Why is it that you never see anyone sneeze when they are concentrating on something important? You never see the President of the United States sneeze during his State of the Union address. You never an athlete sneeze in the middle of a 100-yard dash. You also never see a surgeon sneeze during a delicate operation.
However, when I try to suppress a sneeze, I can ‘hold it in’, but I can’t prevent the bodily convulsions that accompany it. So is sneezing voluntary or involuntary? Would it be possible for me to suppress the entire sneezing response??
I’ve been watching the local TV news broadcast live almost every night for my entire life, and not once have I seen an anchor sneeze while the camera was on them.
I think it’s somehow related to the fact that you can “hold it” while sitting in your car stuck in traffic for 45 minutes, but can barely make it to the bathroom once you get home.
I have noticed that when I’m in front of a group of people, and I’m in good health, I don’t sneeze or cough or get itches or yawn or anything like that. I’m a pretty nervous guy, and I get the feeling that it may have something to do with concentration; I’m too alert to do something involuntary like that.
I attend a lot of conferences, and people do sneeze and cough. It is rare that you see it on TV (but does happen), as most broadcasters don’t have extended segments alone on camera. My guess is that they hold it, and for times when they’re hacking and sneezing away uncontrolably, they are probably kept off camera.
When I was in college, a fun activity was to chug a can of Coke prior to doing an interview on the college radio station, and then seeing if you could freak out the interview subject by letting out an enourmous belch while they were talking, holding the sneeze-button all the time, and acting as if nothing unusual was going on.
