Josh Clark

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, you know, 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.

Yeah.

And, you know, the lateral medulla gets like everything in the brain.

It gets that signal and says –

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's 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.