Hey guys! In this blog post, I’m going to let you in on some famous theories behind why humans yawn!
Be aware: You may yawn through the process
( I realized that when I was researching why humans yawn, I found myself yawning multiple times too – which is crazy)
What even is yawning?
Yes we all yawn on a daily basis to some extent, but what actually is the process of doing so? During the act, you open your airway and take a long and deep breath of air. Although it may seem like a simple movement, it’s actually considered pretty complex.
Firstly, our diaphragm contracts which allows us to take in air. Then, our lower jaw completely opens, expanding our mouth’s to expand to the best of its abilities. Then, the tongue goes down from its normal resting position on the roof of our mouth. As you inhale more air, your face stretches more and more and more, until it reaches the maximum. FInally, at the end of the yawn, our face resets back to normal and as we exhale our closed eyes re-open (which may be slightly watery too). During the end stage of the yawn, we tend to make some sort of a vocal sound, and we end off with some kind of “relaxing or “rewarding” sensation.
But why do we even yawn?
As a matter of fact: Nobody knows! Researchers and medical professionals have been trying to find the actual reason behind why we yawn , but for some strange reason – no one has found the answer. Yet, there are many theories speculating it which I will dive into deeper below.
The first theory is to wake up your brain:
This one is kind of ironic, because we generally yawn when we are bored, tired, or sleepy. So I guess that humans (and many other animals as a matter of fact) yawn as well as a method to wake themselves up. When we are bored, our brain is lacking the mental stimulation that it desperately craves on a daily basis, which eventually leads it to slowly lose touch with our external environment and become absorbed into our eventful daydreams. When our body begins to realize that we are beginning to lose touch, yawning may occur as an attempt to reconnect us with our surroundings, and ultimately give us a “wake-up” call. As a matter of fact, when we yawn, our heart-rate tends to slightly increase, and because our muscles are being stretched – even though it may not seem like it – we are slowly yet steadily releasing the drowsiness.
The second theory is one that I have never thought about before, and am still just beginning to understand. To cool down our brains.
Basically what this means is that when our brain’s and body’s are experiencing abnormal heating (such as through heat stress or hyperthermia), yawning occurs as the body’s natural process of thermoregulation (like sweating). I think yawning in this scenario only occurs when your body is not in extreme motion but is still overheating (because I don’t think it would be considered normal for athletes to be yawning in the midst of a chaotic basketball game). The science behind this explains that because our faces stretch, more blood flows through, and at the same time, there is an intake of excess air. To be honest, I don’t really understand this theory, but because no one actually knows the reason behind this phenomenon, I’m learning to accept it either way.
The third most popular and more commonly recognized theory is that people yawn through empathy in an attempt to subconsciously relate to others.
Yawning has been shown to be extremely contagious, meaning that when we see someone yawn- our bodies automatically tend to yawn too. Some pieces of evidence has shown that the more empathetic a person is, the more likely they are to experience higher rates of contagiousness when glancing at other people yawning. Another aspect to take into consideration is how people tend to yawn more and more easily when seeing a loved one or known individual yawn, rather than a stranger. This fact makes it seem like empathy may actually play a super big role in the science behind yawning. The fact on how yawns are contagious, actually fit into this category that psychologists call “mirroring” or in more scientific language, “limbic synchrony”. Other reasons point towards how an individual’s susceptibility to yawning may be based on whether or not someone is neurodivergent. And if they do happen to be, the contagiousness decreases.
There you have it folks, there are the three most common theories behind why people yawn. Who knows, maybe sometime in the future, we’ll turn these theories into scientific explanations! But until then, let’s just keep yawning away.
Sources:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/yawning
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3678674/