The Strange Reason Plucking Your Eyebrows Can Make You Sneeze
If you've ever plucked or waxed your eyebrows, chances are you've had a sneezing fit as a result. You may not have given any thought as to why this occurs or thought that it was a strange coincidence that your nose gets tingly and itchy when working on your brows.
Turns out, a sneeze mid-tweeze is way more common than you might think. A Los Angeles brow specialist tells The Cut that 15 to 20 percent of their clients are affected by sneezing during the shaping of their eyebrows. She also notes that her clients typically experience worse sneezing symptoms with their left eyebrows than their right eyebrows. Some even get runny noses or tearing eyes to accompany their sneezes.
So why does this strange phenomenon occur right when you start your eyebrow treatments? The reason plucking your eyebrows makes you sneeze is related to the ophthalmic branch of your trigeminal nerve (via The Healthy). These nerves are stimulated by the nose, eyebrows, eyelids, and other parts of the brain.
How to avoid sneezing while tweezing your eyebrows
When you are plucking your eyebrows, you are stimulating that trigeminal nerve that runs through your nasal cavity. As a result, your body reacts on a reflexive action with a sneeze. This is similar to why your eyes tear up when you're plucking your eyebrows or stare into a bright light (via Yahoo News).
While sneezing while plucking, waxing, or threading your eyebrows can be irritating, it's not an inherently dangerous reaction. There is a way to "short circuit" that trigeminal nerve, though. Experts tell Yahoo News you can press your finger to your eyebrow applying pressure to stop the sneezing while tweezing.
Otherwise, just be careful of sneezing while holding tweezers or tell your brow specialist to be aware of potential reactions.