May The Truth Be Heard

At work today, Pete and I had a little debate on if holding back a sneeze is a health concern. Now I mean, not when you sneeze and hold it back and make this sort of Minnie Mouse kind of sound, because I would think holding back something that has built up speed over the course of a foot in your body and comes out of a 3 foot hole in your head at 900 miles an hour. I mean, you feel your going to sneeze, but stop yourself short. We came to the conclusion that holding it back, in any form, must be bad for you health. ((If we're wrong, please, let me know))

But then we started wondering about Hiccups. People get hiccups, then they hold their breath. Is that bad for you? Stopping something that your body obviously needs to do? Well, many more questions followed, and ironically, we couldn't find a book on the topic (we work in a book store). Well, I know that if I sent this question into the wild abyss without some sort of answer, family members and friends would get mad at me, so here is what I found.

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Hiccups are sudden, involuntary contractions of the diaphragm muscle. As the muscle contracts repeatedly, the opening between your vocal cords snaps shut to check the inflow of air and makes the hiccup sound. Irritation of the nerves that extend from the neck to the chest can cause hiccups.

Although associated with a variety of ailments (some can be serious such as pneumonia or when harmful substances build up in the blood for example from kidney failure), hiccups are not serious and have no clear reason for occurring.