if you sneeze with your eyes open, do they pop out?
2006-09-21 03:09:11 · 26 answers · asked by david s 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Other - Science
Neat question!
I can never manage to keep my eyes open, and I don't think I know anyone else who can, so I don't have any person references....Hmmm...
The received wisdom states that if you don't blink when you sneeze, your eyes will fly out of your head. Thankfully, as is often the case with urban legends, this theory is a load of hooey. Your eyeballs are safe and sound in their sockets. For a funny pictorial representation of this hypothetical scenario, check out this urban myth page from MTV.
In reality, a sneeze is simply an involuntary nervous response to nasal irritation. According to this nifty science blog entry, the sneeze impulse affects a variety of body parts, including the abdomen, chest, neck, and face. During a sneeze, the impulses that travel through your face cause your eyelids to blink. This response is entirely automatic. There's nothing you can do about it. Sneezing puts a lot of pressure on your head and respiratory system, so blinking is probably a protective mechanism.
The point is that all of these responses (the abdominal contraction, the sharp burst of air out of your lungs, the general lunging movement) are intertwined. When you sneeze, you can't do one without the other.
2006-09-21 03:13:15 · answer #1 · answered by Elspeth 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
sneeze with your eyes open?
I always used to believe that if I kept your eyes open when I sneezed, my eyeballs would be propelled out of my head with the 100mph force of the sneeze and be lost forever. I, in fact, really had nothing to worry about as firstly, shutting your eyes when you sneeze is a reflex action. This means that your brain is hardwired to do it without you even having to think about it- the same way that you will remove your hand from a hot stove as soon as you touch it. We can bypasses the conscious bits of our brain and tell the muscles what to do immediately if we need to act quickly.
Now some people don't possess the reflex that makes you shut your eyes when sneezing and can sneeze with their eyes open- they still have eyeballs so is there really any reason for this reflex? The answer to that is probably not. So even if I could manage to hold my eyes open when I sneeze, they would stay put. The eyes are really well attached to your head via muscles and the optic nerve (Some strange people can make their eyes bulge out of their head which, although looking odd, doesn't lead to their eyeballs falling out onto the floor and serves to prove how well attached they really are). So the eyelid plays very little part in holding your eyes in when you sneeze.
So why do we still do it? The thing is, no one really nose (he he). Some people have said it is to stop nose gunk from flying into our eyes and giving us an infection. However, the eyes have really good defences against germs so this probably isn't the case. Maybe it is because we tense lots of our face muscles before we sneeze and the eye muscles are tensed as a byproduct. Or it could have no reason. The eyes and nose nerves are intertwined and stimulation of one can lead to a response from the others. This 'cross-wiring' is what happens when some people sneeze when looking at bright lights.
Did you know: Apparently the first sign of the plague used to be sneezing, so people would say 'bless you' if they heard you sneeze (you were probably going to die so they were trying to be nice). Sneezing these days doesn't usually warn of something as horrid as the plague but we still say 'bless you' anyway
2006-09-21 06:26:10 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
No one can sneeze with our eyes open. It's impossible
2006-09-21 03:14:45 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
You can't sneeze with your eyes open, it is an involuntary response to close them - ie you can't stop it - even if you held them open your eyes wouldn't pop out
2006-09-21 04:18:49 · answer #4 · answered by susyhutch 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i don't think that you can't even sneeze with your eyes open, if you can, then they probably will not pop out of your head.
2006-09-21 03:17:13 · answer #5 · answered by coopyey 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes, but it's really, really hard to keep your eyes open when you sneeze. Better to gouge them out with a sharp implement.
2006-09-21 07:02:36 · answer #6 · answered by Katherine S 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I have always been taught that.....I have never tried it, I think it would be impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
2006-09-21 03:18:14 · answer #7 · answered by ~♥Aimee♥~ 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
2006-09-21 03:11:29 · answer #8 · answered by hpneil 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
its impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
2006-09-21 03:16:36 · answer #9 · answered by fungirl 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Go ahead, sneeze with your eyes open.
I'll bet that you can't.
2006-09-21 03:14:37 · answer #10 · answered by credo quia est absurdum 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