The world is full of curiosities. And while some local and global events seem to suggest we're going backward, it's important to remember that progress often takes a winding path, and we can't underestimate how far we've come.

For example, open the wonderful book by Jack Hartnell, called Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages, and you will quickly realize how drastically our understanding of the human body and medicine has evolved just over the last few hundred years. Did you know that people would get their blood drawn even as insurance against future illness? Anything from forthcoming menstruation to the onset of a particularly hot summer!

In the meantime, let's check out an online thread where folks have been sharing wild medical facts. While they might keep you up at night, they’re also a testament to how far we've come in understanding and treating the human body.

#1

A defibrillator actually stops your heart. It’s up to your body to restart things correctly. The equivalent of the IT guy asking if you’ve tried turning it off and on again.

Image credits: NoSwimmers45

#2

Your stomach gets a new lining every few days to prevent it from digesting itself.

Image credits: Swimming_Treat3818

#3

Vaccines dont cause autism.

Image credits: AphroditeExurge

#4

I can't declare a hypothermic person deceased until we warm them to room temperature.

Hot-Data686:
They're not dead until they're warm and dead.

OMG_A_CUPCAKE:
Anna Bågenholm comes to mind. She survived a body temperature of 13.7°C (56.7°F) and made an almost full recovery.

Image credits: GuitarEvening8674

#5

It's impressively hard to close someone's eyes after they die.

Not like on TV.

You press them down, and then they open back up a little. Then you have to press them closed again and press a little harder.

I know. I was bedside when my Dad passed away. If he was still in the room, I bet he had a good chuckle.

Miss him.

Image credits: Ludwig_Vista2

#6

If a man has fallen, and gets a b**er, do not move him. It’s a sign of spinal injury.

Image credits: MidniteOG

#7

Pneumothorax (collapsed lung) can just like...happen. if you sneeze or cough or just breathe wrong, your lung can"nope" and collapse.

Image credits: cat_prophecy

#8

When you get a kidney transplant they don’t take out your original kidneys, so you have 3 kidneys after a transplant. Also, they transplant the new kidney into your abdomen and it sits on top of your pelvis/hip area. If you get multiple transplants, they just keep adding new kidneys in. I’ve known of patients who’ve had 6 kidneys. I learned a lot about this during my kidney transplant 6 years ago. ♻️.

Image credits: Traveling_mustang

#9

During the Covid outbreak when the mask vs anti-maskers clashed, a similar situation happened during the Spanish flu outbreak during WWI.


There were as many people in government pushing for masks and vaccines (a Proto version of what we have) as many were against it — it didn’t help that both sides of WWI lied/modified their numbers so that their opponents wouldn’t see as weakness/exploit it; the only country that was open of its numbers was Spain…as it was fighting a civil war.


Due to Spain accurately reporting its numbers - both sides of WWII pinned the blame of the flu on Spain as their numbers were reportedly larger than the other countries (cause war) thus obviously the flu had to have originated from there.


Most don’t know it originated from the United States.

Image credits: mysticdragonwolf89

#10

If we were built to actually digest them, we could get our daily 2000 calories by eating the full-mouth sets of teeth from 55 adult humans. Crunch crunch.

TamLux
Ma! They're posting weird s**t on the internet again!

Image credits: NecroJoe

#11

Weight loss surgery cures diabetes.

I’m talking about type 2, **diabeetus** diabetes. And not from the weight loss, it happens almost immediately. Somehow it perturbs the gut flora and that’s what causes diabetes, maybe?

The Nobel prize in 2006 was given to a research doctor theorized it was bacteria, not stomach acid & stress that caused ulcers. Unable to get funding for research, he drank an *H. Pilori* milk shake and gave himself ulcers. (He was Australian because of course he was.)

Fecal transplants have been known to cure Crohn’s disease, but have also been found to transmit clinical depression from donor to recipient.

