STRANGE INJURIES

BIZARRE injuries your body can inflict on itself. This week: Blowing your nose can be bad for your heart IN JULY last year, doctors at the Sondershausen Hospital in Germany reported how a 69-year-old man managed to create a small rupture in the wall of his otherwise healthy heart muscle by blowing his nose too hard. Apparently, this caused a sudden rise in blood pressure.

The spike in blood pressure in his brain also caused strokelike neurological symptoms that temporarily left him with slurred speech and an inability to control his right arm, according to the International Journal of General Medicine.

Fortunately, the symptoms disappeared within hours.

Some people just ask for trouble. In 1992, German doctors reported how another patient caused much the same injury by trying to inflate a party balloon with his nose.