The human body is an incredible machine. But it's far from perfect. For all our evolutionary brilliance, we're still stuck with joints that wear out, dandruff, and sinuses that seem designed for misery. And that's just the beginning!
In various places on the internet, people have been sharing the body's most frustrating design flaws, so we decided to compile their "reviews" of the not-so-user-friendly features. And who knows—if we're lucky, maybe we'll receive a patch upgrade. Something bionic would be nice.
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Ectopic Pregnancy
Ovaries are ovulatin and doing their things. Eggs and what not. An egg decides enough is enough, and with the help of a hormone surge, wants out of that s**t. Bigger and better things.
So the egg literally punches out, and is supposed to go straight into the Fallopian tubes, get fertilized while inside the tubes, and then plant in the uterus.
You would THINK that the entrance of the Fallopian tubes would connect right to the ovary?
Nah
The opening of the Fallopian tube has these little hairs (fimbriae) that are like wacky inflatable tube men in front of sketchy used car lots, and kind of guide the egg into the Fallopian tube. Sometimes, the eggs don’t feel like it going, and they venture off. And if fertilized, it’s considered an ectopic pregnancy. It can plant anywhere in the abdominal cavity at that point. Most of the time, it will die because it has to plant in a well vascularized region to be viable. Sometimes, it finds a good, bloody spot, and starts growing there. At that point it’s essentially a tumor, and of it can eat enough into a blood vessel, in can rupture and bleed like s**t.
You would think that millions of years of evolution would create a Fallopian tube that opens up right to the ovary, but that’s not the case.
Physician here.
1) testes only work when they are located outside the body at the junction of two limbs that converge, funneling many stray objects towards them.
2) the low back. OMG. Don’t get me started.
3) clotting is so complex it’s no wonder it messes up so often.
4) Sinuses. Like...why? And why do the holes leading into them need to be so small?
5) The immune system is really bad at stopping things it needs to stop and it’s really good at damaging the body.
6) we evolved on this planet, so why is the light of the sun too bright for us to tolerate?
7) Our bodies like to store fat...in our arteries?
8) Sometimes, the baby’s head wont fit through the pelvis.
8a) even by mammal standards, our newborns are remarkably ill-equipped. A newborn dog can crawl. A newborn horse can walk. We take a year to walk and almost two decades until we can fend for ourselves.
I’ll think of more.
Thank you, I just said in the last post I felt like we came out half baked.
In a way, we do. Anthropologically, the strongest fit trait we have is our big brains. Which, as the list points out, makes it hard to give birth. To compensate, evolution has favored the big brain and infant care instead of bigger pelvises for some damned reason. So we're basically all born premature when compared with other primate species. In college they joked that for the first year we're basically still fetuses.
Load More Replies...I don't think the sunlight one is necessarily true. Human skin DID evolve to respond to the sun, including protecting itself. Our rate of invention simply surpassed our rate of evolutionary adaptation.
The two decades to fend for themselves is a recent development. Luckily most children don't have to work until they're teens in this country, but that's not the case elsewhere or in the past.
True. Childeren can take care of themselves around 6-7 years old but mentally it causes a lot of trouble to grow up without help of parents.
Load More Replies...Evolution makes an organism good enough, not perfect. It’s not stupid if it works. Also, evolution doesn’t “plan” for the future. As long as a trait allows an organism to thrive in its current environment, it’s passed on, even if it might end up being a limitation in the future.
"8a) even by mammal standards..." reminds me of the book Clan of the cave bear
"8a) even by mammal standards, our newborns are remarkably ill-equipped." It's logical. Humans have the brains to take care of the babies that are born ill-equipped to survive. Why? Those brains are BIG and if the babies grew any larger in the womb, they would k**l the mother during childbirth because of their HUGE brainy heads. Brainpower has its costs.
Well, as for the baby part, it makes sense if you think about it. Our development of a large brain and how long childhood is, has made it so we spend more time defenseless. We're born earlier, in respects to fetal development, than other mammals. And we need to birthed before our heads are too big to pass through the birth canal. Plus being a social species has increased our odds of survival.
For 8a, that's a specific evolutionary trade-off as opposed to the body just not working right. When we started walking upright, our pelvises had to adapt. It means that the female pelvis had to narrow, making it too small for a larger infant to pass through. That's why our newborns are so underdeveloped at birth (compared to other mammals).
I mean, true. But human beings have only been around for like a blip in the entire age of the universe. Millions of years and eons down the line future humans might be well equipped for whatever ecosystem is present. It also doesn't help that the last couple thousand of years we've been messing with our own evolution.
