Desmond has his barrow in the market place…
Molly is the singer in a band…
Desmond says to Molly “Girl, I like your face”
And Molly says this as she takes him by the hand…
O-bla-di, o-bla-da, life goes on, brah!…
Lala how the life goes on…
O-bla-di, o-bla-da, life goes on, brah!…
Lala how the life goes on.

I can’t tell you why, but when I hear ‘medulla oblongata’ the Beatles start singing Ob-la-di Ob-la da in my head.  Yes.  Pretty much every time.  I especially like the part about “Girl, I like your face”…..but as always, I digress.

We were studying the medulla oblongata just this week.  The medulla oblongata (Yes, I do have to say the whole thing ‘cuz that’s what triggers the song) is part of the hindbrain and controls autonomic functions like breathing, digestion, heart and blood vessel function, swallowing and sneezing…..

Which leads to the right field question of the evening…..Why do we sneeze in threes?  Guess what!?  Jason — I still don’t know.  I cannot find anything that gives a good physiological explanation for that question.  Keep looking.

However, I now know:

Sneezes are speedy. “Sneezes travel at about 100 miles per hour,” says Patti Wood, author of Success Signals: Understanding Body Language. She adds that a single sneeze can send 100,000 germs into the air.

Plucking your eyebrows may make you sneeze. Plucking may set off a nerve in your face that supplies your nasal passages. As a result, you sneeze.

You don’t sneeze in your sleep.  When you sleep, so do your sneezing nerves — which means you usually don’t sneeze when you doze.

It’s not true that your heart stops when you sneeze. When your chest contracts because of a sneeze, your blood flow is momentarily constricted as well. As a result, the rhythm of your heart may change, but it definitely doesn’t stop.

Your eyeballs cannot pop out of your head when you sneeze. Most people naturally close their eyes when they sneeze, but if they are able to keep them open, their eyes stay firmly planted in their heads where they belong. “While a person’s blood pressure behind the eyes may increase slightly when he sneezes, it’s not enough force to dislodge the eyeballs from the head.”

Kind of a disappointment, the eyeball thing.  Always liked that myth – reminds me of the one that chides us not to make ugly faces — “Your face could freeze like that!”  Audrey and Abby spent days trying to make that one happen after they heard that from me.  And no, that doesn’t mean they are gullible, it means I’m seen as an incredibly honest person by my now traumatized daughters….more fodder for their tell all books!

Oh, and the Water Boy connection!

14 Feb This entry was published on February 14, 2013 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Science. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.