulse down through the head and neck to initiate that response that involves a lot of muscle groups. When you sneeze, and especially with some people, it can be a pretty violent action

for the body. Yeah. Like if you stop and take stock of what you're doing right then, you might find that you're hunched over, one of your legs is in the air, like your knees kind of pulled up. Your face is all scrunched up, your neck is tight. There's a lot of muscles involved. The reason why is because you're taking in a bunch of air and then you're expelling a bunch of air with a lot of force to get that thing that won't leave out of your nose.

Yeah. Like you can, and I've seen professional athletes that have been sidelined from sneezing if you've got a bad back or something, like it can really hurt. Luckily, I don't have back problems, but occasionally I have, and a sneeze can really tweak it to where you're like, that's when you know you're an old man territory. You have a sneeze and you're like, hold on, I can't get up. Yeah. I'm going to have to lay down this weekend.

But your abdomen, your chest, your diaphragm, your vocal cords, you mentioned that you take that deep inhalation. That's that right before you go, and that builds up a lot of pressure in your chest. That happens because your vocal cords just initially clamp shut. Right. Yeah. So you're sucking in a bunch of air, holding it, and so the pressure is building in your thorax.

And then when you release it, your vocal cord openings open up to allow the air out, but then also your diaphragm is pushing that air out really violently so that it's going out your mouth and your nose. I saw about 100 miles an hour is the speed that that can hit. Yeah, easily. Around 100 miles an hour, that is crazy to think about. Your eyes close, but we can go ahead and dispel the old myth that you can pop your eyes out if you keep your eyes open during a sneeze, right?

Yeah, not true. And apparently there are some people who do keep their eyes open when they sneeze and they show quite clearly that your eyes don't pop out. That just would be impossible. Plus they usually close anyway, just automatically. Yeah, it's a very small group of people who sneeze with their eyes open. Most people just, it's like an involuntary, it's part of the involuntary process of sneezing. I don't know if we said that or not, but sneezing is an involuntary reaction to an external

stimuli in your nose. Yeah, like you can't, I mean you can try and trigger a sneeze and we'll talk about certain things that can trigger a sneeze, but you definitely can't make yourself sneeze like full stop. Yeah, no, no, I mean yeah, there's definitely things you can do to make yourself sneeze like you're saying, but there are things you can do to keep yourself from sneezing whether you want to or not is a different question, because you know, sneezing can feel pretty good if you don't throw your back out.

Well, we'll talk about my sneeze pattern later. I know I've talked about it before, but I find it fascinating. Do you accidentally tap out, drink your Ovaltine and Morse code through your sneezes? Is that your thing? Very nice. Thanks. Should we take a break? Let's take a break, Chuck, and then we'll come back and talk more about sneezing.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing

on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

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Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Well, now when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right. Hey, man, before we get back into it too far, I realized I didn't give a shout out to the

guy who gave me the idea for this episode. Dr. Sneeze a Lot? Yes. Dr. Todd G. Sneeze a Lot. No, one of my neighbor friends, Wesley, was like, hey, man, he actually listens and he's like, hey, man, have you guys ever done one on sneezing? I'm like, sure, of course we have. He's like, oh, because if you haven't, you know, you really should.

That's a great one. And I went back and looked into my astoundment. We had never done one on sneezing, like never. I just can't believe that that wasn't like one of the first 10, you know? Yeah, that seems like it would be an early stuff you should know. For sure. And it kind of feels like one of those right now as we're doing it, but you know. My neighbors think I'm unemployed.

It's great. Yeah. But hats off to Wes for coming up with that one. Thanks, Wes. Yeah. I'll leave Josh alone. He's the one that we got the loveyourmama.com stuff for and he's like, we're halfway done with our room spray.

We need some more because we're using it so fast. And you're the pusher man? Yeah. I was like, first one's on me and the next are going to cost you. Yeah. I don't correct my neighbors. They think I'm down on my luck. So that's all good.

Yeah. My opinion. No, that's definitely the way to go. He's very nosy. So he found out I had to finally just stop lying. Oh, that's good stuff. So we're back to sneezing. We're talking sneezing.

And one of the things we mentioned was the sneezing center, which is this up until not too many years ago, a theoretical part of the brain that causes us to sneeze, that coordinates this involuntary response because you're not like, your brain's not consciously saying like, okay, now diaphragm, expel the air. Like this is all, like we said, involuntary. That'd be great if you had to say that every time you wanted to sneeze. Right. Expel air.