If they didn’t, it might just make them look like a random person with no experience, so if they say they’re a physician, people will know they are experts on the topic.
Load More Replies...8a. Now imagine the size every woman's hips would have to be if babys weren't born until they were ready to crawl or walk.
Maybe we can’t tolerate the sunlight because we never actually look directly into it (well, if you have common sense that is) so we have no reason to adapt to it.
Regarding the testes (not something I say often outside of s*x), their core temperature has dropped by two degrees since the turn of the 20th Century thanks to the advancement of modern clothing.
It disturbs me that a person self-identifying as a physician says " testes only work when they are located outside the body at the junction of two limbs that converge, funneling many stray objects towards them." This is incorrect. Testes have two main function, the production of s***m, and the production of hormones. S***m is temperature sensitive, and happy s***m prefer chilling in 'outdoor testes', but the hormones are able to be produced regardless of the location. Two legs are not required. There are men who have fathered children after radical amputations of one, or both legs. - - - Yes, I knew what he meant but it was phrased rather badly.
Us humans can cope perfectly well with the light of the sun. It's not a problem at all - aside from those of us descended from the pale skinned mutants who lost the ability to produce sufficient melanin for full protection because that meant we'd still be able to produce enough vitamin D in regions with weak sunlight. I'm one of that sort myself. Slip! Slop! Slap! is the solution, as the Aussies can tell you:. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7nocIenCYg
I think, by “too bright” they mean that the sun is too bright to look at. I don’t think they’re talking about our skin.
Load More Replies...
Pretty much any autoimmune disease. The body can literally k**l itself trying to protect itself.
My grandson nearly died this spring. Asymptomatic Covid, which devolved into Strep A, which then devolved into Sepsis. This was the diagnosis of the amazing team at CS Mott Ann Arbor (U of M) hospital when he was in their care at his lowest (heart capacity of 15%). His white count has subsided quite a bit. His grandpa (me) has Psoriasis, his Mom has an AI condition as well. 2 year olds, scare the c**p out of you and bounce back like it never happened.
The pain and complications associated with giving birth. Giraffes can birth a whole tiny giraffe hooves and all and go about their day, yet women are still enduring massive amounts of pain (and/or death) during childbirth. It seems evolutionarily unproductive.
Allergies, or said another way, your immune system flipping the f**k out because you bumped into a peanut, dust mite, shrimp, cat, etc...
Exactly, what do you mean you're gonna k**l me to protect me? Anaphylaxis is dumb
The absolute randomness in its strengths vs vulnerabilities.
A person can jump from a plane, have their parachute not open & survive the impact.
Or you can slip in the shower, break your f*****g neck, and die on the spot.
Teeth cannot repair themselves (I think?). If a bone can heal back together why the hell can't a tooth fill in a micro hole.
In a natural state, teeth are pretty dam important.
I think teeth can do some self-repair, but they lack blood flow to do real healing. Yeah, without dental work and care, teeth can degrade to the point of not being able to chew. I think that's how a lot of animals eventually die. 🙁
That we can bite the insides of our own cheeks. I'm sure plently of you know the pain of accidentally biting down on your cheek.
Periods. Most other animals who have a menstruation cycle, or something like it, reabsorb the uterine lining rather than shedding it out and causing woman to suffer from painful bleeding out of their vaginas for 5-6 days once a month.
Edit: I think that if we have to shed it, it should be a voluntary sphincter (like controlling when you pee). So woman don’t have to spend so much money on pads & tampons, don’t have to worry about bleeding through, can stress free wear a bikini, etc.
Cancer. Routine processes meant to repair the body create mistakes that in turn create tumors.
Again, our bodies are designed to kíll us. It's like someone gave a baby a blowtorch.
There are many. But, notably to me is how easily damaged the Knee joints and the Spine are. They next to impossible completely repair. Once damage they are never really right again.
If I wipe the wrong direction I could get an infection that could spread to my kidneys and k**l me.
That thing our brains do where we walk into a room only to instantly forget why we went in there in the first place.
You can kinda just die at any moment from a brain aneurysm, even if you're perfectly healthy.
My young parents were visiting friends when the wife had an aneurysm and died right then and there. My middle name is her name. Thanks, I guess?
Unable to regenerate body parts. You lose an arm or a leg, you can't grow a new one. We can grow hair and nails forever, but not body parts.
Some people might disagree about the hair growing forever. Or at least, not all of it :)
We've evolved for millions of years with the sun always being there. Yet we get burnt and skin cancer from too much exposure. Dark skinned people are slightly better designed than the fair skinned ones.
