Do you stop breathing for the few seconds that you sneeze?
469142
I don't. Are we supposed to?
18663
You're simply blocking the air that would come out during the sneeze, not actually preventing the sneeze. You can accomplish the same thing by closing and tightening your mouth.
898455
Hmm, if I had to count how many times i sneezed every day it would probably end up being a couple hundred each day, lol! I have very bad allergies and I am constantly sneezing. Usually after the 3rd sneeze, my family members will tell me to shut up(sarcastically) because they know that I will go on forever.
244805
If you cough, sneeze, and fart all at the same time, will you die?
224264
Sorry, we don’t know why most people close their eyes when sneezing. Not all do. \n\nSome experts guess that we’ve evolved closing eyes to reduce sneeze spray landing in our eyes. However, our eyes are exposed constantly to bacteria and viruses and have good defenses without eye closing.\n\nClosing eyes (or keeping them open) is part of the sneeze reflex. It’s a reflex—meaning we have no conscious control of sneezes. Instead, the primitive part of the brain (called the medulla oblongata and located at the top of the spine) calls the shots. The reflex triggers major muscles of face, throat, and chest to fire out gunk going at 100 mph (150 kph) as fast as a pitcher’s fastball.\n\nMost people tighten the eye muscles, causing them to shut, as they tighten the other muscles involved in a sneeze. But not all do. Some sneeze with their eyes open. Either way, it’s part of the inborn sneeze reflex.\n\nIn 1888, Thomas Edison hit upon the idea of movies from looking at sequential pictures of someone sneezing
564644
the only systems that a sneeze can effect are:\n\nrespiratory (the heart skips a beat when you sneeze [hince why we say bless you])\n\nmuscular (the muscles tighten up when you sneeze [if someone were to sneeze 100 times in one day, they will burn 5 calories])\n\nof course your nervous system ( when you sneeze and your body moves, reacts, or holds your hands up its because of your nervous system tells it to do so.)\n\nwell your immune system is kind of effected. ( its the reason why youre sneezing in the first place)( its getting rid of unwanted air or particles that recently entered your body)\n\nand thats all i believe.
304437
When you sneeze, it is said that your heart stops beating. \nWhen you cough, your heart is not affected.
1012615
My longest sneezing fit lasted 45 minutes. I just couldn't stop. I kept sneezing and sneezing and I don't have allergies or anything like that.
621962
Yes there is!, I'm from South Asia ( india) and there no one really cares if you did pretty much anything to yourself. Sneezing  generates sympathy in other parts of the world which I believe is somewhat ok but it becomes irritating when you hear a sympathetic voice too often. \n\nIf nature produced the sneeze, it took care that no one was hurt by it, so the less you is pretty much redundant.
395451
No it doesn't kill brain cells. Sneezing is an automatic reaction to an irritation of the nasal passages. You should never suppress a sneeze. It can cause major ear problems, eye problems and does your vascular system no good at all.\nAs an example of how strong a sneeze is, I fractured my eye socket when sneezing and it wasnt a suppressed sneeze. I couldn't believe it. My socket was fractured and the tear duct popped out of the corner of my eye!
960883
'It is unclear, but scientists theorize that we close our eyes when we sneeze to protect them. We may be protecting our eyes from microorganisms and particles from our sneezes," But it could also be simply because a sneeze is a kind of bodywide reflex in which a lot of muscles contract, not just in the nose and throat but also those in the diaphragm, the abdomen, thighs, back, even sphincters (which is why some people with stress incontinence may urinate slightly when they sneeze).\n\nResearchers aren't sure exactly why the sneeze reflex happens, but whatever neurological message tells the eyes to close probably comes from a primitive part of the brain called the medulla oblongata in the brain stem.  And, it's not just an irritation in the nose that can trigger a sneeze; some people, probably because of genetics, have a photic reflex, which makes them sneeze in response to sudden, bright light.\n\nAnd, in case you were wondering about that old wives' tale about the heart skipping a beat when you sneeze, rest assured: It doesn't, though it may pause for a fraction of a second before resuming its normal rhythm.  That pause is believed to occur due to a change in intra-thoracic pressure, or pressure in the chest, when you sneeze. That pressure may stimulate the vagus nerve, which in turn slows the heart rate down for a brief moment.\n\nThis is not dangerous.   But it's believed that people began saying ''God bless you" when a person sneezes because they believed that, in that brief moment, you were between heaven and hell, and, if you were blessed, you'd be saved from damnation.
