Most people cover their nose and mouth when they sneeze. But if you’ve ever been tempted to suppress an ACHOOO—don’t. Recently, a man in England clamped his nose and mouth shut to stop a sneeze and ended up rupturing his throat.
A sneeze is a reflex—automatic response—caused by irritants like pollen or dust entering the nose. The body reacts by pushing air up from the lungs and out the nose and mouth. When the man held in his sneeze, pressure built in his pharynx, or throat, and caused it to burst.
A case like this is “very, very rare and heals within a week,” says Raguwinder Sahota, a doctor at the University of Leicester in England who treated the patient. Nonetheless, he advises that a big sneeze is always better let out than kept in.