Dark skinned people are the original humans. Not designed but evolved. Humans evolved from the original black skinned type when they moved to regions with weaker sun. It turned out advantageous to produce insufficient melanin for full sun protection because that enabled production of sufficient vitamin D in weak sunlight. All you need is a bit of common sense if you've got light skin for strong sun not to be a problem - humans have had clothing probably longer than humans have had complex language.
The amount of time it takes for us to grow and mature to a level where we are able to contribute and not be 100% dependent on our parents/family unit.
Or the fact we have a useless organ that randomly ruptures and will k**l you if you don't seek treatment for it.
Getting tired and needing to sleep. I could have done so much s**t if I hadn't had to sleep.
Though really, I probably would have just still not done anything.
You can control your bladder and sphincter. Why of why isn't there a mechanism to hold in your period?
Eyelashes, designed to keep things out of your eyes but they just fall in anyway.
Right now my skin is itchy for no g*****n reason. I think that's a pretty big flaw.
Get a tiger to lick you there. Yes, there’s no skin left, but it’s stopped itching now!
Over-storing fat.
I mean, I get hanging onto 20 pounds of the stuff just in case you need to tap into that energy - but at 50, 100, 300 pounds our bodies are still like “well better still stock up, you never know if we’ll find any food this upcoming year”.
That is an evolutionary adaptation meant to help get us through times when food was scarce. We were never meant to be sitting all day.
I like the example of the recurrent laryngeal nerve.
It runs from the brain to the larynx. However, to get there it goes from the brain, down the neck, into the chest, around the aorta and then back up the chest, up the neck and then connects to the larynx. That's a massive detour. It also means a blow to the chest can damage your ability to talk.
That something as important as the brain can stop functioning properly because of chemical imbalances.
The brain should be better secured in the head. Rattling the brain inside the skull can mess a person up, so if it was more secure it would be safer.
That we cannot delete or sort unwanted/not needed info and memories from our brains.
To know what is "not needed" involves a crystal ball, or time travel. Better have memories that are not used, than forget something vital.
The fact that there’s so many things you can do to the human body without k**ling it
But _oh f**k slept wrong and pinched a nerve now I’m f*****g paralyzed_
(Didn’t happen to me, but happened to a semi distant family member a year ago)
Edit: holy f**k this comment took off
Edit 2: To everybody getting paranoid in my replies, don’t worry:
He was sleeping in a crowded camper on a small couch
in a very, very awkward position
This isn’t a very common thing, but it does happen to people. So long as you sleep relatively well you shouldn’t have a problem.
Edit 3: apparently Reddit’s full of health experts who kNoW fOr a fAcT that you can’t do this. He pinched and severed something in his spinal cord from what I remember, I’m not 100% sure if it was a nerve but idk what else it would be tbh.
_Either way the point I was trying to convey was this man went from sleeping to paralyzed, so..._.
Went to visit my aunt and uncle several years ago and he told us about it happening to 1 of his nephews HR went to bed 1 night, everything was fine. When he woke up he was a paraplegic. It WAS NOT a stroke, can't remember if they ever figured out what caused it.
The size of the average baby head vs the size of the average v****a.
The v****a isn’t the issue. That bit stretches. The pelvis on the other hand…if it’s too small, it’s too small
A stroke. My aunt had one when she was 31 and the healthiest person in the world. Ran an aerobics class at the Y, just perfect perfect health. Went to Pizza Hut with her the night before, next day, massive stroke, almost died, critical surgery, twenty years later she still has trouble speaking. It sucks. There is no reason that should’ve happened. Perfectly healthy person damaged for the rest of her life. She’s still amazing and lovely and my favorite person but d**n is that annoying.
I always thought strokes mainly happened to older people but I know three people, all in their early 50s, all reasonably fit and well who had a stroke. Two of them have never regained their mobility and the other one got his mobility back but it has robbed him of his speech.
Jugular veins.
Yeah, pop those basically on the outside in the area predators attack, that will ensure and slight mishap will result in death in about 8 seconds.
Thanks evolution.
Definitely motion sickness.
Getting worse as I get older. I get seasick in large puddles. Theme parks are kinda pointless now because the rides make me sick. Le sigh
The fact the brain can not regenerate more cells, but practically everything else can. Even though the brain is the most important.
Regenerate more cells *with what memories*? We don't come with a backup disk ...
Tumors.
Organ ruptures caused by typical functions going wrong.
Many things about pregnancy.
Periods and ovarian cysts.
Also, for women, that the urethra is so short and so close to the v****a and a**s.
Not being able to hold our breath long (quick oxygen usage).
Lung volume x rate of using oxygen = survival time without breathing. But we often need a large rate of using oxygen - it's a function of our power output. Nature involves compromises.