191465
No, that is a myth....\n\nIn a word, no, your heart does not stop when you sneeze.  From my \nperspective, it is hard to even imagine what this would mean.  A sneeze \nitself is really a very brief event, occurring in a shorter time then a \nheartbeat.  Of course, there is the building up to the sneeze (the "ah" of \nthe "ah-choo"), but the heart certainly does not stop beating because of \nthis ah-ing.  Check your pulse next time to prove this to yourself.\n\nAs I answer this question, I am trying to imagine just how the heart might \neven "know" that you are sneezing.  The heart beats because a small part of \nit called the SA node has a "pacemaker" activity.  What this means is that \nthere is a type of electrical cycle going on that triggers beats roughly \nonce every second.  Sneezing does not change this electrical cycle, so the \nheart keeps beating.  Said a different way, the muscle of your heart is a \nbig mass of electrically active tissue, and this electrical activity will \nnot stop because of a sneeze, or anything else for that matter.\n\nAnd yet, a sneeze is definitely a complex cardiovascular event.  As you \n"ah" and "choo", you significantly change the pressure inside your chest, \nwhich in turn affects blood flow and thus the beating of the heart.  Still \nfurther, I assume that a sneeze involves a significant activation of \ncertain pathways of the "autonomic" (roughly means automatic) nervous \nsystem.  These also innervate the heart and do affect the frequency and \nother aspects of the heartbeat.\n\nSo MAYBE the rapid culmination of these inputs OCCASIONALLY causes the \nheart to "skip a beat" after a sneeze.  Notice I did not say "stop".  We \nall experience skipped beats once in a while, some more than others.  You \nmay notice it as a "fluttering" in your chest, a sensation that generally \nevokes a bit of anxiety.  What happens is that there is occasionally a \ndiscoordination of the normally organized pathways of electrical activity \nin the heart.  Sometimes one part of the heart does not conduct the beat \nappropriately, or more commonly, another part actually manages to beat \nahead of schedule, thus throwing the whole beat off.  Either way, you get \none beat that does not occur correctly.  But all this means is that you \nhave to wait for the beginning of the next electrical cycle to come around, \nat which time a normal, organized beat will occur (assuming that we are \ntalking about a normal heart!).  You see, the heart didn’t stop, really, \nsince the electrical cycle was still ongoing.  It just got out of synch for \na while.  Again, I am not actually aware that this happens with any \nincreased frequency after a sneeze, but I suppose it is possible.\n\nTaking a more historical/philosophical view of your question, the much more \nlikely explanation for why people say "God bless you" has to do with \nreligious beliefs and superstition.  As I understand it, in earlier times \nit was believed that when you sneezed you opened yourself, or your soul, to \nthe outside world.  It was an unnatural and certainly a bizarre happening, \nand clearly portended evil.  I am certain that there are variations on this \ntheme, but basically it was thought that your soul might escape, or demons \nand evil spirits might get in, or even that they may have caused the sneeze \nin the first place.  The blessing was to help ward off such badness.  I am \nno historian, but I think people have done fairly extensive studies of this \ncustom, its variations, and its origins.\n\nAh, well.  Or maybe I should say, Ah choo.\n\nTom Wilson, MD PhD
314007
First of all not all people sneeze multiple times in a row.  The reason for sneezing is your body's primary defense against something trying to get in that shouldn't be there such as dust, pollen, bacteria, etc.  The little hairs in your nose are very sensitive and when something moves them it gets trapped inside and sneezing is how your body expels the invader from your nose or throat if it made it that far although coughing is usually more related to the throat.
98543
Some people can sneeze with their eyes open and some people can’t. Sneezing is a reflex and so is closing our eyes. We have no control over whether or not we close our eyes when we sneeze. Some people don’t have reflex, so when they sneeze then their eyes won’t close. Some people try to close their eyes so when they sneeze their eyes won’t pop out. Your eyes don’t really pop out. People without the reflex to sneeze with their eyes open can try to train themselves to sneeze with their eyes open. One good way to do this is if when you sneeze you hold your eyes open.\n\n    People think that when you close your eyes when you sneeze that you are blocking germs and bacteria. That is not true because your eyes deal with germs all the time. If you close your eyes during a sneeze, then it is just a reflex. During this part of the sneeze, we tense some of our muscles. The tensing (tightening) of our muscles causes our eyes to shut.\n\n    People that sneeze a lot can prevent sneezing. If you feel a sneeze, then use saline solution. You can also softly hold your nose at the end. These things can help your body remove things it does not want without sneezing.\n\n    No one knows the reason you close your eyes when you sneeze. There are many possibilities. Some people think it is to protect your eyes from flying goop. Most doctors think that it is still a reflex, or we just can’t help it.\n\n    Sneezing is very good for you and your body because it removes things from your body like bacteria and germs. It also is good because it keeps the tubes that carry the air from your nose to the lungs healthy. Sneezing makes your nose clear when you have a cold. If you used to hate sneezing, then I hope this has changed your mind.
722090
When you sneeze every muscle in your body tightens, The muscle in your eye might be more sensitive to the sudden spasm
277164
Yes it is healthy to sneeze! If you hold your sneezes in then you will totally mess up your sinus cavity, and have to have a $14,000+ sinus surgery. The thing about all of your functions is only if you sneeze so many time in a row. I was told if you continue to sneeze more than 12 times your heart will stop. \n\nSo, if you gotta sneeze let it out! My husband and I spent 4 sleepless nights after his surgery!
894281
No, I sneeze all the time.\nb