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#82418 10/01/02 07:21 PM
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Sneeze-words! Depictions of the sound of sneezing:
English: Ah-choo!/Ker-choo!
Chinese: Han-chee!
Hebrew: Itush!
Czech: Kychnut! (my favorite)
Indonesian: Wa-hing!
French: A-tchouin!
Russian: Ap-chi!

Any more?!
(I've no idea WHY I bought this up...)


#82419 10/01/02 08:22 PM
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And along another dimension: do you sneeze in bright lights?

Really. I'm serious. There was even correspondence on the subject in the New England Journal of Medicine some years ago, believe it or not, started by a medical resident whose newborn daughter did, as indeed did he. It seems to be hereditary. He asked several of his contemporaries and got a very bipolar distribution of replies: either "Are you crazy?" or "Of course, doesn't everybody?"

I'd like to take an informal poll - how do AWADers stack up?

PS I do, my sister does, my mother did, my father did, only two of my three kids do. My mother always used to say it was a response to "actinic rays."


#82420 10/01/02 08:31 PM
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Of course, doesn't everybody?


#82421 10/01/02 08:40 PM
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wofa...y
bo/a...y
sjm...............n
oT................n (maybe it should be 1/2?)
FB................n
milum............n
ww...............n
slithy..y
dxb.....y
shona............n
Boron............n
TEdR....y
MG................n
(MG's MD yes but he's disqualified)
byb...............n
Sp'ye.............n



....Y=5........N=10

Photic sneezing present in 5/13 = 33 % of AWADers so far
10/3/02 6:00 PM EDT


#82422 10/01/02 08:49 PM
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>Do you sneeze in bright lights?

Taking this to mean, "do bright lights make you sneeze?", the answer is no. I have never heard of this phenomenon before, knowing no one so afflicted.


#82423 10/01/02 09:04 PM
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Do i sneeze in bright lights? no...

but, when i have the feeling i am about to sneeze, and i am almost there but not quite... then looking directly at a bright light will bring the sneeze on!


#82424 10/01/02 09:36 PM
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I have the opposite phenomenon. If I feel a sneeze coming on, I look into a dark corner to force it out. Bright lights actually *suppress* the sneeze reflex in me.


#82425 10/01/02 10:33 PM
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No. I only sneeze at the idea that people sneeze in bright lights. What amazes me is that some people can modify the natural sound of their sneezes to affect the politically and phonically correct sound, "Ah-Choo!", I wonder, do they do this in other languages?

Here are some percentages I found in a URL.

Photic sneeze reflex occurs in something like one-sixth to one-quarter of the population. It occurs more often in Caucasians than Afro-Americans or Orientals.

According to a Johns Hopkins medic named Stephen Peroutka, the trait is passed along genetically, with a 50 percent chance of inheritance.

Researchers in Sweden found that out of 460 subjects, 24 percent sneezed in bright light, and 40 percent had at least one sneezing parent.

Sixty-four percent of children with one sneezing parent were themselves sneezers, but two nonsneezers never produced a sneezer. (Isn't it amazing how I can make these things so easy to understand?)

Nobody's exactly sure what causes photic sneeze reflex. I see here in one of the journals we have an impressive discussion of the role of the trigeminal nerve nucleus.



#82426 10/01/02 10:38 PM
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I don't sneeze in bright lights and never heard of this phenomenon till tonight.

However, I do get the hiccups if there is too much pepper in hot soup.

And I suppress my sneezes. My dear departed Grandma Etta said I sounded like a kitten sneezing in bright lights.


#82427 10/02/02 12:04 AM
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That's a great term: photic sneeze reflex. Now I know the name of that condition I first experienced when, as a small kid, I spent most Saturday afternoons at the local movie theatre, emerging into the bright sunlight with fits of sneezing.

And what about those Indonesians? Wa-hing? They ain't sneezin'; they's spittin'.


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