Peeing a little bit when you sneeze or cough. Wtf, nature?
Push a few c****h goblins out and tell me your bladder control is what it used to be
We're physiologically built to have s*x with as many people as possible as soon as we hit puberty, but practically, socially, and psychologically, that's a *really* bad idea.
Again. Survival mechanism. The species will find a way to continue. A lot of these posts are survival seen through modern eyes. It doesn’t work like that
Ears being so fragile and irreparable.
That ridiculously itty bitty tube that so easily clogs up and makes the whole ear shoot craps. Also that single wussy nerve that doesn't just quietly fail but gives you tinnitus.
Too many pain receptors on feet.
Ask most diabetics what happens when feet don’t hurt. It doesn’t usually end well. This seems like a survival thing
Wisdom teeth. They were useful when we used to have bigger jaws, but now they often cause pain and infection.
My lower wisdom teeth came through with problems. They were brittle, sensitive and not fully formed. I pulled them out when drunk and it bloody hurt briefly, but now, no problems. I have been to the dentist since and all is ok, but she did give me a wierd look. I do not recommend doing this.
The genitals arent protected by any bones and are utterly fragile.
Our lumbar and a*s aren't really that great at holding us up and this is why everyone has back problems regardless of whether they spend their lives working out, sitting in a chair, or in between. Evolutionarily, we should have spent more time in trees waiting for our muscles and such to develop more to support the greater half of our bodies being held upright without destroying the system that's meant to do exactly that.
The muscles developed *after* we came down from the trees. Evolution is mainly reactive, and rarely pro-active.
Digestive system, regenerative system, immune system. isn't it funny how human body can be fully created in 9 month but a broken ankle will take several years and never fully recover?
It's easier to assemble those things on the factory floor rather than your garage, so to speak. i.e. A developing foetus has its mothers biology supporting it, not to mention the undifferentiated cells that become every cell in the body don't habitually revert to their earlier state which would facilitate rebuilding on that scale. Also, matters of scale.
Whatever design flaw has made me addicted to oxytocin (the neurotransmitter not a misspelling of the opiate).
dopamine is worse, get a kick at anytime in your relationship/ on substance etc. and your hormonsystem/reptil brain clings to this ,even if your logical brain teach you daily how bad it will mess up your health. Even rats will starve to get a further kick of dopamine
The brain hardware has some compatibility issues with the software. I.e. patch random b****s, agression instinct, need for attention, staring at b***s and affection for shiny stuff then we can talk.
All of this is to say that, if we’re “designed” by a being(s), they sure as shït are not intelligent. Because no truly intelligent being would come up with a design such as ours; if we can see all the flaws, surely a being more intelligent than us could have done a better job. It is clear that what evolution gave us is “good enough” to have survived this long, full stop.
This. There’s nothing “intelligent” about the design of the human body. It’s developed from an accumulation of random adjustments that didn’t k**l us before we could reproduce, and that sometimes helped us survive.
Load More Replies...Humans aren't the hardiest animals out there, but at least we have big brains that can figure out solutions to many of these things. I don't think we were meant to live much past childbearing/raising age so our parts wearing out or malfunctioning is just natural. Doesn't make it suck any less, though!
That our eyes have separate immune systems to the rest of our bodies. Essentially, if your body's immune system detects your eyes, it'll identify them as threats, then attack them, potentially causing you to go blind. And it can happen randomly. I think this is due to autoimmune diseases, though. Edit: Clicked on the wrong comment section. That's why there's a deleted comment on #48.
Your eyes don’t have separate immune systems. Eyes are an immune privileged site, meaning under usual circumstances, your immune cells don’t surveil there. Injury, infection, etc to the eye prompts immune cell migration to the area, and if you happen to have B/T cells with receptors that recognize eye antigens, there is the potential for autoimmunity to occur. However this is extremely rare, it needs to be a perfect storm of other factors as well, so please don’t everyone think an eye infection = autoimmune disease = blindness.
Load More Replies...How easily our brains can be misled/tricked. Ever try the 'what does p-o-p spell, what does t-o-p spell, what do you do at a green light?' trick on someone? (same with h-o-s-t, p-o-s-t, what do you put in a toaster?). Also, the brain 'should' be able to come up with better solutions to life than the whole depression/anxiety mess!
So, the tadpole has no limbs, and lives in the puddle. The development of the frog depends on the external temperature and available food. The energy intake and ambient tempeature is relayed by the thyroid gland. Frogs have four nimble legs. Therefore, thyroid hormones have an important role in the development of the central nervous system for a frog. Makes complete sense. A few hunder millions year later, mammals are born with all the limbs they'll ever have. Still, thyroid hormones play an important role in the development of the central nervous system. Now newborns are screened to check their thyroid status, as the lack of these hormones will lead to irreparable damages.
