The prospect of yawning in public fills me with fear.
My anxiety isn’t because others may see my apparent boredom or be let on to how tired I may be, but for the weird thing my body does when I can’t resist carrying out the reflex.
Around 90 percent of the time I yawn, a jet of water sprays out of my mouth. I describe it a bit like a cobra spitting venom towards a predator to defend itself.
If I don’t cover my mouth, the spout can reach quite far, and embarrassingly over the years it has jetted out to land on unsuspecting victims in close proximity – neighbors on planes, my partner next to me on the couch and my work computer, to list a few.
Last time I went home to visit my mom, she voiced disgust as we sat having a glass of wine together and I failed to shield my mouth in time, allowing a small sprinkling of water to land on the dining room table.
While I thought this was just a freaky thing I did, a friend recently told me I’m not alone. And there is actually a term for spitting when you yawn. It’s called ‘gleeking.’
According to Dentistry for Children, gleeking ‘is a natural occurrence that accidentally happens when yawning, eating or talking.’
The act involves ‘saliva being projected from the salivary glands under your tongue.’
DailyMail.com’s Sadie Whitelocks says the prospect of yawning in public fills her with fear because of the ‘weird’ thing that happens (stock image)
Only 35 percent of people unintentionally gleek, experts say, and only one percent can perform the act intentionally and on command.
While I am in the 35 percent camp, I am powerless over controlling my gleeking.
And it’s not a useful party trick, as when I am put on the spot, I merely produce a normal yawn.
People gleek when their tongue accidentally applies pressure to the sublingual glands, salivary glands located under the tongue in the floor of the mouth.
Steven Morgano, the chair of the department of restorative dentistry at the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, told Health.com gleeking comes from ‘built up watery saliva [in your sublingual glands, then,] pressure on the glands from the tongue causes the saliva to squirt out.’
It commonly occurs when people yawn because of the positioning and movement of the tongue coupled with the movement of the jaw.
Dr Mark Wolff, dean of the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, says ‘everyone can gleek,’ but he does not reveal why some people do it accidentally, while others can do it easily on command.
On TikTok I was surprised – and somewhat comforted – to find clips about gleeking and other people who experience it.
People who can gleek at will even offer tutorials for those looking to replicate the water fountain-like spout of saliva.
In one clip, Texas-based orthodontist Dr Ben Winters offers a quick lesson on how to gleek.
The content creator, who widely known online as The Bentist, says it is important to ‘agitate your sublingual glands with your tongue’ by pushing them around
Sadie (pictured) says unfortunately gleeking is not a useful party trick, as when she’s put on the spot, she ‘merely produces a normal yawn’
Next, he instructs viewers to ‘stick your tongue to the roof of your mouth and go as far back as you can go.’
He continues: ‘The final step is to push your tongue up [against the roof of your mouth], while squeezing [against it].’
After describing each step, Dr Winters then proceeds to spray saliva from his mouth towards the camera.
The video quickly amassed thousands of comments with many viewers talking about their own experiences with gleeking.
Like me, one viewer revealed: ‘I can’t do it on command, it only happens when I don’t want it to.’
Similarly, another commenter wrote: ‘It happens once in a while for me and in the most embarrassing places.’
Many people who watched Dr Winters’ video also said they were unable to perform the gleeking 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 ear, nose, and throat (ENT) doctor, at Mount Sinai told DailyMail.com ‘there’s not much in the medical literature about gleeking’ and he is ‘unsure how common it is.’
He adds: ‘Also, a point of interest is that the term “gleeking,” which always seemed universal to me, didn’t mean anything to some of my partners; even though they knew what the phenomenon was when I asked, they didn’t have a name for it.
‘When I was growing up, trying to gleek was a popular playground activity, but only some kids could do it on command, and even then not consistently.
‘All I can say, then, is that gleeking is the forceful expulsion of saliva from the submandibular gland through the submandibular duct (also known as Wharton’s duct), by contracting muscles in the mouth and tongue.
‘There isn’t any information available on how common this is. I can say that, despite looking into thousands of mouths in the office, I have never had a patient gleek on me during an exam!’