All this is to say, we don’t know **f**k-all** about the gut.

Image credits: garrettj100

#12

Endometriosis (tissue from the womb) is not cancer. But it can send out cells that spread through your internal organs and grow, stick your guts together or block them, deform your organs and eat holes through them, and spread up to your diaphragm and lungs. Unsurprisingly, this is agonisingly painful.

Something like 1 in 10 women have it. And apparently it's still not worth doing research into.

i_am_voldemort:
My spouse is a gynecologist surgeon. She had a patient with endometriosis in her lungs that caused life-threatening pulmonary issues.

CannibalAnn:
I do medical deep dives regularly as a morbidly curious freak and endometriosis is one of the scariest things I have ever seen. It can grow anywhere. People have had it in their brain and on their skin. And it can go through menses. Awful, scary, terrifying stuff.

Image credits: LegalFox9

#13

Your immune system can just decide to attack whatever

It can decide that your hair follicles are a deadly threat and make you bald. It can go after your spinal cord and make it so your legs feel like they're on fire 24/7. It can attack your organs and cause damage severe enough to necessitate a transplant. It can eat holes in your brain. It can tear up your joints. You can even wake up blind because your eyes were on your immune system's hitlist for today.

I think people are aware of autoimmune conditions, but I think most people don't think about how much can go wrong.

Image credits: hillbilly-man

#14

Newborn girls can have a period and both newborn boys and girls can lactate.

95% of URIs that kids get are viruses (no antibiotics needed)

You CANNOT get the flu from the flu shot. You can feel a little s****y, but if you have URI symptoms after the flu shot.. you just have a cold.

Image credits: efox02

#15

If you have a rib removed (say for a surgery), the younger you are the more likely that rib is to grow back.

Image credits: kiwidale

#16

Humans can live with one lung, the remaining one will expand and partially fill the rest of the chest cavity, which can lead to cardiac distress. It's not the most pleasant existence, but people have made it up to 30 years like that.

Image credits: mck1llguddy

#17

Pregnancy can just turn on diseases that you may have never had before.


I developed a thyroid disease and an autoimmune disease during my first pregnancy.... it's been great...

Inwint:
It can also make your eyesight worse, cause cavities and loose teeth, cause or exacerbate bone loss/osteoporosis, make moles or angiomas grow or appear, make subsequent periods heavier, temporarily reduce grey matter in the brain, cause pelvic organ prolapse, cause skeletal structure changes, cause abdominal muscle separation, new-onset diabetes (usually from gestational diabetes), and increase the risk of Alzheimer’s.
The number of side effects, complications, and possible permanent effects of pregnancy would fill a book, yet people still try to pretend it’s a perfectly normal and harmless process and women are just complaining.

Image credits: PublicProfanities

#18

The female fetus has developed every egg they will ever ovulate before they are born.

Image credits: ChanSungJung

#19

Prion diseases. Basically a protein, which is the basic building block for your body, goes rogue. This leads to a chain reaction where other proteins around it are misshaped and basic body functions break down. When it attacks the brain it causes irreversible brain damage and death. There’s no way to target a rogue protein. In diseases like Mad Cow disease it’s acquired by consuming meat. But it can also just happen randomly.

Image credits: Junior_Significance9

#20

Situs inversus - a congenital condition in which the major visceral organs are reversed or mirrored from their normal positions. which I only learned about when reading about Catherine O’Hara (Home Alone, Schitt’s Creek)- apparently her organs, like heart, lungs etc are flipped to the opposite sides of her body.

shaarlock:
My grandfather had this! Made his doctors very confused when he had appendicitis, and the pain was on the wrong side.

Image credits: katasoupie

#21

Things I learned (from my doctors and my own reading) after I found out I was having twins:

1. At age 35, a woman’s odds of having a multiples pregnancy drastically increases…and it continues to increase each year. This is due to your body’s response to preparing for menopause by releasing more than one egg at a time. The older you are when you get pregnant (pre-menopause), the more likely you could have a multiples pregnancy.

