Did you know that when you sneeze your heart stops?

Question

That's why people say "Bless You" after someone sneezes..

Answer 1

In a word, no, your heart does not stop when you sneeze. From my
perspective, it is hard to even imagine what this would mean. A sneeze
itself is really a very brief event, occurring in a shorter time then a
heartbeat. Of course, there is the building up to the sneeze (the "ah" of
the "ah-choo"), but the heart certainly does not stop beating because of
this ah-ing. Check your pulse next time to prove this to yourself.

As I answer this question, I am trying to imagine just how the heart might
even "know" that you are sneezing. The heart beats because a small part of
it called the SA node has a "pacemaker" activity. What this means is that
there is a type of electrical cycle going on that triggers beats roughly
once every second. Sneezing does not change this electrical cycle, so the
heart keeps beating. Said a different way, the muscle of your heart is a
big mass of electrically active tissue, and this electrical activity will
not stop because of a sneeze, or anything else for that matter.

And yet, a sneeze is definitely a complex cardiovascular event. As you
"ah" and "choo", you significantly change the pressure inside your chest,
which in turn affects blood flow and thus the beating of the heart. Still
further, I assume that a sneeze involves a significant activation of
certain pathways of the "autonomic" (roughly means automatic) nervous
system. These also innervate the heart and do affect the frequency and
other aspects of the heartbeat.

So MAYBE the rapid culmination of these inputs OCCASIONALLY causes the
heart to "skip a beat" after a sneeze. Notice I did not say "stop". We
all experience skipped beats once in a while, some more than others. You
may notice it as a "fluttering" in your chest, a sensation that generally
evokes a bit of anxiety. What happens is that there is occasionally a
discoordination of the normally organized pathways of electrical activity
in the heart. Sometimes one part of the heart does not conduct the beat
appropriately, or more commonly, another part actually manages to beat
ahead of schedule, thus throwing the whole beat off. Either way, you get
one beat that does not occur correctly. But all this means is that you
have to wait for the beginning of the next electrical cycle to come around,
at which time a normal, organized beat will occur (assuming that we are
talking about a normal heart!). You see, the heart didn’t stop, really,
since the electrical cycle was still ongoing. It just got out of synch for
a while. Again, I am not actually aware that this happens with any
increased frequency after a sneeze, but I suppose it is possible.

Taking a more historical/philosophical view of your question, the much more
likely explanation for why people say "God bless you" has to do with
religious beliefs and superstition. As I understand it, in earlier times
it was believed that when you sneezed you opened yourself, or your soul, to
the outside world. It was an unnatural and certainly a bizarre happening,
and clearly portended evil. I am certain that there are variations on this
theme, but basically it was thought that your soul might escape, or demons
and evil spirits might get in, or even that they may have caused the sneeze
in the first place. The blessing was to help ward off such badness. I am
no historian, but I think people have done fairly extensive studies of this
custom, its variations, and its origins.

As a final thought, I think the most interesting question is not why we say
"God bless you", but rather why we sneeze in the first place! I wrote a
Mad Scientist answer about this a while back that I am still trying
to fully satisfy myself about.

Ah, well. Or maybe I should say, Ah choo.

Tom Wilson, MD PhD

Answer 2

You do know that's not true, right...


Traditional responses to a sneeze

In English-speaking countries, it is common for at least one person to say "Bless you" after someone sneezes. Its origins are unclear, but it has been cited as far back in Western culture as 150 CE. One story is that since the final stage of the Black Plague was sneezing, anyone who sneezed was thought to be at death's door and was blessed for the ascension into heaven.

Answer 3

Yes. As a matter of fact, your whole body shuts down for that split second it takes to complete the sneeze.

Answer 4

Apparently you also lose a braincell everytime you sneeze.

Answer 5

you also cant keep your eyes open when you sneeze

Answer 6

Did you know when I had open heart surgery my heart was stopped? So?

Answer 7

Yeah...and u close your eyes because otherwise your eye balls would pop out of your head

Answer 8

Stops what?

Answer 9

That is a myth

Answer 10

yup