As hay fever sweeps the country, how SNEEZING can burst your lungs, break your ribs, make your bowels explode… and a host of other health consequences
A good sneeze comes with numerous benefits, and with hay fever sweeping the country, many of us will need it.
Medically speaking, sneezing is a powerful expulsion of air that removes all kinds of irritants from your nose.
Usually it is caused when a foreign substance in a pathogen such as a virus or irritant such as pollen or a chemical enters your nostrils.
Although they are a natural response, they can cause a range of terrifying and gruesome injuries including, in extreme circumstances, your intestines bulging out of your abdomen.
From breaking ribs, bursting lungs and even tearing delicate brain tissue, there are many ways a simple sneeze can land you in hospital, reveals Professor Adam Taylor, an expert in anatomy at Lancaster University.
Sneezing is a powerful expulsion that removes all kinds of irritants from your nose, not just snot
Exploding intestines
A horrific case study revealed how a man’s intestines exploded after he sneezed.
The 63-year-old from Florida was having breakfast at a restaurant with his wife when a seemingly harmless sneeze caused parts of his lower digestive system to burst through his body.
The man, who had a history of prostate cancer, had recently undergone abdominal surgery after a surgical scar failed to heal properly.
On the morning of the horrific event, he went to the urology clinic where they judged his wound to have healed well and removed some surgical staples.
To celebrate, he and his wife went to a restaurant for breakfast, according to the newspaper’s account of the events American Journal of Medical Case Reports in 2024.
During breakfast, the man first sneezed and then started coughing.
He then noticed pain and a ‘wet feeling’ on his lower abdomen.
Looking down, he noticed several “loops of pink gut” protruding from the recent surgical site.
He was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, where his intestines were placed back into his abdomen.
However, Professor Taylor warned that anyone who had undergone surgery was at risk of a similarly horrific injury from a simple sneeze.
‘There is an increase in pressure in your chest and your abdomen when you sneeze. “If you have an open wound, you run the risk of something popping through because of the pressure that is created,” he added.
‘Once the scar has closed and healed, that risk decreases dramatically. But if they have a wound that is not completely bandaged, then that is a real risk.”
You could break a rib
In fact, a single sneeze can be enough to break a rib.
Although rare in young and healthy people, Professor Taylor said the ‘sheer force’ of a sneeze can break a bone.
“We typically see rib fractures in the elderly or in people with specific medical conditions,” he said.
People with lower bone density due to osteoporosis are a group that is generally at increased risk of bone fractures, including from sneezing.
Professor Taylor added: ‘When you sneeze you tense your chest muscles against the ribs and pull the ribs inwards with a very sharp and rapid contraction, the air is forced out, clinging to the rib and causing it to literally tears. ‘
Experts say terrifying and gruesome injuries can occur from innocent sneezing after a case report showed a man’s intestines burst from his stomach
Bursting eardrums
Even holding in a sneeze can be unsafe.
Professor Taylor said that the increased pressure that causes a sneeze must escape somehow, potentially damaging sensitive tissue if it escapes.
He said, “When you sneeze, that pressure is expelled through your nose and out through your mouth.
Everything you need to know about hay fever
What exactly is hay fever?
Hay fever is an allergic reaction to pollen, a fine powder that comes from plants.
In spring and summer, when the plants bloom, there is more pollen in the air.
The reaction usually occurs when pollen comes into contact with a person’s eyes, nose, mouth or throat.
Symptoms include coughing and sneezing; a runny or stuffy nose; itchy, red or watery eyes; an itchy throat, nose, mouth or ears; headache and fatigue.
The image explains how you get an allergic reaction, such as sneezing and coughing, from pollen
Is it getting worse every year?
The severity of hay fever depends on the weather.
Wet and rainy conditions wash away the pollen, reducing the number of people with complaints and their severity.
However, in dry weather, the pollen is blown into the air, where it can easily get into the eyes and nose.
The pollen season also appears to be getting longer, with a US study showing it extended by 30 days between 1990 and 2018.
When are the symptoms worst?
Hay fever symptoms are usually at their worst around 11am and 6pm, because the pollen is at nose level.
The pollen lies on the ground at the beginning of the day and rises when the grass warms up.
During the day, the pollen then goes very high into the atmosphere.
As temperatures decrease during the day, the pollen grains sink back to the earth. They are usually back at nose height around 6 p.m.
‘If you hold your sneeze and close your mouth, and hold your nose, the inner ear tube extends from the inside of your throat all the way to the outer ear.
‘So you are more likely to burst your eardrums when you sneeze, because that pressure has to escape somewhere.’
Tear the fragile lung tissue
A particularly violent sneeze can even cause tears in your lungs.
In some cases, the lung can herniate through the intercostal muscles between the ribs, if there are weak spots.
According to Professor Taylor, this is usually a side effect of other health problems such as obesity, lung disease, diabetes or smoking.
There have also been cases where sneezing tears the delicate tissue of the lungs.
This can happen when air escapes into the space between the chest and lungs, causing air to compress the lungs on one or both sides.
“Our lungs, when we get to the level where we’re exchanging gas while breathing, those layers are very thin,” Professor Taylor said.
He added: ‘That increase in pressure occurs because the muscles contract when you sneeze to expel the air. This can cause those layers to tear, causing air to escape from the lungs into the chest cavity.’
However, people with lung conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or scarring of the lungs from previous injuries are more at risk because they already have weak spots in the organ.
Tear the covering off your brain
Not only the lungs can rupture, the brain is also at risk.
There have been reports of people tearing the delicate lining of the brain by sneezing, which can lead to a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a type of stroke.
Professor Taylor explains: ‘Our brains are surrounded by a number of very thin, delicate layers of tissue. There’s blood between some of those layers.”
‘Because some of these layers are involved in returning blood to the veins and back to the heart, a rise in blood pressure can cause them to rupture.’
And such a rise in blood pressure occurs when we sneeze, he explained.
‘So if you sneeze particularly heavily or you have a weakness in the walls of the brain, they could potentially rupture. This can cause blood to leak and cause immediate problems such as stroke,” he said.
Will your eyes pop out?
Although it is a myth that sneezing with your eyes open will cause them to pop out of their sockets, this does not mean that they are completely safe from sneezing.
Professor Taylor explains that because your eyes are held in place by muscles and nerves and the airways do not connect to your eye sockets, they cannot come out through a sneeze.
However, closing your eyes when you sneeze is an automatic reflex, and it is thought that the body does this to prevent the expelled germs from getting into your eyes.
So you could fight the reflex and keep your eyes open, but that’s probably not a good idea.