According to a paper published in BMJ Case Reports in 2018, a British man once held back a powerful sneeze, so much so that he ruptured his own throat. The 34-year-old man tried to suppress his sneeze by clamping his mouth and blocking both of his nostrils, but the force of the sneeze in turn blew a hole in his throat.
The paper titled “Snap, crackle, and pop: when sneezing leads to crackling in the neck” claimed that the man “tried to halt a sneeze by pinching the nose and holding his mouth closed.” He started to have strange symptoms including painful swallowing, a change in his voice, and a popping sensation and swelling in his neck. He decided to seek medical attention.
The doctors said that streaks of air had become trapped in some of his throat tissue and ruptured his throat. Spontaneous rupture of the pharynx is very rare, usually caused by vomiting, retching, heavy coughing or some kind of trauma. They took the man for medical observation to avoid the risk of aggravating his issue and gave him a feeding tube and antibiotics. He soon started to recover within two weeks and then slowly started to eat soft foods.
Even though this result is unlikely in normal circumstances and is only more likely to happen when there is some sort of infection or trauma around that area, it is always advised to not your mouth and nostrils while sneezing. “Halting sneeze via blocking nostrils and mouth is a dangerous maneuver and should be avoided,” the authors wrote. “It may lead to numerous complications, such as pneumomediastinum [air trapped in the chest between both lungs], perforation of the tympanic membrane [perforated eardrum], and even rupture of a cerebral aneurysm [ballooning blood vessel in the brain],” they added.
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