So it makes sense that there would be a region that was responsible for this because we've already, we'd already seen it in cats. Don't ask how we know where it is in cats, but in cats, it's in the medulla. And so it was hypothesized that it was in the lateral medulla in humans too. And finally, I think around 2005, there was basically incontrovertible evidence that came in the form of this fisherman, I believe he might have been Spanish, who had this sneezing fit one day of like about 20 really violent sneezes in a few minutes. And then all of a sudden he stopped sneezing and couldn't walk right.

Like his gait was affected, almost like he'd had a stroke. And apparently either he caused a lesion on his lateral medulla from the sneezing or that violent sneezing was like an initial symptom of a lesion, kind of like, here's your last sneezes ever. And he went to the doctor and they started testing him and they would do things like put capsaicin in his nose, like red hot chili pepper in his nose, which makes everybody sneeze. It's like a universal sternotatory, right, makes everyone sneeze and it wouldn't make

this guy sneeze. It would burn his nose and it would make his nose runny, but it wouldn't make him sneeze. On the other side, it would make him sneeze, the other nostril, but not the right, I think. And so they found this lesion on his lateral medulla and they said, sneezing center, welcome to our understanding. That's such a bad red hot chili peppers joke that I just sat on through that whole spiel. That's a very grown up of you. Should I say it?

Sure. Whoever said we were grownups. No, I was just thinking the doctor would do the capsaicin and ask him how he feels and he'd say, well, I don't know, sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner. That was pretty good. Yeah, you know, it's better than fight like a brave, I don't know. I'm trying to think of chili pepper songs. What if the doctor came in wearing nothing but one of those reflector headbands and a

sock on his penis? I saw that coming. That was it. Oh, that'd be great. You know, you got the right doctor. Yeah, you do. The party doc. So things that can make you sneeze, I know you kind of rattled off some jokes about perfume

and smoke earlier. Oh, I wasn't joking. But those are all realities that the most common cause of a sneeze is, and the collective term is rhinitis, R-H-I-N-I-T-I-S. And that is just your sort of standard inflammation and swelling of your mucus membrane when you got allergies, when pollen's in the air, when you have a cold. But there are all kinds of other things that can cause a sneeze too that are all different types of rhinitis.

Yeah. Speaking of rhinitis too, I ran across a term, the clinical term for a runny nose is rhinorrhea. That's gross. Yeah. Isn't that grody? That makes it at least 12 or 15 times worse than runny nose, you know? Yeah, weird.

So there's occupational rhinitis, which is basically when stuff you're working around makes you sneeze or irritate your nose. Things like cleaning supplies or, you know, flour I saw was a pretty common occupational rhinitis, sternotitory, or sternotitiv, depending on your preference. Cigarette smoke, if you're working a place where they let you smoke, like maybe a cigarette factory. Although I heard that they don't allow smoking inside some cigarette factories now in like North Carolina, isn't that just the end all be all?

You think they would allow you to do that while you're working? They used to up until very recently. Really? Oh yeah. I have the impression you could just pluck one off the line and light it up. Wow. I guess if you're a smoker, that's a big perk. It is, but then now they're like no smoking inside, which leads you to the follow-up question

why? Yeah. Why can we not smoke inside? Because it kills you and they go, what? Pretty dangerous, you dummy. Let me see. You've also got the hormonal rhinitis, which is women might experience that when they have high estrogen levels.

Maybe if you're pregnant or you're on the pill or you're going through puberty, you might have some sort of run-on sneezing episodes. Sure. There's a drug-induced rhinitis. There's certain drugs that have been identified, what'd you say? The hippos kind. Right. Mushrooms will make you sneeze.

Apparently I'm guessing that, I didn't see this anywhere, but this is an educated guess. Tell me if you think it sounds convincing. Those drugs probably stimulate your mast cells to release histamines and then that's just basically almost like a phantom allergen. Okay. That's what I'm going with. All right. But apparently NSAIDs, beta blockers and some anti-hypertensive drugs are the ones that

are known drug-induced rhinitis during the tutorials. If you are of advanced age, you might have what's called geriatric rhinitis, which is that's when those submucosal glands atrophy and that means your nose can get really irritated and you might sneeze a lot. Right. That is very sad to me if you think about it because there's not much that can be done. I'm sure you just put like maybe Vaseline or something in your nose that's got to be the cure for that.

