Do you ever walk outside from grocery store into the sunlight and immediately feel an urge to sneeze? You’re not alone! I am a sun sneezer, I always sneeze 3-4 times when I walk out into bright sunlight. Honestly find it relieving now. According to a report by Science Line between 10 to 35 percent of the population is affected. This phenomenon is called photic sneeze reflex. Sometimes referred to as the Achoo Syndrome MedicineNet.com defines this as a disorder characterized by nearly uncontrollable paroxysms of sneezing provoked in a reflex fashion by the sudden exposure of a dark-adapted subject to intensely bright light, usually to brilliant sunlight. The number of successive sneezes is usually two or three, but can be up to about 40. MedicineNet.com goes on to explain that this is a genetic trait. Males and females have a 50:50 chance of passing it on to their children.
There is no set in stone scientific to fully explain this, but there are many theories that float around. Live Science explained that sun sneezes occur because of pupillary light reflex, which is when your pupils shrink when stimulated by a bright light. Science line explained that a photic sneeze reflex is caused by a confusion of nerve signals in pathways close to one another. It is hypothesized that for sun sneezers the pupillary light reflex sends signals to the brain to constrict the pupils when exposed to bright sunlight but there is a crossed wire that makes a sneeze happen as well.
There is ongoing research at the University of California, San Francisco looking further into this topic. There is no 100% determined reason as to why this happens to people, but science is getting closer!
This is really cool considering I’ve never heard of or been affected by “sun sneezing”. After reading this and hearing that the phenomenon is still unexplained I have come up with a theory regarding it. Perhaps the brain associates the sudden intake of bright light (the sun) as something that closely follows an intake of irritants into the nose. This could be tested by checking for a correlation between those who have this reflex and those who already have allergies in general. Who knows. Do you have allergies in general?
Marisa, we’re on the same page!! I always look up at the sun, or into the light when I have the sudden urge to sneeze. Everyone yells at me because it is obnoxious, but it really is the only thing that helps. It was interesting to read your article and get the real answer as to why this happens to me. Thank you for sharing!! Here is a link about sneezing, and what your body has to do when you sneeze: http://www.mnn.com/health/allergies/questions/what-happens-to-your-body-when-you-sneeze
Hello, I really appreciate this piece of blog. I think it mentioned a part that sun actually make us sneeze more often! It is a curious question because I always want to sneeze under the sun and I could not figure out why until I saw this blog. I had done a test that examines how environment changes can affect our human bodies while the results included how sun rise and falls affect our degree of sleep and how cold weather make us feel sympathy. So it is really an interesting idea that sun makes us sneeze more!
For years now whenever I would have to sneeze everyone would scream at me to just look up at the sun. This always confused me but it worked so I just continued to do it. It was really cool to read about why looking up at the sun can help us sneeze, especially because up until reading this blog I was never fully aware of how much impact the sun would have on our sneezing reflexes.