My dear sweet husband has a way of imparting knowledge that no one else on earth can possibly come up with.  It is one of his more endearing qualities.  He is somewhat of a sponge.  Read a fact and it stays with him for life.  Never mind that the facts that he spouts are ridiculous, irrelevant crazy not pertinent to my life.  He still continues to amaze me with his knowledge.

The other day he threw a new one at me.  Seems there is research that shows that yawning is related to having a hot brain.  Well all I can say is that my brain must be on fire these days because I have been yawning up a storm.

But on to the “study” and I use that term loosely.  Evidently the researchers are proposing that sometimes the brain needs to cool down to work more effectively.  In order to do that yawning occurs to take in cooler air from the surroundings to help facilitate this.

The article in The New York Times written by Anahad O’Connor goes on to state that yawning does appear to be contagious.  I have experienced this first hand on the drive  with said factoid husband.   I was debating the merits of this same article and yawned.  Then Chris yawned. Then I yawned again. Seems that the mere mention of yawning elicits a Pavlovian response from me.  A study where participants watching yawn videos (can anyone say boring??) induced yawns but when cold ice packs were applied to the subjects’ heads the yawning stopped.  Probably had brain freeze at that point.

O’Connor goes on to cite a study of 160 people (now is that really a good sample size?)  shared that yawning varied by season.  More yawners in the winter months.  That makes no sense to me whatsoever.

All I know is that this article (read it here) left me yawning…..repeatedly.   Someone alert the firefighters–my brain is on fire.