Why Do I Sneeze?
You sneeze sometimes when you look up at the sun or at a bright light. There does not seem to be any real good explanation of why looking at a bright light should make you sneeze. It is due to the connection there is between the nerves of the eyes and the nose. You generally blink if you look at a bright light suddenly, and the blinking process stirs the nerves inside of the nose to make you sneeze.
You know, of course, that the start of the sneeze is inside of your nose. The nose is, besides being the organ of smell, the channel through which we take air into the lungs, when we breathe properly. The nose is lined with membranes, back of which are a net of very small nerves which are extremely sensitive. The membranes are placed there to catch and hold the impure particles of matter which come into the nose when we take in a breath of air, and sneezing is only one effective way of cleaning out the nose. It is brought on only when some particularly difficult job of nose-cleaning has to be done. Pepper up the nose will make you sneeze quickly, because pepper produces a very great irritation inside the nose, and the nose goes to work at once to get rid of it in the quickest possible manner as soon as the pepper comes in. Other things have the same effect. Sometimes a cold in the head causes you to sneeze. The sneeze in that event is merely nature’s effort to clean out the nose when other efforts have failed.
There are many suggestions for stopping a sneeze before it takes place, after you feel it coming on, such as putting the finger on each side of the nose, and many others. But a half sneeze does not remove the cause of the sneeze, so it is much better to sneeze it out, and many people enjoy the after effects of sneezing so much that they take snuff into the nose to produce it.