The sneeze secret: how much should you worry about this explosive reflex?
It is one of the most powerful involuntary actions the human body can perform. But is a big sneeze a sign of illness, pollution or something else entirely?
How worried should we be about a sneeze? It depends who you ask. In the Odyssey, Telemachus sneezes after Penelope’s prayer that her husband will soon be home to sort out her house-sitting suitors – which she sees as a good omen for team Odysseus, and very bad news for the suitors. In the Anabasis, Xenophon takes a sneeze from a soldier as godly confirmation that his army can fight their way back to their own territory – great news for them – while St Augustine notes, somewhat disapprovingly, that people of his era tend to go back to bed if they sneeze while putting on their slippers. But is a sneeze an omen of anything apart from pathogens, pollen or – possibly – air pollution?
“It’s a physical response to get rid of something that’s irritating your body,” says Sheena Cruickshank, an immunologist and professor at the University of Manchester. “Alongside the obvious nasal hairs that a few people choose to trim, all of us have cilia, or microscopic hairs in our noses that can move and sense things of their own accord. And so if anything gets trapped by the cilia, that triggers a reaction to your nerve endings that says: ‘Right, let’s get rid of this.’ And that triggers a sneeze.”
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Black Panther made him a megastar, but in private the actor and his wife Simone Ledward Boseman were dealing with his terminal cancer diagnosis. In a rare interview, she talks about the shock of losing him, and how a revival of one of his plays has helped her heal
Simone Ledward Boseman is reflecting on the five years that have passed since the death of her husband, actor and writer Chadwick Boseman. “The edges of grief get less sharp over time,” she says. “Five years definitely feels like a marker. I’ve had to gradually figure out how I talk about Chad. What do I want to share, and what do I feel comfortable sharing? Can I find something that I might want to share in the midst of something I don’t want to share?” We meet on a video call across time zones – it’s 9am in California, where she lives. “Except for my mom, I’m not talking to anybody before 10am,” she laughs. She’s made an exception to give a rare interview ahead of the UK premiere of her late husband’s play Deep Azure, which is currently in previews in London at Shakespeare’s Globe.
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