ACHOO! is When You Sneeze at the Sun - Photic Sneeze Reflex

If you look at the sun (hypothetically; do not do it and suffer), you are sure to look away sooner (unless you are either my man Karna, who was the Sun's son so he can stare or my other man Galileo, who was determined to look at it for, you know, Science!) to avoid discomfort (yeah the necessary comfort not like your optional 'comfort zone' comfort). 

But did you know that a third of the population sneezes at the Sun upon staring ? This is called Photic Sneeze Reflex.

SOLAR SNEEZING, SON...

It is also called as Photosneezia, Autosomal Compelling Helio-Opthalmic Outburst (ACHOO : Now that's some god-tier naming : approved, sealed and delivered) and colloquially sun sneezing.

This condition is reported to affect 18 to 35 percent of the world population and its exact mechanism is unknown ( there you go, open topic for probing research ).

HISTORICALLY HAH-CHOO!

Aristotle has mused about sneezing and sun being correlated in his The Book of Problems (but hey! That man literally wrote about everything under the sun and a few beyond it, so). He even came up with an explanation: Probably the heat of the sun on the nose triggered it. 

Francis Bacon came along soon to refute the old Greek. He stepped out with his eyes closed and the heat was there but the sneeze was not. Bacon's guess was that the sunlight made the eyes to water and that seeped in and irritated the nose (he called "braine humour").

As humourous as it is, Bacon's bet was brilliant; until we came to know that the actual response time was too short for his mechanism to occur. 

ENTER THE BRAINS...

Today, most experts believe that the 1964 hypothesis by Henry Everett ( who gave it the name "Photic Sneeze Effect") which states that the syndrome is linked to the nervous system ( as it is lightning-fast ) and probably due to the confusion of nerve signals.

It results from exposure to bright light as uncontrollable bursts of sneezes. A study by University of Alabama at Birmingham found out that 67% sneezies are women and 94% of the sneezies are Caucasian. It has also found significant correlation of sneezing to septum deviation and revealed that the mechanism is inheritable.

SNEEZE IN THE GENES

NCBI states that ACHOO (suggestive of the naming) is inherited in an autosomal dominant manner. This means if one parent is affected, the child has a 50% chance of inheriting the syndrome (at min). 

The exact genetic root is still unidentified but scientists are taking interest to find it out. For starters, a 2010 study by Ericksson Et al.(a web-based perticipant-driven genetic study), demonstrated a correlation between photic sneezing and a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP (pronounced "snip"), is a variation at a single position in a DNA sequence among considerable no. of individuals) on chromosome 2.

RISKS & MANAGEMENT

Sneezing generally is not that harmful but do not be deceived. There is the universal risk of transmitting infectious diseases (in the current scenario, better you know). There is also the serious issue of losing control during vehicle operation and especially in pilots, it is a considerably high stake. 

Shielding of the eyes by wearing hats, sunglasses and scarves or applying transverse pressure on the philtrum (the groove between your nose and upper-lip) with a finger may help in finding relief. Antihistamines may be used to reduce the occurrence of photic sneezes, show recent research.

RECOMMENDATION:

Do not go out: The Sun has corona too...

SSV

P.S. ACHOO is one case in point of supreme naming and I will never cease to be amazed by it.