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“We Don’t Actually Know”: 35 Medical Mysteries That Doctors Can’t Explain
Article created by: Ilona Baliūnaitė
It's wild to think that we've grown organs in labs, built robots that can perform surgery, and started producing mind-controlled prosthetics, but we still don't know exactly how anesthesia works, or what's actually going on when a baby has colic.
For all the incredible progress made in modern science, it seems the human body continues to hold some stubborn secrets. Beneath our skin lies one of the most complex and mysterious systems in the universe, and experts are struggling to piece together how and why it all functions the way it does.
Someone recently asked doctors, "What’s a mystery about the human body that science still hasn’t fully explained?" and the answers came pouring in faster than you can say, "I really don't know." It wasn't only medical experts giving their two cents, but also ordinary people who've been met with blank stares after asking a doctor about something seemingly simple.
Bored Panda has put together a list of the best answers for you to scroll through while you wonder why you get goosebumps, talk in your sleep, or why yawning is contagious. May they serve as reminders that no matter how far we've come, we still have a long way to go.
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#1
Whether or not women are sentient and experience pain. I mean, I feel like I know, but a lot of doctors don't seem to.
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#2
I was in hospital once and about to be put under sedation - I casually asked how Anesthesia works to which the anesthetist replied "We don't actually know".
When I got home I did some research - we don't know how anesthesia actually works, we just know that it does.
#5
The immune system is just its own insane thing. My son is recovering from Guillain-Barré syndrome and what I have learnt is that the immune system just does random stuff sometimes and we don't know why and have to hope it calms down before it destroys something important. So unsettling honestly.
#6
Autoimmune anything. I used to think it was pretty straightforward then I was diagnosed with a disorder. Everything is so hit and miss and open to interpretation, even bloodwork. I went from seropositive to seronegative at one point, how??? Do antibodies, rheumatoid factor, and ana just disappear? Or fluctuate? Depends on the rheumotologist you ask.
Symptoms all overlap for so many similar things and the treatments all work differently for different people until sometimes they randomly don't or do for awhile then quit. Maybe you have Lupus maybe you have Arthritis? Can't be sure so take this malaria medicine about it and let me know if you get mouth sores, your liver swells up, or it does nothing for no reason. Could be the meds, could be a flair.
Either way it's going to affect parts of your body you never knew interacted. How is your relationship with gluten and dairy because it's about to get weird. Which came first, the depression or the inflamation? No idea, but here's another four pills about it. You're hypermobile ever heard of Elors Danlos or pots? Similar but different but who knows... why did you come in again?
Fatigue 😩.
#7
How the brain deals with damage. We can’t give recovery times, or predict outcomes as we just don’t know. The brain is remarkably resilient and fragile all at the same time.
#9
ALS.
It's a horrible disease with no cure, no real treatment, no known cause, and 100% death rate. Diagnosis is often only through a lengthy process of elimination. Typical life expectancy after diagnosis is 2-5 years. It causes slow, progressive degeneration and loss of muscle function leading to paralysis. Probably something autoimmune related which is its own can of worms.
It has at least 3 common names for the same thing:
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
Lou Gherig's Disease
Motor Neuron Disease (MND).
#11
There is still no single concrete scientific model for what consciousness is.
We know that the brain is a network of neurons that send electrical signals to each other, something like a complex computer. We can observe the functioning of the hardware through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. We can even identify which parts of the brain are active when we feel happiness, sadness, or recognize a face.
But we have no idea how this electrical and chemical activity results in the creation of the subjective, first-person perception of seeing the color red, feeling heat, or possessing a sense of self. This is what philosophers call the hard problem of consciousness.
We are becoming extremely good at imitating the functions of the brain with artificial intelligence, but we haven't even begun to try to imitate the experience itself. It is the greatest mystery that exists.
#12
The microbiota, dysfunctions in which likely explain at least a few functional disorders that we don’t understand e.g. IBS.
People with IBS have symptoms but otherwise will have completely normal gastrointestinal investigations, ie there is no structural problem that can be conventionally identified.