2. You are likely to be the most fertile right before you begin menopause. Ever hear of a “change of life baby”?

3. If you already have had a multiples pregnancy, your odds of another one greatly increases.

4. People frequently ask, “Do twins run in your family?” Fraternal twins (two fertilized eggs) are the only genetic twins. Women get the gene to release more than one egg through their mother and her mother and her mother…. Identical twins (one egg that splits) is random nature and can happen at any time.

5. African American women are the most likely to have twins over any other race. Caucasian women over 35 have the highest rates of triplet or more pregnancies. (In the USA)

6. If you have a higher BMI (30+), you’re more likely to have a multiples pregnancy.

Image credits: Fluffy_Momma_C

#22

Your gut bacteria plays a big part in your overall wellness and affects your mental health even. You're depression may or may not be in some part caused by lacking a certain bacteria or the presence of another.

garrettj100:
Fecal transplants have transmitted clinical depression from donor to recipient.

Image credits: nsmith0723

#23

I had a total thyroidectomy last year due to thyroid cancer. I learned that, in rare cases, your body can regrow thyroid tissue (maybe healthy/functioning, maybe not) from the very small number of thyroid cells left behind. It’s the reason thyroid cancer patients need to be on a high dose of replacement hormone to suppress the production of thyroid stimulating hormone that could trigger regrowth. It was wild to learn that removing the gland doesn’t always solve the issue.

Image credits: trizer81

#24

If you take a medication, it will kick in fastest if you are lying down on your right side. A recent study found this out. They had assumed that standing would be the best position, but they found out the stomach works better lying down on your right side.

Image credits: Unique-Ad-9316

#25

A lot of bone breaks don't hurt that much. I work in radiology and while we don't see the nasty breaks you do in trauma (which often REALLY hurt), we see a lot of broken toes, fingers, metacarpals and metatarsals. Those breaks are often not easy to distinguish from muscle or tendon strain without imaging and the patient is acting completely normal. I used to think breaking anything would have someone on the floor in agony but a lot of them are like "yeah it hurts when I bend it."

If you want nightmare fuel: sometimes your spine can spontaneously break under its own weight. This is called a compression fracture.

Image credits: Halospite

#26

If you have an allogenic bone marrow transplant, your blood type will change to the donor’s and your bone marrow and blood will contain the donor’s DNA. For example, if you are a male and your donor is a female and you do a blood DNA test your results will show that you are a female. Since the rest of your cellular structure is your own, a DNA mouth swab test would show you are a male. This is known as chimerism.

Image credits: dadamax

#27

Roughly half of the world's population is iron deficient, of whom about half have iron deficiency anemia.

Iron affects literally every part of your body, from how cold your feet are to whether you exhibit symptoms of bipolar disorder. Seriously consider looking into it if you have any unexplained symptoms. If you have restless legs syndrome, get a blood test for ferritin *now*. A level of 100 is recommended but doctors will sometimes say that as little as 40 is fine (edit: which the published sources I've encountered disagree with. In any case, there's no harm increasing your ferritin to 100).

Image credits: 314159265358979326

#28

Possibly been noted before - but humans are naturally covered in cool stripes - mostly across the back. They are unique to each human.

They are not visible under our visual spectrum, but certain other animals can see them. It's a shame we can't, because I think they look awesome.

Image credits: AnnoyedOwlbear

#29

Everyone knows that if you feel a lump in your breast you gotta get that s**t checked out, but there are actually [twelve symptoms of breast cancer]

Image credits: lizlemonista

#30

CPR was intended to treat younger people whose hearts had stopped due to trauma. It was not intended to be used on 85 year olds with multiple disease processes.

Image credits: Ana_P_Laxis

#31

There's certain conditions where your bowel can leak into your stomach and you vomit s**t.

It's called feculent vomiting.

