Hey everyone, it’s Medicine Mondays… on Tuesday. Today is just a short post to explore “What is gustatory rhinitis?”.

Gustatory Rhinitis?

Yea.

It’s kind of funny, but ever since I can remember, whenever I ate too much I would start sneezing and my nose would start running. I never really understood why. It’s kind of becoming a running joke between my wife and I because whenever I start sneezing after we eat she would know “Oh, Daddy is full!”

To be honest, I had always thought it was just a weird quirk that I had. It didn’t bother me really so I didn’t think much of it. Perhaps it was related to reflux when I ate too much or some kind of reaction to eating too much.

Then, when I was looking into something else at work, for a patient who had a complaint of intractable coughing/sneezing after eating. I ran into this terminology:

Gustatory Rhinitis

It is in the family of “non-allergic” rhinitis.

“Gustatory rhinitis is characterized by watery, uni- or bilateral rhinorrhea occurring after ingestion of solid or liquid foods, most often hot and spicy. “

Rhinology. 2010 Mar 2;48(1):7-10. doi: 10.4193/Rhin07.153.

In this particular article, it states:

“It usually begins within a few minutes of ingestion of the implicated food, and is not associated with pruritus, sneezing, nasal congestion or facial pain. “

However, in other articles, they mention gustatory rhinitis being associated with both rhinorrhea (runny nose) and sneezing.

Interesting…

There is another entity called snatiation which is a word was coined to explain the stomach squeeze reflux. It is characterized by uncontrollable bursts of sneezing brought on by fullness of the stomach. Typically, this is immediately after a large meal.

I’ve concluded that I have both gustatory rhinitis and snatiation. I never really noticed it before, since I thought they always occurred together. However, there are some times when I sneeze without too much of a runny nose. Other times I would have a runny nose but don’t really sneeze. For the most part though, they do occur together.

The likelihood is that I like to eat a lot of the food (spciy) that cause gustatory rhinitis. This then leads to snatiation and so they happen together.

So now, whenever I start sneezing after eating, I can say “oh man, my gustatory rhinitis and snatiation are acting up”.

Isn’t being a doctor fun?

TL;DR

Gustatory rhinitis and snatiation, I have them both.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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