Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hey guys, it's Josh. And Chuck, Jerry, Ben, and I put together a nice new playlist for you to chase the winter blues away and get ready for one of the four greatest seasons around, spring. It's our Stuff You Should Know Think Spring playlist.
And even if there's still snow on the ground where you live, it will put you in a mind to grab your trowel and sit by the window and wait till everything melts. You can get the Stuff You Should Know Think Spring playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math & Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Math & Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. Coming up this season on Math & Magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario.
People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower, where it's really like a stone sculpture.
You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of sneezing in humans and animals?
Take to interactive CEO, Strauss Zelnick, and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey. Listen to Math & Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On paper, the three hosts of the Nick Dick and Paul show are geniuses.
We can explain how AI works, data centers, but there are certain things that we don't necessarily understand. Better version of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Yes.
Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time. I actually, I thought it was. I got that wrong.
But hey, no one's perfect. We're pretty close, though. Listen to the Nick Dick and Paul show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Spring is so many wonderful things, trees budding, flowers blooming, getting to wear straw hats. But for a lot of people, it also means a miserable season of allergies. And sneezing is the poster child for allergies.
Let's just admit it. So we chose our episode on sneezing so we can at least help you understand what the heck is going on with your face, even if we can't cure you. We wish we could. So seal all the doors and the windows and kick back with this episode.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.
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? This sounds like a very 80s Reagan era campaign. It does. It definitely does.
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.
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Chapter 3: How does the human body initiate a sneeze?
Sure. Yeah, that's a pretty good way to put it. I mean, and it's an ancient, 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. 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. She's brachiocephalic. You ever had a dog that has that? I mean, I've never had a dog that didn't do it occasionally.
But Nico, I feel like goes, and it's not often, but it's like a, you know, it's like can be prolonged like 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 rub her 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. They're narrow for a very good reason, and that is to create turbulence inside your nasal passages
And, you know, 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.
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Chapter 4: What role do nasal passages play in sneezing?
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, almost 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 irionophils, 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, 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 ā
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.
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 there.
or the sneezing center in your brain, and your sneezing center sends it back over this kind of same switchboard of nerves in your face. And all this is happening in just, you know, a very short amount of time. Yeah, I mean, like I said, the whole thing takes place in less than a second.
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Chapter 5: What triggers the sneeze reflex in the body?
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.
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Chapter 6: How fast can a sneeze travel and what are its effects?
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. And 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. 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 mucous membrane when you've 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. Gross.
Yeah, isn't that grody? Like that makes it at least 12 or 15 times worse than runny nose, you know? Yeah, weird. Yeah. 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 condition.
Sternitatory or sternitative, depending on your preference. Cigarette smoke, if you work in 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? Very dangerous, you dummy. Yeah.
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 drug-induced rhinitis. There's certain drugs that have been identified. What did you say? The hippest kind. Right, yeah.
Mushrooms will make you sneeze. Apparently, I'm guessing that ā 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 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 antihypertensive drugs are the ones that are known drug-induced rhinitis sternitatories. If you are of advanced age, you might have what's called geriatric rhinitis, which is when those submucosal glands atrophy, and that means your nose can get really irritated and you might sneeze a lot. Right.
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Chapter 7: What are some common myths about sneezing?
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 setup, a get it to the front of your nose and then a get out. But I also saw where it could be genetic. Yeah. Like that you inherit a sneeze pattern.
Yeah.
Oh, really? And that like double sneezers beget 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 wasn't even going to bring that one up, to be honest. We'll just pass it by and let everybody wonder for the rest of their lives.
But autosomal dominant compelling helioophthalmic outburst syndrome, achoo. 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 is a term for photic sneezing that was coined at some point by someone who's obviously totally out of line.
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're coming from. You don't want it to be ad-chu. It's like, why even do it?
Yeah.
But you've got to figure it out, you know? I mean, just take dominant out. Just go with autosomal, you know? Yeah, who would know? I wouldn't have noticed. So you were saying, was that it for the patterns, the sneezing patterns? Yeah, I mean, there are just a couple of theories, either hereditary or that it just takes that much.
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Chapter 8: How does culture influence the way we respond to sneezing?
Right. So that's, I mean, that'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 four families, right?
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. Sure. But don't, yeah, don't do that.
But babies are pretty sensitive to that photoclite reflex, and they think that may be a reason why. And 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, that jump over that crossover. Yeah. Maybe.
Plucking nose hairs, does that ever happen to you? Every time. So it doesn't make me sneeze, but it makes my eyes water. Like I've just seen every long-distance commercial from the 90s all at once. Yeah, and it's interesting because those, you talked earlier about the trigeminal nerves that are all through the face. I think it's just all related.
Like 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 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 before. 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, 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? Has that happened to you? I have not noticed that. When you pull on one, does the other one get shorter? That was a wonderful joke. That'd be great. Yeah.
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