Your Heart Does Not Stop When You Sneeze!

yetunde oyeleke

March 26, 2014 12:30 PM

Sneezing may occasionally cause your heart to 'skip a beat', due to a change in pressure in your chest...

Your body tenses up as a tingle starts somewhere in your nose, the resultant sneeze shakes you hard your eyes squeeze closed and your heart seems to jump.

But does it stop, even for a few seconds?

Many people have argued that the heart stops when we sneeze but that is just a mere figments of human imagination.

Worst still, some ancient cultures thought that the soul was in the form of air and resided in the head so a sneeze might accidentally expel the spirit from the body and result in death.

However, some cardiologists have speculated that this belief that the heart actually comes to a stop during a sneeze could result from the sensation of having the heart "skip a beat."

Occasionally your heart may "skip a beat", due to a change in pressure in your chest as you sneeze.

This change could decrease the blood flow back to the heart which then tries to compensate by changing its regular heart beat momentarily to adjust – but it does not stop beating!

Interesting facts about sneezing:

Sneezes are an automatic reflex that can’t be stopped once sneezing starts.
Sneezes can travel at a speed of 100 miles per hour and the wet spray can radiate five feet.
You can’t sneeze when you are asleep because the nerves involved in nerve reflex are also resting.
Some people still believe sneezing forces evil spirits out of the body endangering those around because these spirits might now enter their bodies. So they say ‘bless you’ to protect both the ‘sneezer’ and others around him.
Scientists think a sneeze is an involuntary reset of the nasal system? O yeah?

yetunde oyeleke