But that's just sad because it's like your little body's running down. We should have a cure for that. Yeah. Like our medicine is not far enough along in my opinion for this to be 2020. It's kind of a disappointing 2020 everybody, am I right? Yeah. So, we've talked before, Chuck, multiple times about photic sneezing, which I am a photic sneezer and I don't remember if you are or not.

I feel like I have, but it's not like roundly something that happens to me. I don't think so. Okay. I am a photic sneezer more than I'm a native-born Toledoan even. Maybe they're tied. So, how does it get you like anytime you like turn on a light? Very rarely light. It's almost always sunlight and I think it's just because of the intensity of it.

But yeah, like if I walk out, say like if I go see a movie in the middle of the day, like it's just a slacker and I come out and I come out and it's very sunny, it is guaranteed three sneezes in a row. Is that your usual pattern? Yeah, usually. And I looked into that, like why do we sneeze multiple times? Apparently, there's a very simple answer for it and that's that your brain has determined that the irritant hasn't been ejected yet.

But with photic sneezing, it's almost like it's mistaken identity, right? Yeah. I actually did see some other things too about the patterns because that's always fascinated me because I always sneeze in threes. Oh yeah, okay. And I did see where some places said that just once isn't enough, so it's like a set up, get it to the front of your nose and then it get out, but I also saw where it could be genetic.

Yeah. So it's like that you inherit a sneeze pattern and that double-sneezers get to double-sneezers. It makes sense because there are like photic sneezing is one of a couple ways that you can inherit a genetic sneezing trait, so that would make sense. Yeah, that's right. Photo, I'm sorry, photic sneeze reflex is passed on by autosomal dominant inheritance and I love this acronym because this is one of those reverse engineered ones that we like so much.

Do you like this one? I like this one. I hated the other one. Yeah, man, with a passion. Like I wouldn't even, I wasn't even going to bring that one up to be honest. Okay. I will just pass it by and let everybody wonder for the rest of their lives. But autosomal dominant compelling Helio ophthalmic outburst syndrome, Achu, it's a little rough.

It is. I mean, there's a whole D, a whole dominant in there that's missing, but okay, fine, we'll go with that. But that's the, that is a term for photic sneezing that was coined at some point by someone who's obviously totally- That's your biggest pet peeve, right? For acronyms is when they just sneak a word in there and don't use it for a letter. Yeah, it's lazy. Although I mean, I get where they were coming from.

You don't want it to be Achu. It's like, why even do it? You got to figure it out, you know, I mean, just take dominant out, just go with autosomal, you know? Yeah. And I wouldn't, who would know? I wouldn't have noticed. So you were saying, was that it for the patterns and sneezing patterns?

Yeah. I mean, they're just a couple of theories, either hereditary or that it just takes that much, but I'm not, I just don't know if I buy that for myself because it's always threes and it's not like I have a weak sneeze, so it takes three, man, I don't know. It feels ingrained somehow. Yeah. Like if you only do two, you notice and does it feel incomplete? It does, but that almost never happens.

Occasionally I'll do a forebanger, but I don't know that I ever sneeze once or twice. It's almost always three. Yeah. And speaking of incomplete, if you actually go, if you experience the afferent phase, but the efferent phase isn't triggered, but it's enough to drive you nuts, there's things you can do. And one of those things that's recommended is to look at a bright light or look kind of, don't look directly at the sun, but look toward the sun.

And that should help jumpstart that efferent phase, the second part where the actual sneeze takes place. Oh, okay. That makes sense. What they think what's going on is that there's a crossover between the sneeze reflex arc and the pupillary light reflex arc, which basically is one nerve becoming so stimulated that it stimulates by proxy the other nerve, the sneeze nerve. So you're getting so overloaded with bright light when you see that sunlight that it accidentally

jumps on over to your sneeze reflex as well and makes you sneeze. It's like, are you getting all this light? Are you getting this? Yeah. Get a load of this. It's some good stuff. I think they've landed on about between 23 and 25% generally of people have this photic sneeze reflex.

Right. So that's, I mean, it's pretty substantial. There are some other like small identity groups of sneezers that are far smaller than that. Apparently, there are people who, there's a four families, not one in four people, four families as far as anyone knows, who have something called snatiation, which is where you, if they eat too much and they feel overly full, it will trigger a sneezing attack. Yeah. I would call that rare.

