What would happen if you sneezed with your mouth and nose shut?

ceiling_fan

ceiling_fan

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Utah
ceiling_fan
My friend and I were arguing what would happen, assuming your mouth and nose were completely shut by something or someone. Your eardrums would burst, right? What would happen if your eardrums were blocked?
 
There are only so many ways for air to escape. It is possible that your lungs wouldn't be able to force it out. But I'm wondering how you would manage to keep your mouth, nose, and ears air-tight. Also, your eardrums don't need to burst to allow pressure to equalize.
 
Danoff
There are only so many ways for air to escape. It is possible that your lungs wouldn't be able to force it out. But I'm wondering how you would manage to keep your mouth, nose, and ears air-tight. Also, your eardrums don't need to burst to allow pressure to equalize.
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Sorry, when I said 'completely shut by something or someone' I meant it in a mostly hypothetical way. Just something that would permanently close the openings.
 
Whoever had their hand over your mouth and nose would get a handful of "ick".
And it would serve him right.
 
I believe the first quesiton would result in the same consequence as dividing by zero.

Diagram Shown:
 
I block sneezes very often, i don't ever feel like there is air escaping from my ears but I'm sure its not a good thing to do often, I only do it when I need to keep quiet and a sneeze is coming.
 
land sea air
I block sneezes very often, i don't ever feel like there is air escaping from my ears but I'm sure its not a good thing to do often, I only do it when I need to keep quiet and a sneeze is coming.
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I think you're closing off some passageways in your throat/nasal passage when you do that. The end result is that your lungs simply can't push the air past. I don't know of any ill effects of doing that except that whatever it is that triggered the sneeze isn't gone.

That effect is similar to what I think would happen, but I believe the hypothetical is about what happens when you don't block the sneeze but it can't exit the mouth, nose, or ears. I think at that point you'll just feel the pressure in your ears but it won't equalize.
 
I can answer that... it really, really hurts.

Your ears will pop, but your ear-drums probably won't burst. There's no simple way to hold all that pressure in, so no matter how hard you try, you can't. But I've gotten close, and I don't suppose that little bit that does get out counts.

It leaves you with an awful feeling in your ears, possibly some ringing, and your lungs will ache from the pressure, feels like you're going to have a heart attack... but you'll live. :lol:
 
When I was younger I used to make a lot of noise whenever I sneezed, to the point that I would pinch my nose whenever I had to, or I'd close my mouth as hard as possible. There was this one time when I had a cold and my nose was very stuffy, so no air could go through. I suddenly had the urge to sneeze and thought if I closed my mouth, the air would have to come out my nose, thus forcing all the snot out.

It didn't.

It came out of my eye! Between the eye and the skin a bit of air came through... I've never been able to replicate it, but it was pretty wild.
 
My sister used to work in a nursery and one of the children had an unusual problem. Whenever he sneezed he would hold his nose and keep his mouth closed. He also had a problem with one of his eye sockets. Everytime he sneezed his eye would fall out the socket. They had to call an ambulance nearly everytime to put it back in.

He did have surgery in the end so his eye didn't fall out, so at least there was a happy ending to this amazing story..

The moral of the story is, don't hold your sneezes because something may fall out, or even worse, fall off.
 
I actually tried this a couple of years ago to see what would happen. All I received was big pops from my ears and a moment of pressure behind my eyes.

After reading what you guys said about what could happen, I don't think I'll be trying it again anytime soon... :lol:
 
Mark T
My sister used to work in a nursery and one of the children had an unusual problem. Whenever he sneezed he would hold his nose and keep his mouth closed. He also had a problem with one of his eye sockets. Everytime he sneezed his eye would fall out the socket. They had to call an ambulance nearly everytime to put it back in.

He did have surgery in the end so his eye didn't fall out, so at least there was a happy ending to this amazing story..

The moral of the story is, don't hold your sneezes because something may fall out, or even worse, fall off.
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I'm having trouble seeing how that could happen. There's a good amount of tissue keeping your eye in place.

Edit: In fact, there's a mythbusters episode that's very related. They proved that you can sneeze with your eyes open and were talking with a doctor who thought it was ludicrous that people think your eyes can come out so easily.
 
Danoff
I'm having trouble seeing how that could happen. There's a good amount of tissue keeping your eye in place.

Edit: In fact, there's a mythbusters episode that's very related. They proved that you can sneeze with your eyes open and were talking with a doctor who thought it was ludicrous that people think your eyes can come out so easily.
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I'm not to sure on the exact circumstances. I know that it was only one eye and I believe the actual muscles around the eye hadn't formed properly or were too loose around the eye. The eye didn't fall completely out but more than half of it would come out the socket.

Luckily I never I saw it but apparently it was quite distressing.
 
I used to close my mouth and nose when a sneeze was going to happen, but I dont do it anymore since I heard that someone doing the same thing exploded an artery in the head. Sounds very plausible to me, a strong sneeze creates a lot of pressure and its always creates pain in my head and throat because the pressure cant escape; it almost feels like a grenade exploding in my head.

IMO not so good for you, but very quiet.
 

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