#32

The mold from which the first antibiotics were harvested were first discovered from a young French med student Ernest Duchesne, noticing that Arab stable boys would keep horse saddles in damp, dark places to encourage mold growth. This reduced the amount and severity of saddle sores. Wrote a paper on it but didn’t receive credit. Several decades later and Fleming makes Penicillin.

#33

Sneezing fits can cause orgasms and orgasms can cause sneezing fits.

#34

You can get skin cancer in areas not exposed to the sun.

#35

One way to fix a prolapsed r****m is to pour sugar on it. Just good ole pure white cane sugar. I’ve actually seen this done.

#36

I think we take for granted that we're constantly teetering on the edge of not-surviving. You have a few MINUTES of oxygen in your body. Your life up to now has required hundreds of thousands of hours of routine heart beating and breathing to not-die - it's not something you can be good at just 99.9% of the time. Your brain is the most complex thing in the known universe, but it still is only a few MINUTES away from death if it doesn't get oxygen.

Right now, take a deep breath in and feel your heartbeat. If either stopped happening, that clock starts ticking and it's all over. The pituitary is cool and has some neat tricks up its sleeve, your gut and microbiome are crazy, but that's all irrelevant if your brain misses out on a few minutes of oxygen. We can make iPhones and stream live video from the space station, but all of us have a countdown timer that could start at any second. That system is so simple and elegant, but also so terrifying.

#37

When they remove your guts for surgery, they just jam them back in once finished and they settle back into place on their own.

#38

There are a million nerve fibres that form the optic nerve in each eye.

#39

A tumor can contain hair and/or teeth.

coors1977:
I had a cyst removed that had been growing on my ovary: I was told it had hair, teeth, and brain matter. I called it my cyst-er.

RoutineOther7887:
It's called a teratoma.

#40

Erectile dysfunction can be a precursor to heart disease. The penile arteries are only slightly smaller than the coronary arteries; once they start blocking up causing ED the coronaries are soon to follow (approx 2 years).

#41

Something around 2% of the world's population hears "The Hum." Those excessively loud and thumping sound systems in cars can be borderline torturous

Enjoy the rabbit hole.

#42

Taking antibiotics can cause psychiatric symptoms.

It's not common but it's not rare, either. If you are taking antibiotics and experience derealization / depersonalization, you need to stop, immediately.

The cause of this is not well understand but it's generally thought to be something to do with serotonin. Gut microbes modulate about 60% of your serotonin so that you can use it, and antibiotics disrupt your microbiome severely.

Curiously, patients with pre-existing psychiatric symptoms sometimes see improvement when they take antibiotics.

Source: ex-microbiologist who researched gut flora for years.

Also: a lot of people in this thread are talking about fecal transplants, and I want to mention that those transplants are NOT easy. You have to nuke the existing biome to establish the transplant which is very hard to do and very hard on the body. A lot of those transplants don't "take." And even if they do, the body can revert back to its old microbiome (and associated conditions) due to the recipient's diet and location. Microbiomes do not exist in a vaccuum; what you eat, where you live, who you hang out with, all of this influences what kind of microbes live inside you. So the fecal transplant, while promising, is still very much in its "research" phase and should not be thought of as some kind of simple miracle cure.

#43

Women's bodies naturally produce significantly more testosterone than estrogen.

#44

All mammals have seven cervical vertebrae. Giraffes have the same as humans, they're just huge.

The only mammals that don't are manatees and sloths.

#45

That tumour markers in your blood work are no good for detecting Some cancers, notably bowel cancer. Schedule a routine colonoscopy and listen to your body for symptoms. I received blood results that said no tumour markers but then gave my doc a symptom list that had him send me for an immediate colonoscopy. I had stage three cancer. So as it happens medically some tumours do not show up in bloods, listen to the body or better yet once you hit forty schedule a routine colonoscopy as sometimes it’s symptomless until it’s way too late.

