Friday, April 29, 2011

What does a sneeze smell like?


When I sneeze it smells like honey. 
What's up with that?

At first I thought it was the face masks I wear at work when I'm sterilizing the equipment. Like, maybe the masks are scented, but only when wet as some kind of safety thing, you know, so when your mask gets fluid on it that could possibly be contaminated? Makes sense, right?

But then we did experiments at work...somebody (I can't remember who it was!) helped me do all kinds of tests: spitting and pouring water on the masks. Nothing...except for the next time I'd sneeze into one. (I know it's weird, but after four years I'm bound to sneeze while wearing a mask more than once.)

What brought this up? Well I just sneezed...and there was a definite honey smell. Again. What is going on? Is it possible that there are tiny bees living in the back of my throat, making honey? Nose bees?
...

Well guess what guys, it's an actual thing. I just Googled it. Yeah, I did my research halfway through writing a post....ANYWAY it's actually called "honey sneeze". Shocker. It normally smells like honey, beeswax, pollen, baby powder, hay, or just "sweet". There are plenty of theories on why it happens...and it seems like it is actually pretty common. (And I thought I was crazy special.)

Here are some of the theories on why some people's sneezes smell like honey:
*note* Some of these don't make any sense. Also? I found these on the internet so take it all with a grain of salt.

-Sinus infection.
-Bacterias in your head tubes that smell...like honey.
-Bad breath/hallitosis.
-Mucus with similar chemical makeup to sugar.
-The atmosphere changes chemical makeup when you sneeze.
-Medicine you're taking.
-The sneeze clears out your nose and you can really get a good whiff of what your body smells like.
-Diabetes.
-It's your body's reward to you for letting a sneeze out, because if you hold them in you could cause an aneurysm.
-A ton of scary medical anomalies that don't even make sense but that's what happens when you look up any symptom or change in your body...suddenly you have cancer, AIDS and leprosy.
-It just does and nobody knows why.
...

I kind of like it. And now that I know that it's a thing, and not just my imagination, I can just sit back and enjoy the smell, post-sneeze. Although ever since that summer I worked on a honeybee farm, doing bee stuff and honey extraction, I actually really don't really care for the smell of honey...yuck.

The good news is that I have the best of the "scented sneeze" world. Apparently there are tons of people out there with bad smelling sneezes. And other people can smell them! (Get up close to me next time I sneeze, it's true!)

There are actually people out there who sneeze out the smell of:

-spiders
-musk
-dirt
-copper
-urine (!)
-bad breath
-old cheese
-a "rape field" (This is canola btw.)
-raked up leaves
-rotten teeth
-dead animals
-mold

Have any of you experienced this strange phenomenon? What do your sneezes smell like?

1 comment:

  1. My sneezes also smell like honey. My wife verified it for me. I googled it and your blog appeared. Good to know im not alone

    ReplyDelete

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