I was just thinking about that girl who continuously has been (or had been?) sneezing for a long time (she was on The Doctor’s Show via satellite awhile back) and wondered how she was.  Anyone hear anything about her?  I looked up how sneezing effects people to try and make sense of it:

1. Sneezes start in your nerves.  Everyone's nervous system is basically wired in the same way, but signals traveling along nerves can take slightly different paths to and from the brain, resulting in different sneeze scenarios from person to person.  It's a nerve transmission that tells your brain something is in your nose that needs to come out.

2. Sneezing helps keep your body safe. Sneezing is an important part of the immune process which helps to keep us healthy.  Sneezes protect your body by clearing the nose of bacteria and viruses.  When something enters your nose or you encounter a trigger that sets off the "sneeze center" in your brain, located in the lower brain stem, signals are rapidly sent to tightly close your throat, eyes, and mouth. Next, your chest muscles vigorously contract, and then your throat muscles quickly relax. As result, air -- along with saliva and mucus -- is forced out of your mouth and nose…resulting in a sneeze.

3. Sneezes are fast.  Sneezes travel at about 100 miles per hour.  Also, a single sneeze can send 100,000 germs into the air.

4. Plucking your eyebrows may make you sneeze. Plucking may set off a nerve in your face that supplies your nasal passages. As a result, you sneeze.

5. You don't sneeze in your sleep. When you sleep, so do your sneezing nerves -- which means you usually don't sneeze when you doze.

6. Your workout may make you sneeze. You hyperventilate when you're over-exerted, and as a result, your nose and mouth start to dry up. So your nose reacts by starting to drip, making you sneeze.

7. The longest sneezing spree: 978 days, a record set by Donna Griffiths of Worcestershire, England, according to background information on the Library of Congress' web site.

8. Sunshine may make you sneeze. Bright sunlight causes one out of three people to sneeze. Light sensitivity is also an inherited trait.

9. Sex can be a sneezing trigger. The stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system fires off signals in some people to not only enjoy the act of sex, but to sneeze when it's over.

10. The sneeziest animal: the iguana. Iguanas sneeze more often and more productively than any other animal. Sneezing is how they rid their bodies of certain salts that are the normal byproduct of their digestive process.

Sneezing Superstitions

It’s not true that your heart stops when you sneeze. When your chest contracts because of a sneeze, your blood flow is momentarily constricted as well. As a result, the rhythm of your heart may change, but it definitely doesn't stop.

And your eyeballs cannot pop out of your head when you sneeze. Most people naturally close their eyes when they sneeze, but if they are able to keep them open, their eyes stay firmly planted in their heads where they belong. A person's blood pressure behind the eyes may increase slightly when he sneezes, but it's not enough force to dislodge the eyeballs from the head

A post-sneeze blessing stems from the ancient belief that sneezing is a near-death experience, and that a blessing will prevent your soul or sneeze from escaping your body and will deter the devil from entering in.

Melissa.