What is happening when my nose gets "stuffy"?
Your nose becomes stuffy because the tissue inside your nose is expansive tissue, meaning that it can increase and decrease in size based on its environment. When the nose is irritated, the tissue inside the nose swells and it blocks air from coming in. It's a protective mechanism, but it doesn't feel good because you can't breathe, so you have to breathe through your mouth and you feel like you're obstructed. The nose can react to different things in the environment, and the tissue within the nose expands and contracts based on the amount of humidity and heat in the air. If you come across an allergen that irritates the nose, this tissue swells, and the goal is to block you from breathing in more of those allergens. When the tissue in your nose is completely swollen, you can't breathe through your nose and air can't get into your lungs anymore. Your nose is trying to protect you by becoming stuff, but in an effort to protect you, you can't breathe. You sneeze because your nose is trying to protect you from irritants that are trying to get into your nose or into your throat. When your nose comes into contact with something like pollen or pepper, or something in the environment that irritates it, we sneeze to expel those things from our nose and from our air passages in order to protect us unwanted things getting into our body.