Yeah. Four families for sure. And we're just going to pass right on by, right, Chuck? Yes. Okay. That acronym. Getting back to the photic sneezing though, they think it also could be a holdover and evolutionary advantage from when we were little babies, because little babies don't have,

they can't blow their nose, they don't know what that even is. So the only, they can't pick their nose, they can't use any implement at all to clear out their nose except the sneeze. They rely on the sneeze to get that mucus out or, of course, parents who will suck that stuff out through a little device, which is no fun, but necessary. Or you hold them on their side and you blow in their ear, that usually clears out the nose. I should probably just go ahead and say, don't do that, that was a joke.

You can whisper sweet nothings, but don't, yeah, don't do that. So babies are pretty sensitive to that photic light reflex and they think that may be a reason that basically we, that's just sort of a holdover from when we were babies. It makes sense. It also makes sense to me that babies might have more active or kind of raw or nerve pathways. So maybe they're just more sensitive to that jump over, that crossover. Maybe. Plucking nose hairs, did that ever happen to you?

Every time. So it doesn't make me sneeze, but it makes my eyes water. I've just seen every long distance commercial from the nineties all at once. Yeah. And it's interesting because those, you talked early about the trigeminal nerves that are all through the face. I think it's just all related. You could pluck an eyebrow and it could make you sneeze and your eyes are watering and

that's part of your face. It's just all sort of one big nerve bundle that's all interrelated and any of those could trigger either watering of eyes or definitely sneezing. Even if you'd like pluck a hair out of your head, that could do it. That's never happened to me, but my nose hair and my eyebrow hair, oh man, my eyes will start watering. It's not a pleasant experience for sure. I've never plucked an eyebrow hair.

Oh, every once in a while, I'll get one that's a big, fat, long goat hair. It just suddenly comes up overnight. No, I've seen, I've got those too. Okay. Well, I pluck those. I just trim those. You know, it's, maybe I should trim them. That's a good idea, but have you ever noticed if you get one, there's almost invariably

one on the other side too, like they come up in pairs, does that happen to you? I have not noticed that. Can you pull on one, does the other one get shorter? That was a wonderful show. That'd be great. Yeah. It's like pulling that spaghetti through your nose and out your mouth. Don't do that either.

Can you do that? No, I've never tried to do stuff like that. I've never tried either. I don't want to. There's also a group of people who sneeze when they become sexually aroused. Yeah, that's a thing apparently. Or if you orgasm, like after you orgasm, it could trigger a sneezing fit. Yeah.

It's apparently a bigger group than you would expect. Some researcher went around to internet chat rooms and said, hey, does anybody sneeze when they become aroused or when they have an orgasm? She found 17 people who sneeze from sexual ideation and three who sneeze from orgasm, which is, that is way more than I would expect from just going around on internet chat rooms and asking people. Yeah. And also we should point out, way not scientific.

No, not at all. Yeah, anecdotally, it's still impressive. But I read an explanation for this. It's a terrible explanation, but it's an explanation by the journal of the association of physicians of India. It's an Indian journal, coincidentally enough. They suggest that it's because the nose contains erectile tissue, which it does, which erectile tissue is just tissue that can become larger and gorged by blood flow.

And yes, you have erectile tissue in your genitalia. Yes, you have it in your nose, but they're not in any way related as far as anyone's ever even thought, aside from the people in this journal. And the most bizarre thing you've ever heard, it's pretty bizarre. Like your nose is becoming aroused is basically what they're saying. And so you sneeze. Yeah. Fantastic.

There's also intractable sneezing or psychogenic, and that is something that's almost exclusive to young women, girls, adolescents basically going through puberty. And these are girls who may not suffer from allergies, they're not sick with a cold or anything, but can go on these big sneezing binges for days and days at a time. Yes. And apparently the world, oh my goodness. The world record holder is a girl named Donna Griffiths who was 12 when she started. She started in 1981, January of 1981, and her sneezing fit ended 977 days later in September

of 1983. I remember hearing about this one. And as it, I mean, as it went on, I was way too young for this, but had I been more aware, I would have felt very bad for this girl. Because as it went on, if she sneezed once in a day, it was considered part of the record. And I think that that was kind of how it was toward the end. But that first year sounds like a bear. Yeah, no good.

