Somewhat lighter fare than I’ve been posting of late. Yesterday, when I went out for my walk, I sneezed. Nothing out of the ordinary there; I always seem to sneeze when I go outside. But this time, I decided to think about it. I found a few articles talking about the photic sneeze reflex, telling me that it’s an autosomal genetically dominant trait, that 10 to 35% of the population have it, and that we actually know just about nothing about it. What I didn’t find was something I thought I remembered about it. I seem to recall reading somewhere sometime that it’s a hold-over from caveman days, when walking out of the cave into the sun, a sneeze could help get rid of mold spores accumulated in the dank cave. Anyway, so, yes, I’m one of this minority. How about you?

A few articles:

“Looking at the Sun Can Trigger a Sneeze” (from Scientific American)

“Why Looking at the Sun Can Make You Sneeze” (from PBS)

“Photic Sneeze Reflex” (from Wikipedia)