Increasingly it’s thought that IBS may be a disease of disordered microbiota which in itself isn’t well understood. The microbiota even more mysteriously seems to have some connection to the brain and mind itself which may be why IBS is often comorbid with psychiatric problems like anxiety and depression.
#13
Exactly why we need sleep and how it works. We have a general sense, but can’t explain it beyond the brain needs it.
#14
Not a doctor, but recently went through cancer treatment. One of the medications I was on is designed to stimulate white blood cell production, but a nasty side effect is that it can cause your bones to hurt.
Antihistamines work REALLY well to stop the pain, and no one knows why.
#15
I'm not a doctor, but I'd really like to know what dreams are and why we have them. What's the point of them?! It's completely fascinating and I'm nowhere near smart enough to understand most of the human body, but I'd still love to know why I have my own cinema hall in my brain but only when I'm asleep.
And also w*f that house I keep dreaming of is. I've never lived in it. None of my friends have ever lived in it. I do not recognize it at all.
#17
Colic. The bane of my pediatric specialty.
Oh your kid screams uncontrollably for hours on end? Welp just don’t shake your baby. Good luck!
#18
When I was choosing major back in my college days, I had many discussions with professors that essentially reduced to:
- a doctor never truly understand how to fix a patient's problem (or even why a medicine works), but
- an engineer can truly expect to resolve a machine's root problem, because there is always a logic to how things work (or not work).
So I chose engineering and stayed in it for 40 years. No regret.
#19
Most things related to pregancy. Also pathologies like eclampsia is not wekk understood. Babies are also pretty wild. .
#20
HOW DO WE KNOW SOMEONE IS STARING AT US? No wires, no noises, just a psychic feeling. We even get the direction right most of the time.
#21
Not 100% sure what kickstarts labour. We know how it proceeds, but the trigger is not 100% confirmed/known. A popular theory is the excretions from the lungs of the infant signalling the placenta to get the ball rolling.
#22
It gets really fun when you take two "we don't really know" areas, like women's health and ADHD, smash them together and take it to your doctor for questions. So much fun, that. .
#23
Endometriosis. It’s severely underresearched with no real known cause for why the body will do that. Severely painful to live with and affects more than just “bad periods”. Mine would trigger my sciatic nerve I believe and would cause major weakness in my legs to the point I began using a cane on a daily basis before I had a hysterectomy.
#25
Not a doctor, but I haven't been able to get an answer for why we yawn or why it can be 'contagious'.
#27
The mechanism of the photic sneeze reflex - why some people sneeze when they go out in bright light.
#29
Epilepsy/Seizures.
Most people don’t realize this, but in around 60–70% of epilepsy cases, doctors can’t find a clear cause. It’s not that the cause doesn’t exis.
it’s just that our current tests can’t detect it yet. Epilepsy can come from tons of different things (genetics, brain injury, infections), but for most patients, it ends up being labeled as “unknown cause” or “idiopathic. Or in my case STRESS. W*f
Science still has a lot to figure out about what’s going on under the surface.
#30
Most of it isn’t fully explained. Most of it is partially explained. A lot of engineering-types of people come into the hospital expecting the body to be explained- if there’s a problem you simply need to find the bug and fix it let me see the data I can do it myself - and then they get wildly disappointed when symptoms and lab values and imaging don’t correlate one to one, that medications have side effects that sometimes are worse than the problem they are meant to solve, and that replacement of one organ doesn’t fix the rest of the organs that are failing, even if the damage was all related to the first organ. The idea that humans and their body parts have a life span is both innate understood and yet impossible for many people to comprehend. Anyway- there’s more that we don’t know than that we know about how it all works. That’s why science funding and high quality research are important to fund.
#31
Last time I checked, the question of why we cry tears hasn't been fully answered.
Also, the effect of lithium as a mood stabilizer.
#34
Frozen shoulder! We know who it tends to affect (mainly middle aged people, diabetics), but the why isn'tfully understood.
#35
Why are men?
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