could sneeze 17 times in a row, but I don't want to. So I'd better stop."
A couple years ago, one of his co-workers took the same approach. The woman was "on the edge of a sneeze fit" and stopped only once, he says.
"We didn't know why this happened, but we knew it was because she'd stopped."
It's a phenomenon that's been studied by several researchers, says Dr. Jonathan Zon, a pediatrics researcher at the University of Toronto. They've found it to happen more frequently among women than men.
"Women are actually more likely to stop sneezing if they sneeze, as opposed to people who don't usually sneeze, when they sneeze," Zon says.
But while Zon is sure it's all in our genes, it's not as simple as that.