Does The Light Make You Sneeze? Don’t Worry, There Are More People Like You
It happens almost every week: I leave the entrance of my house and, just when my face crosses the border where the shadow of the goal gives way to the direct light of the Sun, a tingling appears that begins near the eyes and advances to the nose to end up turning into one or more sneezes.
It has happened to me for as long as I can remember, usually when I have been in the shade for a long time and suddenly I am exposed to intense sunlight. It took me many years to learn that this phenomenon is nothing like “sun allergy.” that I thought I had, which is called sneeze reflex from bright lighteither photic sneezeand that it is fixed in the DNA of many people: from 18% to 35% of the population experiences it.
The idea that foreign stimuli produce the uncontrollable urge to sneeze is usually directly associated with the types of allergies. Perhaps for this reason, some people believe that their propensity to sneeze just after coming into direct contact with a powerful light source is due to some kind of strange allergy, something that does not help to explain why they need to sneeze at the moment of being illuminated. and not during the entire time they are kept under that light source.
Other people don’t even stop to think about whether sneezing because of light is strange or not; They assume that it happens to everyone, and when they first notice that others are drawn to their sneezing because of the light, they wonder if they are being pranked.
Both possibilities are very reasonable, since the propensity for photic sneezing is a sufficiently minority characteristic to be considered strange but, at the same time, it does not cause so many problems as to be considered something similar to a disease. The bright light sneeze reflex may be somewhat annoying on the rare occasions in which it is expressed, but it is not a form of allergy to sunlight.
What is photic sneezing?
The photic sneeze reflex is a genetically inherited characteristic which is expressed in the appearance of the impulse (automatic and involuntary) to sneeze when the area of the face is suddenly exposed to an intense light source.
It is necessary to keep in mind that what causes these sneezes is not so much the intense light itself but the contrast experienced between the shadowed area in which one has been before and the area exposed to direct light in which one is. after. That is why this false “sun allergy” only expresses itself during the first seconds or minutes after having moved to a well-lit place.
The causes of photic sneezing
The phenomenon of the photic sneeze reflex is relatively common, as it could affect a third of the population, but despite this, more research is still needed on the subject to know what triggers these sneezes.
Of course, possible causes of the photic sneeze reflex are being considered. The one that has the greatest acceptance is one that has to do with the trigeminal nerve, one of the cerebral nerves that leave directly from the brain without passing through the spinal cord that runs through the spine.
This set of neurons serves the function of both informing the brain about things that are happening in other parts of the body and as a channel through which the brain transmits orders to other organs. Specific, One of the tasks of the trigeminal nerve is to detect signs of irritation in the nose to start the necessary procedures to start sneezing right after.
In people who have inherited the photic sneeze reflex, the trigeminal nerve may be closer than normal to the eye nerve in each half of the face, so it “intercepts” information from it and confuses it with data coming from the nose. . In this way, when there is a sudden exposure to intense light, the trigeminal nerve would be taking this wave of sensory data as an indication that something is happening in the nose; hence the sneezing.
Is it dangerous to have this reflex?
Currently, the only context in which photic sneezing is considered potentially dangerous is when piloting fighter aircraft..
The rest of us can limit ourselves to providing extra caution when driving for example by wearing sunglasses, and celebrating the small eccentricities of our body.