#46

Fat is not inert. One pound of fat has about five miles of blood vessels to support it. That's a lot of an extra load on our heart. .

#47

You can taste salt when given a saline IV because it diffuses out of the blood in your lungs.

#48

Not moving for long periods of time can increase your chance of blood clots, especially as you get older.

#49

What makes measles such a dangerous disease is that it causes a sort of amnesia of the immune system that can last as long as a year or two.

#50

You can end up with too much or too little cerebral spinal fluid, and its REALLY HARD for doctors to figure out that somethings wrong with your CSF cause it doesnt really show up on standard CTs or MRIs. And its rare enough that most neuros dont think of it as a first line issue.

They also suck at it, and use outdated or bad information in their diagnosis. Having optic nerve damage is a sign csf pressure is high, but not having optic nerve damage doesnt mean youre fine.

It's unfortunately a common mistake, and theres potentially a lot of people misdiagnosed with chronic migraine who actually have a cerebral spinal fluid issue.

The only actual test is a lumbar puncture to get the real pressure inside your head.

#51

I have a fun rare condition called “dextracardia.”
It means that my heart is on the right side of my chest, instead of the left per usual. Sometimes this can be a more complicated condition where other organs are switched, but for me it’s just my heart. For me, it doesn’t cause any major issues. But if involved other organs, it could create complications. So yay for me? I like to say that my heart is always in the “right” place ????.

#52

Breast cancer treatment hasn't significantly improved from a mortality and morbidity point of view in the last decade. Despite this, it overwhelmingly gets more funding than other deadlier and similarly common types of cancer (e.g. bowel cancer).

#53

Your nerves conduct electrical signals at over 50m/s when healthy. Over 100mph if you prefer freedom units. It’s very complicated process of ions moving across cell membranes to propagate a signal from one spot to another yet happens so fast. Nerves are cool.

#54

Many doctors don’t believe that fibromyalgia, POTS, chronic fatigue, or chronic Lyme disease are real. Or should I say that most doctors know the patient’s symptoms are real, but believe the symptoms have psychological origin rather than a physiological.

#55

Cancer vaccine has been in the works by Moderna and BNT. They have, in fact, been working on them when they took a detour to make COVID vaccines (and made a ton of money). Their results in 2023 were surprisingly good; great hopes for cancer treatment in the near future.

#56

In the mental health world, when someone becomes mentally sick, their ability to recognize them becoming ill is taken away. It’s called prodromal. It’s really sad to see this happen to the people you love. How they change and not know it’s happening.

#57

The human body has a turnover of 70kg of ATP a day when resting.

#58

The human body is ridiculously efficient. You live, day to day, off of roughly 2000 calories, even less if you've stored up enough fat. Animals of equivalent mass to us regularly 10,000.

one of the biggest reasons why neanderthals died out was simply because they required about 10,000 or more calories daily just to be alive while humans were far more efficient.

#59

There are people that feel nauseated before sneezing, and the body gets confused thinking it's going to throw up, but then just sneezes.

#60

It’s common for people in motor vehicle accidents to sustain a ruptured bladder.

Moral: pee before you get into a car.

#61

There’s a medical condition called ‘Stone Man Syndrome’ where your muscles and tissues slowly turn to bone. Your body basically starts building an extra skeleton inside you, and there’s no cure. It’s rare, but terrifying.

#62

You really shouldn't use those hot air blowers to dry your hands in bathrooms...likewise.. ffs put down the lid when you flush...iykyk.

#63

Performing CPR often breaks ribs.

#64

According to a 2016 study by Johns Hopkins Medicine, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, k*lling over 250,000 people each year.

#65

Even though there's several tests to evaluate lung function/capacity, there is apparently also a cell found in your blood that indicates you have asthma.

source: my doc after two hours of lung testing.

#66

It is medically recognized that right before a heart attack most patients feel a "sense of doom".