If I go too long without eating — say I’m working a long shift and haven’t had a chance to take a lunch break — I start feeling normal hunger pangs … and then I start sneezing. Complete with excessive mucous buildup in my nose/sinuses. It’s almost as if I’m having an allergic reaction to hunger.
Any medical explanation for this? I’m never heard of anybody else experiencing this phenomenon.
It happens to me a bit. I asked my (doctor) aunt about it, and she told me that the process involved in wretching or vomiting is similar to sneezing in some way that I couldn’t quite fathom. Since hunger pangs can cause nausea, maybe that’s the connection.
And now I will promise to stop answering medical questions when I really don’t know what I am talking about 
Now that you mention it, the sneezing is frequently preceded by mild nausea …
Same in my case. I’d be interested to hear the views of medical Dopers.
I sneeze when I have sudden sexual thoughts. I always assumed it was to do with erectile tissue, but never saw anything to back up the theory.
I also have sneezing and a runny nose, but only when I’ve had just enough to eat. That began only after I had had a gastric by-pass. Curious.
Another odd thing is that this only started a couple years ago. I wonder if it’s connected somehow to eating on an irregular schedule. I lived in a homeless shelter for eight years, where meals were served three times a day, always at the same times. I held down full-time employment for most of the time I lived there (I was trying to get out of debt, which was made easier by not having to choose between paying on the debt and paying rent/buying groceries), so meal times were irregular when I was working, but since I worked as a cook it was a simple matter to nibble on something as soon as I felt the first hints of hunger.
I don’t cook for a living now, though, so eating at work is mostly limited to break times, which can sometimes be far enough apart that my stomach starts to complain.