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…
“I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
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.
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?
“I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
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.