Suppose I did something painful–a pinprick or a pinch, for example–every time I sneeze. Would my body eventually get the message and quit sneezing? Or would I just develop a stress reaction when I felt a sneeze coming on? (In which case I think my brain would be trained, but no my body.)
You have quite clearly never broken a rib.
A full month where any attempt to sneeze results in incapacitating, cold-sweat-inducing pain. And no, you never quit sneezing the whole time. The urge is still there, and as soon as the muscles start to contract there is searing pain. The type of pain that takes you to the brink of unsconsciousness for the first week or so, and is merely intolerable for the next three weeks. Then after that it graduates from major pain to minor pain and remains uncomfortable for about two moths.
I figure if a month of searing, incapacitating pain and another month or so of minor pain doesn’t work, simply poking yourself with a needle won’t do squat. I also figure that if two months doesn’t have any effect at all then no amount of time is going to magically work.
What Blake said. Pinprick? Ha!
You could try my science teacher’s guaranteed cure for hiccups - it would probably stop all sneezing too.
He said, hold your breath for ten to fifteen minutes. If you succeeded, he guaranteed you would not hiccup again.
Oooh, ouch. I guess a broken rib would be pretty adverse…
Come to think of it, it usually hurts something when I sneeze anyway–usually it causes a pain in my upper back but it all depends on my position at the time. And so far, I still keep sneezing.
I shudder to think of how much crap would end up in your sinuses if you stopped sneezing. It’s a reflex designed to expel irritants; preventing that would probably have some adverse effects on your health.
Also have you ever had the sensation of when a sneeze wants to come out but it just doesn’t. I’ve heard it called a stuck sneeze, it is uncomfortable and you want to sneeze to get it out.
If I’m in a private area:
Heh -choo!
But when I’m in public, I often exhibit a half-sneeze:
Heh - nn!
So I get the quick breathe-in, but without the expelled effluent. So yes, “The body eventually gets the message.” If I had a broken rib (following Blake) I would still have the searing pain though, as my chest and diaphragm still convulses. I’m not recommending this, however: as Daerlyn notes, sneezes serve a function. I picked up half sneezes as a teenager: it wasn’t wholly intentional. I speculate that it started in some place like church, and maintained itself via a sort of force of habit.
Stuck sneezes are a separate phenomena.
I have a 100% success rate in stopping sneezes-in-progress by grabbing my nose and squeezing. Then I can grab a tissue and blow my nose instead. Can everyone not do this? (it seems like in the case of broken ribs, it’d be a better idea to avoid sneezing)