What happens if you sneeze with eyes open

Have you tried sneezing with your eyes open?  And if you did, did your eyes stay in their place or did they fall out of their sockets? Is it even possible?

“Your eyes are firmly attached by the powerful muscles keeping them in place, so they are not going to be thrown out of their sockets, and even if the pressure behind the eyes can slightly increase while sneezing, the force is  not enough to dislocate the eyeballs from your head," explained Dr. Madhusudan Shendre.

Speaking to ‘Emirates24|7’, ENT Surgeon at Medeor 24 x 7 Hospital, candidly helped to debunk a few myths surrounding the wonderful world of sneezing.

As there’s so much more to sneezing then simply creating a noise, we know how to do it, we know (most of the time) how it will sound, and how we will end up feeling relieved right after.

As sneezing is mainly a protective reflex, basically for taking your foreign body out of your nose, Dr Madhusudan did explain when it would be possible for the eyes to fall out.

"Pathologically, without any sneezing, it can be possible, but only if those parts and muscles holding your eyeball get diseased and loosened, which then in spite of closing your eyes, they may fall out because of the pressure and muscle weakness caused by diseases as well as severe endocrinal and thyroid issues."

Holding your sneeze

And when it comes to sneezing we’ve also heard this heard the usual – don’t hold your sneeze.

Since sneezing comprises thousands of minute bits that get blown from your nostrils more than a 100kph,  you can imagine how that amount of pressure could affect the tissues inside your head if you tried to block the sneeze by holding your nose.

"If you close both your eyes and nose during a sneeze, the pressure is increasingly built up there in the mouth," said Dr Madhusudan.

So when a foreign body enters your nose, your sneeze will undoubtedly remove it, but imagine if you placed a hold on that. 

The ENT Surgeon explained: "What happens is that there is pressure developed and built up in the air passage, larynx, esophagus, and nasal area, so if you hold the nose and mouth where will it go?  If you create a block by holding your sneeze, then the pressure has to go somewhere else."

He added: "It will come out through the ear, and that is extremely dangerous, leading to ear damage and many other problems, including pressure trauma to the ear.”

That is why when you blow your nose you have to make sure your mouth is open, to keep the pressure balanced.

When you sneeze, your heart skips a beat 

This is yet another of the many myths that requires some deflation.

What happens during a sneeze is that the pressure in the body increases for a while and reduce the blood flow to the heart, but not enough to actually affect the electrical activity of the heart, as some folks believe.

Demystifying another myth, the ENT Surgeon said: "When you have a call from above, your heart will definitely stop, it’s nothing related to sneezing!"

(Image via Shutterstock)

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