A million sneezes in the first 365 days, which is basically a sneeze a minute on average. And Chuck, and it's impossible to sneeze in your sleep. You cannot sneeze in your sleep. If you sneeze while you're sleeping, you wake up to sneeze. Your brain just isn't functioning correctly to sneeze while you're sleeping. So that means this girl was averaging a sneeze a minute just during waking hours, but a sneeze a minute over 24 hours compressed into, say, 10 or 12 hours that she was awake that day. Or would she wake herself up sneezing?

I don't know. If that's the case, then she had a really, really rough year because she was sneezing every minute and not getting any sleep. Yeah. I mean, it's disruptive no matter what. I mean, you can't hold on a job if you're sneezing every minute. Well, luckily she was 12 and this is after child labor laws were passed. I'm hoping she didn't have a job.

Get out of that cigarette factory. That's right. She has nimble little fingers for sorting cigarettes. Perfect. Should we take another break? Yeah, I think so. All right. We'll talk about the travel and droplets right after this.

Great band. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing.

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And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Well now when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck and get stuff you should know, all right. All right.

So this is pretty relevant now. And I know, and I think this was put together before, I feel like we've been sitting on this one. Was this before coronavirus? Um, no, I think it was during, was it during? Okay. Yeah. And this is a Dave helped us out.

Dave Rus helped us out with this one. Yeah. And I think we've all seen these videos by now with everything that's going on. But in 2016, a researcher from MIT named Lydia, oh boy, goodness me, Barubia? Sure. Bariba? I'm going with Baruba. Baruba.

Baruba. Baruba. Baruba. Baruba. It is, there's a couple of sounds in there that follow one another. It makes it very difficult. Yeah. There are three vowels in a row, it's always sort of a dealer's choice.

So she published some slow-mo 2000 frame per second film images of people sneezing and what that looked like. That's where we get, and other people have done this too and measured the sneeze, but that's one place where we get the 100 miles per hour stat. Oh, from that study? Yeah. And other places. I mean, that's pretty common knowledge now.

But up to 25, 30 feet, you can blow a sneeze, it can stay suspended in the air for a few minutes, and they likened it to, if you would take a bucket of paint and just throw the paint out of the can into the air, sort of is how a sneeze works. They call it sheets of fluids. And you got these big hunks of mucus and saliva that just sort of come out together and then break apart little by little until you get to the fine mist that sort of can hang in the air. Yeah.

It starts as a clump and then turns into ropey filaments and then into increasingly smaller particles. And those really small particles, the aerosolized stuff. That's the scary stuff. I saw a Bristol study that said, and this wasn't necessarily coronavirus, but that contagious germs can stay in the air, suspended in the air for weeks, possibly. That would have to be a very hardy contagious virus or bacteria. Yeah.

No air flow. Right. Yeah. To just sit there. But the 27 feet, which is kind of common knowledge these days in the era of coronavirus, that your sneeze can project those particles up to like 27 feet, there's little pockets of gas and turbulence that are in a room, even a room that seems still, but certainly one that has like the AC on or air flowing through it.

And those little particles can hitch rides on those pockets and travel. I saw it 200 times further than you expel them with just your sneeze. Yeah. So, you know what prevents that? Covering yourself, your mouth and your nose when you sneeze and or wearing a mask. Yeah. I mean, they teach, I mean, this has nothing to do with coronavirus, but this is especially important.

But they teach little kids from the moment they can even understand things in preschool to always sneeze into your elbow and cough into your elbow because that's something that kids can, you know, you can't always get to a tissue, right? Which is what they say is sort of the best thing to do. But that elbow is a pretty good, it's a pretty good system, I think. It's really cute to see a little kid do that too. Yeah. Because they're doing the right thing.

It's, it's, it is adorable. I agree. Yeah. But yeah, the ideal is to, to sneeze into a tissue, throw your tissue away and wash your hands thoroughly. That's what you're supposed to do after you sneeze every time, every single time. Every single time. And I don't sneeze a lot.

Emily sneezes a lot. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because she's got the allergies. Oh yeah. So she's got a lifelong persistent tickle in her nose. It's terrible. Aw.

Does she have what's it called? That kind of sneezing where it's a, a psychogenic, intractable sneezing? Well, no, because she's not, she's not 13. Yeah. Man. No, it's just allergy related, but lots of sneezing when it's, when it's really bad. It's, it's pretty tough to be around. Not to, not tough for me, but you know.

