The prospect of yawning in public fills me with fear.
My anxiety isn’t because others see my apparent boredom or know how tired I can be, but because of the funny thing my body does when I can’t resist mirroring.
About 90 percent of the time I yawn, a stream of water comes out of my mouth. I describe it a bit like a cobra spitting venom at a predator to defend itself.
If I don’t cover my mouth, the beak can reach very far and, embarrassingly, over the years it has shot out to land on unsuspecting victims in close proximity: neighbors on airplanes, my partner next to me on the couch. and my work computer. , to list a few.
The last time I went home to visit my mother, she expressed her displeasure while we were sitting having a glass of wine together and I failed to protect my mouth in time, allowing a small splash of water to fall onto the dining room table.
While I thought what I did was strange, a friend recently told me that I’m not alone. And there’s actually a term for spitting when you yawn. It’s called “shiny.”
According to Dentistry for Children, glowing “is a natural occurrence that occurs accidentally when yawning, eating, or talking.”
The act implies that “saliva is projected from the salivary glands under the tongue.”
DailyMail.com’s Sadie Whitelocks says the prospect of yawning in public fills her with fear because of how “weird” it happens (file image)
Only 35 percent of people become fancy unintentionally, experts say, and only 1 percent can perform the act intentionally and on command.
While I’m in the 35 percent camp, I’m unable to control my style.
And it’s not a useful party trick, since when I’m put on the spot, I just produce a normal yawn.
People are happy when their tongue accidentally applies pressure to the sublingual glands, salivary glands located under the tongue on the floor of the mouth.
Steven Morgano, chair of the department of restorative dentistry at Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, said Health.com Gleeking comes from “the buildup of watery saliva (in the sublingual glands, then); pressure on the glands from the tongue causes the saliva to squirt out.”
It commonly occurs when people yawn due to the position and movement of the tongue along with the movement of the jaw.
Dr. Mark Wolff, dean of the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, says that “everyone can gleek,” but does not reveal why some people do it accidentally, while others can do it easily when instructed. order.
On TikTok I was surprised, and somewhat comforted, to find clips about gleeking and other people experiencing it.
People who may enjoy it will even offer tutorials for those who want to replicate the saliva stream in the form of a water fountain.
In one clip, Texas-based orthodontist Dr. Ben Winters offers a quick lesson on how to gleek.
The content creator, widely known online as The Bentist, says it’s important to “agitate the sublingual glands with your tongue” by pushing on them
Sadie (pictured) says that, unfortunately, glowing is not a useful party trick as when put on the spot, it “just produces a normal yawn.”
He then instructs viewers to “stick their tongues to the roof of their mouths and move back as far as they can.”
He continues: “The last step is to push the tongue up (against the roof of the mouth), while pressing down (against it).”
After describing each step, Dr. Winters proceeds to spray saliva from his mouth toward the camera.
The video quickly racked up thousands of comments, with many viewers speaking out about their own experiences with gleeking.
Like me, one viewer revealed: “I can’t do it when I’m told, it only happens when I don’t want to.”
Similarly, another commenter wrote: “It happens to me from time to time and in the most embarrassing places.”
Many people who watched Dr. Winters’ video also said they were unable to perform the action, despite their best attempts.
On TikTok, Sadie said she was “surprised – and somewhat comforted – to find clips about gleeking and other people who can do it.”
Dr. Benjamin Tweel, an otolaryngologist at Mount Sinai, told DailyMail.com that “there’s not a lot of medical literature on gleeking” and he’s “not sure how common it is.”
He adds: ‘Also, a point of interest is that the term “gleeking”, which always seemed universal to me, meant nothing to some of my partners; although they knew what the phenomenon was when I asked them, they didn’t have a name for it.
‘When I was a child, trying to gleek was a popular playground activity, but only some children could do it on command, and even then not consistently.
«All I can say, then, is that gleking is the forceful expulsion of saliva from the submandibular gland through the submandibular duct (also known as Wharton’s duct), by contraction of the muscles of the mouth and tongue.
‘There is no information available on how common this is. I can say that, despite looking at thousands of mouths in the office, I have never had a patient look at me during an exam!’