sneezing and closing eyes?
913830
its possible that when you sneeze, your eyes close reflexively, to prevent your eyes from getting contaminated by whatever is coming out of your nose and mouth.  As well, the urge to sneeze (that tingling feeling in your nose) may play a part, due to the optic nerves for your eyes laying close to the nerves for your nose and recieveing some residual signal...
871528
I doubt it can damage your brain.  But it is bad for you.  You sneeze to expell germs or something irritating your sinuses, so not allowing yourself to sneeze ("closed mouth") allows that germ or whatever to stay inside.  Just let yourself sneeze!
925113
Well the fact is that humans cannot sneeze while asleep.\nSneezing requires a reflex mechanism, wherein the sensory nerves in our upper respiratory tract, esp nostrils, are stimulated by some stimuli (mechanical or chemical or other)and these nerves then go to the CNS (i.e brain) and as a final process excite the nerves which supply muscles pf our respiration and the pharngeal region and the man sneezes thus. You must \nknow that this reflex is a natural means to protect our sensitive upper respiratory tract from harmful influnces or, more appropriately, external influences, be it a solid or a gas or as a response to some infection. Now when the man sleeps, his brain is not working at its normal levels and so even though the man's nerves have some external factor acting upon them,\nno reflex is initiated and the man doesn't sneeze. You must also know that when the stimuli continues or crosses a particular \nlevel, it changes from an irritative agent to a source of maybe say pain and the the man can have a disturbed sleep; there is a threshold for every thing.
951717
Look at a brihgt light until you sneeze. Or Get some pepper and smell deep into it if you wait a while.\n~*Alyssa*~
760689
If you did manage to sneeze with your eyes open, your eyes would pop out of your head.   Er, no. As discussed above, some people do manage to sneeze with their eyes open, and they don't go blind from it. Eye sockets are made of bone, they aren't connected to the nasal passages, and there are no muscles behind the eyes that contract when you sneeze, so there's really no mechanism involved in a sneeze that could force your eyes out of their sockets. Even if there were, human eyelids aren't particularly strong, so simply closing your eyes during a sneeze wouldn't be sufficient to keep them in their sockets if a sneeze truly had enough power to dislodge them. (In any case, some people — due to circumstances such as birth defects or injury — do not have eyelids. Were the "eye-popping" rumor true, all of those people would have to spend their lives in constant mortal fear of sneezing.)
271416
It is almost impossible for a person to keep their eyelids open during a sneeze, although some rare individuals report having little if any trouble doing so. The reflex of shutting the eyes serves no obvious purpose: the nerves serving the eyes and the nose are closely related, and stimuli to the one often trigger some response in the other.
640985
Sneezing helps u to remove an irritation from your nose.It is more of a response than a voluntary action. Like all other involuntary actions in our body sneezing also involves a lot of muscles. Some of these muscles may be involved in the closing of the eye lids. Being an involuntary action we are unable to keep our eyes open when sneezing. \nHowever we do find yogis who have control on many of their muscles - may be they will be in a better position to keep their eyes open when sneezing.\n\nOn the lighter side - what do you really expect to see when u are sneezing!!!!!
603572
I'm allergic to something that no doctor has yet been able to figure out.  It strikes me at the worst times (usually when I'm eating or drinking) and it was extremely hard to control.  What I've learned to do is to hold a piece of ice to the top of my mouth with my tounge.  If you press the ice firmly enough to the roof of your mouth the sneezing should stop (at least, it does with my sneezing).
753958
Similar to the reflex that occurs when your knee kicks after it's hit with a medical hammer, or the way your hand pulls away from something hot when you burn it, closing your eyes when you sneeze is a powerful reflex.\n\nA 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). When we sneeze, we tense some of our muscles. The tensing (tightening) of our muscles causes our eyes to shut.
323959
Usually the sneezing relex make your eye lids to close.
162788
Tidbitonebox7 is on the right track.  The nerves that serve your eyes and nose are very close together, and strong stimulation of one can affect the other.  So, if you get a strong light stimulation in your eyes, it can affect your nose nerves and cause you to want to sneeze.  There are similar affects and effects throughout the body.
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.
23007
Sneezing is defensive act by the nose to bring out any foreign body-ouside elements- outside.  So it should not be stopped.
267134
look at a bright light-it usually works!=) oops thats for getting a sneeze out....sorry =) not sure how to stop em' just don't fart and sneeze at the same time...although i'm not sure you can...
493240
closing your eyes is a natural reaction to many events.  if someone blows in your eye, you will naturally try to shut them.  sneezing elicits this response because you are going through a spastic motion and there are lots of particles being hurled into the air.  it is hypothesized that we evolved this reaction to sneezing to keep those particles out of our eyes.\n\nsneezing involves releasing the air in your lungs at very high velocity.  for the most part, your nose and mouth can expel this gas before the pressure in your sinuses gets to a point that it causes your eyes to pop out.\n\nyour eyelids alone can't prevent your eyes from popping out.  try to close your mouth, nose and eyes as tight as you can and see how the air gets out.  also tell the doctors at the emergency room
348729
I read something about it being impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. Even if you try your eyes would automatically close. I think they would pop out if they were taped open.
550897
A search of the Internet yields a lot of sites that basically say that it's a known phenomenon, but science hasn't figured out why.\n\nThere is speculation that the optic nerve gets overloaded by the bright light and "leaks" onto the nerves that trigger sneezing.