Right, right. Yeah. It's really annoying. So I did look up to find out where we stood as far as knowledge on sneezing and contagion outdoors goes. And from what I can tell, there was some study that was done by some engineers that sprayed an aerosol can running, walking, and then on a bike. And the results showed that this stuff spreads really far and wide, but they didn't take

into account a lot of different things, a lot of different factors so that if you are outdoors, as long as somebody doesn't sneeze at you basically in your face or in your direction within, you know, 20 or 30 feet directly toward you, you're probably not going to catch enough of a viral load of something like coronavirus to become sick from it. Especially if you're not in a crowded group, if you're just walking outside and somebody else is walking, you know, 15 feet ahead of you and they're just breathing and they're on the other side of the street, you're probably going to be fine just because that stuff's going to dissipate so much because of all the factors, the environmental factors that

exist outdoors rather as opposed to indoors. Indoors is a totally different ball game. Outdoors you're much safer. Yeah. I mean, I haven't been around a human that sneezed aside from my wife in, you know, four or five months. Great. Like I would even when I've gone to the store and like I'm on the lookout for that stuff.

Oh yeah. And like I think we all are, but I haven't even been in a store like on an aisle where someone's like sneezed because I would, and probably unreasonably, you know, freak out a little bit. Sure. I think you're allowed to yell at that person. But I haven't even seen anyone that been around anyone that sneezed, so that's been a comfort.

Yeah. You me went to the store and came back and said somebody sneezed twice and the whole store just started looking around like where did that come from? Yeah. It's weird, huh? It's basically like a stampede or something to get away from that thing. It is. It's a weird time to be alive.

We're all going to be very, very weird even after things go back to normal, I think. Yeah. You know? It's going to take a while. I know I will be. Yeah. So should we talk a little bit about a culture and, you know, sort of what people say all around the world.

I know here in America it's sort of custom to say God bless you or bless you and that, you know, there's some different explanations, but one of them that seems to hold water, I think, dates back to the Middle Ages with the Black Plague when Pope Gregory 7 basically said, hey, everyone, you know, things are pretty bad. We should just, we should say God bless you if someone is sneezing because they might be dying. Yeah. Which is a, from what I saw, a big departure from earlier Christian teachings which taught

people to just totally ignore sneezes. Or say God is dead. Which I find very weird, like why would you teach people to ignore sneezes? I didn't get that, but I found this really awesome article called Romance and Tragedy of Sneezing by Dr. Wilson D. Wallace in Scientific Monthly from 1919. And he cited that, that earlier Christians were like, just ignore it, just pretend it didn't happen. Yeah.

I'm a, I'm a bless you guy, I don't do the gazuntite or salute, which is Spanish to your health, that kind of thing. Yeah, it's also a toast. Yeah. I say that, I don't, I don't say that ever really. Sometimes I'll say it when I toast, but it's been, I don't know, I don't remember what I'd do with anyone anymore. You know, it's, I don't, I've forgotten to deal with people.

I always raise my glass and say it's time to get toe up from the flow up. I say, may Jupiter bless you. Right. I saw another one from the Greeks too. I love that one. Live Zeus preserve you. I think you and I should bring back both of those. Okay.

That's fantastic. Can't you imagine everyone in Greece just like being like, don't sneeze, don't sneeze. Just everyone's all twitchy and shaky from people yelling that at them. Yeah. I mean, it's weird too, because it's a, it's a very kind thing to do to a stranger. It's a, this one, I guess Dave just says in academic, but they called it a micro-affection, which is nice. You know, it's just a little quick, nice thing to say to a stranger if, and I'll always do

it. We've, we've done it during our live shows when someone sneezes. It's a, and not to be funny, it gets a laugh, but it's just sort of a, it's almost like an involuntary micro-affection, I think for most, you know, non-monsters. For sure. Yeah. Where people just kind of have a brief connection. Yeah.

Bless you. No, they don't know each other. But now it's like, bless you. I'm a human being. You're a human being. What is it now? Well, just bless you and get pleased and get very far away from me. Right.

