GETTING MORE TALE #445: An Orgasm For the Brain

The Boss at the Record Store used to have a little office in the back of one of our stores.  The walls seemed paper-thin.  You could figure out what he was doing back there from the sounds, especially when he had a cold.  His sneezes were epic.   They were monolithic in scale, and sounded like they were a tremendous relief each time.

“AHHHHHHHHH-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  Woo!”  Something like that.

One afternoon, he was having a particularly active bout of the sneezes, and the frequency and strength of them combined were impossible to ignore.  One of my customers noticed and chuckled.

“Sounds like that guy is having a good time back there,” said the man.

I know the feeling a good, refreshing sneeze too.  “Yeah,” I replied.  “He’s had a cold all week but he’s really good at sneezing.”

“No, seriously,” the man persisted.  “A sneeze is like an orgasm for your brain.  That guy back there is basically having a whole bunch of brain orgasms right now.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I answered, “Wow.  I did not know that!”

“You learn something every day!” said the man, who went on to do his music shopping.

Is there any truth to this?  Or is this just one of those wild tales that customers used to tell me?

The folks over at livescience have the answer.  “This myth isn’t worth the price of a tissue,” they say, but also add, “Connections do exist, however.”

For one, a sneeze may release endorphins. However, “Although supporting literature remains sparse, cases have been reported of men and women who sneeze when sexually aroused. Doctors suspect that the phenomenon might arise from a case of crossed wires in the autonomic nervous system, which regulates a number of automatic functions in the body, including “waking up” the genitals during arousal. The nose, like the genitals, contains erectile tissue.”

I was not aware of that. As my old customer said, you learn something new every day!