I mentioned this to someone recently, the fact that when we are lied to by a.busers, and believe things about ourselves and our lives that we later learn aren't true, it takes seemingly endless, intense brain work to stop believing something that we KNOW isn't true, and never was. I can learn something one time and know it forever (all my usual forgetfulness aside), but to unlearn something, especially a lie about our own existence and our own brains, is so d@mn difficult. I hope in generations to come there is significant improvement in people being held accountable for psychological and emotional a.buse, especially parents.
So? It didn’t say it was a list of features that SOLELY AND ONLY exist in humans. It’s just an article about the human body. Yes, some other creatures will share some of our features. That doesn’t mean we can’t include those features when talking about the human body. That’s like me saying “one feature about airplanes is that they can fly” and you trying to tell me “no, birds can fly too so flying is not an airplane feature.” Like, yes it is 😂
Load More Replies...Then I offer you an example that is utterly bad for any mammal: the big role of thyroid hormones in the development of the central nervous system. It made sense for the tadpole/frog, now just a remnant that can cause huge problems.
Load More Replies...All of this is to say that, if we’re “designed” by a being(s), they sure as shït are not intelligent. Because no truly intelligent being would come up with a design such as ours; if we can see all the flaws, surely a being more intelligent than us could have done a better job. It is clear that what evolution gave us is “good enough” to have survived this long, full stop.
This. There’s nothing “intelligent” about the design of the human body. It’s developed from an accumulation of random adjustments that didn’t k**l us before we could reproduce, and that sometimes helped us survive.
Load More Replies...Humans aren't the hardiest animals out there, but at least we have big brains that can figure out solutions to many of these things. I don't think we were meant to live much past childbearing/raising age so our parts wearing out or malfunctioning is just natural. Doesn't make it suck any less, though!
That our eyes have separate immune systems to the rest of our bodies. Essentially, if your body's immune system detects your eyes, it'll identify them as threats, then attack them, potentially causing you to go blind. And it can happen randomly. I think this is due to autoimmune diseases, though. Edit: Clicked on the wrong comment section. That's why there's a deleted comment on #48.
Your eyes don’t have separate immune systems. Eyes are an immune privileged site, meaning under usual circumstances, your immune cells don’t surveil there. Injury, infection, etc to the eye prompts immune cell migration to the area, and if you happen to have B/T cells with receptors that recognize eye antigens, there is the potential for autoimmunity to occur. However this is extremely rare, it needs to be a perfect storm of other factors as well, so please don’t everyone think an eye infection = autoimmune disease = blindness.
Load More Replies...How easily our brains can be misled/tricked. Ever try the 'what does p-o-p spell, what does t-o-p spell, what do you do at a green light?' trick on someone? (same with h-o-s-t, p-o-s-t, what do you put in a toaster?). Also, the brain 'should' be able to come up with better solutions to life than the whole depression/anxiety mess!
So, the tadpole has no limbs, and lives in the puddle. The development of the frog depends on the external temperature and available food. The energy intake and ambient tempeature is relayed by the thyroid gland. Frogs have four nimble legs. Therefore, thyroid hormones have an important role in the development of the central nervous system for a frog. Makes complete sense. A few hunder millions year later, mammals are born with all the limbs they'll ever have. Still, thyroid hormones play an important role in the development of the central nervous system. Now newborns are screened to check their thyroid status, as the lack of these hormones will lead to irreparable damages.
I mentioned this to someone recently, the fact that when we are lied to by a.busers, and believe things about ourselves and our lives that we later learn aren't true, it takes seemingly endless, intense brain work to stop believing something that we KNOW isn't true, and never was. I can learn something one time and know it forever (all my usual forgetfulness aside), but to unlearn something, especially a lie about our own existence and our own brains, is so d@mn difficult. I hope in generations to come there is significant improvement in people being held accountable for psychological and emotional a.buse, especially parents.
So? It didn’t say it was a list of features that SOLELY AND ONLY exist in humans. It’s just an article about the human body. Yes, some other creatures will share some of our features. That doesn’t mean we can’t include those features when talking about the human body. That’s like me saying “one feature about airplanes is that they can fly” and you trying to tell me “no, birds can fly too so flying is not an airplane feature.” Like, yes it is 😂
Load More Replies...Then I offer you an example that is utterly bad for any mammal: the big role of thyroid hormones in the development of the central nervous system. It made sense for the tadpole/frog, now just a remnant that can cause huge problems.
Load More Replies...