Bless you over there. So there's also a very common understanding that people thought that a demon was trying to get in or your soul was trying to get out. Yeah. And I kept seeing like other cultures or old, ancient cultures, that kind of thing. The closest one I could find that seemed like that was in Persia, Zoroastres believed that your body was fighting off a fiend that had invaded, like an invading demon or spirit, and that a sneeze was basically your body signaling that it had been victorious in

fighting this fiend and getting this fiend out, and that deserved a prayer, and that if you overheard somebody sneeze, you would say the same prayer with them. I couldn't find what prayer though. Yeah, it seems to be a good luck thing in a lot of cultures throughout the years. According to the Talmud, it's a good omen if you sneeze when you're praying in China and Japan. If you sneeze, it means someone's sort of like your ears are burning, someone's talking about you.

Yeah. And one sneeze means they're saying nice things, two means they're spreading gossip. I don't know what they would think about me with my three. Three means you die. Right. I don't know what three mean. I don't know. I mean, because there's only two ways people can talk about you, right?

Exactly. They might be saying something like, Chuck has a beard. Okay. That's as neutral as it gets. Exactly. So, there's folklore and then there's what we think is true, which is a kind of folklore, but it's actually, it's just folklore too. Urban legends is what we call them, or old wives tales, and we talked about one where

that your, your eyes will pop out of your head if you sneeze with your eyes open. We debunked that one pretty clearly, I think, don't you? Can't do it. And then there's some other ones too. There's one that Yumi told me about, I had no idea until she said this, but apparently some people believe that you basically die for a second while you're sneezing. Like your body just shuts down, including your heart, and that you're technically dead for that half second while the sneeze is going on.

I've heard your heart stops. I had never heard that before until a couple of days ago. And yeah, I looked it up and it's a thing, but no, it's, that's not at all true. Like your heart rhythm might actually change and the volume of blood in your heart might decrease or increase because of the pressure of the air in your chest or the release of pressure, but the electrical activity remains the same. And that's the key to whether your heart's, you know, alive or not. Yeah.

Yeah. Your heart does not stop. Yeah. It's like playground stuff. It is. I thought it was very cute. Yeah. What about sneezing after sex preventing pregnancy?

Did you see this one? Well, I mean, what are you sneezing out of? Right. So I mean, like that's the idea that if you sneeze, you're expelling, well, there's really no other way to put it, semen, and that that would keep you from getting pregnant. Wow. It seems a little redic. Yeah.

That's another playground thing. I guess so. That's good. What playground have you been hanging out on? Pretty advanced playground activity. You got anything else? Oh, I've got one more thing, Chuck. Yeah.

You got anything else? I got nothing else. In 2016 or 18, a man in Leicester in the UK ruptured his throat from trying to stifle a sneeze. The pressure was so great, it broke open his throat. Wow. Yeah. Internally, it didn't break through the skin, but his throat internally was rupturing.

Because that's what I pictured, like a throat explosion. It just blew his head completely off like that guy in scanners. Well, I guess that's it for sneezing, everybody. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks again to Wes for the idea. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. We call this Atlanta, Texas. Hey, guys, my name's Ben Lee, local Atlanta, Georgia.

And my wife and I are huge longtime fans. In your recent episode on Pirate Radio, y'all briefly brought up Radio Atlanta, which was named after Atlanta, Texas, and you joke that no one knew that town exists, even the people that live there. And that's pretty much true. My family is originally from Atlanta, Texas. It's pretty small, just about 5,000 residents, so it's totally understandable. I was born in Texarkana, Texas, not too far from there, which is basically famous for

being in the Smokey and the Bandit movie. I thought that was the town that dreaded sundown, too, wasn't it? I don't know about that. I definitely remember from Smokey and the Bandit, because they were driving that beer from Texarkana to Atlanta. And Benjamin here says, I don't know why they didn't do Atlanta to Atlanta. Wasted opportunity. It really is.

It sounds like Benjamin moved from Atlanta to Atlanta, though, huh? Maybe. Kind of. I mean, he's in Atlanta. Right. He teaches at Georgia State. That's pretty awesome. Hey, hats off to you for teaching these days, Benjamin.

Yeah, he says there's a lot of towns in Texas that are also Georgia names. There's in Athens, Texas, at Douglasville, Columbus, Dallas, Georgia, and Texas. And he said there's even a Georgia, Texas. Well that's just confusing. And he said thanks for all the great stuff, and that is from Benjamin Bowden-Lee. Thanks a lot, Benjamin Bowden-Lee. That was a great email. We appreciate it.

Any email that references Smoky and the Bandit, we're all right with. Yep. Well, if you want to email us about Smoky and the Bandit or anything else, we'd love to hear from you. You can send it to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. People podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever

you listen to podcasts.