Night sneezing

[Jophiel]

Someone must of asked this before, but I didn't find it in the SD archives or the SDMB archives, so here goes.

How come my allergies don't make me sneeze when I'm asleep? I'm guessing the pollen doesn't take a rest at night, yet I'm not awakened by violent fits of sneezing either. I can't imagine I'm sneezing and not realizing it in my slumber, so what gives? Not that I'm complaining...

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"I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn't."

[Montfort]

My completely uneducated stab-in-the-dark guess is that your body sort of shuts down and doesn't do anything more than it needs to do during your unawake hours. I don't ever recall hearing my girlfriend cough, either, as she slept.

(This is my first ever post, be gentle to me).

[AWB]

I know coughing only happens when one is awake. Probably sneezing is too.

[Jophiel]

Well.. ummm.. yeah.. but my question is why? If pollen is bothering my body and throwing my immune system into a tizzy when I'm awake, why isn't it doing so while I sleep? I'd hate to think my immune system clocks out when I hit the pillow. I can't imagine that I'm breathing any less pollen. So what's with the lack of raction? Should I just spend the summer months drunk and passed out as to avoid my allergies?

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"I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn't."

[eggo]

actualy, my mom coughs quite alot without waking herself up. but one time i farted and it woke me up.

[Zyada]

WAG - Chemicals which put us to sleep inhibit sneezing.

Don't know if that is true, but I believe adrenalin is a very good sneeze suppresor. I was driving to work one day with a bad case of scratchy nose sneezing and nearly ran into another car. The resulting adrenalin flood stopped one sneeze in mid-tickle and I didn't have any more problems that morning.