Hatschi! The photic sneeze reflex
Do you know this? You step into the sunlight and - whoops - you have to sneeze. This phenomenon is called the photic sneeze reflex. Around a third of all people have this reflex.
Medically, this is a completely unproblematic story, and it is not a disease. The only thing you can't do with it is become a fighter pilot. The vast majority of people will be able to live with this restriction.
However, some people who don't know about the reflex sometimes find it silly or believe that the person who sneezes whenever they look at the sun is just fooling around. But it's really not the person's fault. The problem is genetic. We don't know exactly what the cause is or what exactly happens. It is likely that some nerve pathways are triggered that trigger the sneezing.
So the important thing here is that the photic sneeze reflex really does exist. However, it is not a clinical picture, but simply an interesting everyday medical phenomenon.
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