“We Don’t Actually Know”: 44 Medical Mysteries That Doctors Can’t Explain
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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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.
Have you ever wondered why we have fingerprints? Well, so have some scientists...
Initially, it was thought that the swirly patterns helped us to grip things. But it turns out that might not be the case. "Fingerprints actually allow less of our skin to come into contact with objects than perfectly smooth fingertips would," reports thehealthy.com.
According to the site, some theories about the evolutionary purposes of fingerprints include that they protect our fingers or provide touch sensitivity. But at the end of the day, scientists really don't know.
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.
I asked the doctor whether he always does a gastroscopy under full narcosis. He replied "No, you were conscious the whole time, and even fairly coherent. But the stuff we use does tend to wipe out the memory of it."
Versed is what you were given. It's used when they want you to be able to follow commands but not remember what happened to you. Creepy right?
Load More Replies...I had surgery for the first time a few months ago. I was awake one minute, closed my eyes, and woke up the next minute. Except it was three hours later. Wild.
when i was a kid i was put under as i kept having nose bleeds they needed to check why i remember going into the room and thats it next minute i am in a bed
Load More Replies...I had surgery on Monday and am still recovering. For the life of me, I can't remember a thing between being in the OR and getting home later that day. It's a good thing they provide a printout of post-surgical instructions or I'd have no idea.
I had to get picked up by a "responsible adult" after same-day surgery and be under her supervision for 24 hours. She was cautioned not to let me make any important decisions like buying a car. Thing is, I was totally lucid right after I woke up, and I remember everything.
Load More Replies...Not really true. Like most older drûgs our understanding oh how the body works was very sparce when thy were first found to have an effect. Over time our understanding of physiology has of course increased massively, but in nearly all cases there's only a certain depth we can drill down to, so cellular level is now largely understood, even molecular level in some cases, but there's always going to be more to find out.
I believe the interaction of everything is still very puzzling
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How some people dont have an inner monologue.
Some people argue with themselves, specially oldpeople. Said that,I am 43 and sometimes argue with myself, specially when I do something dumb.
Load More Replies...And others don't see pictures in their mind when thinking of things. I don't think these people are weird at all, since I never knew I was having an inner monologue and visualizing things, until I found out about those people who don't. I'm sure those people are perfectly content
True! I can't/don't visualize and that's just how it is. I am creative though
Load More Replies...I'm not sure why, but this legitimately creeps me out. I not only have an inner monologue, but also inner conversations and full-blown movies with special effects and surround sound.
Yes this. I watch movies while working all the time but they are just playing in my head.
Load More Replies...I'm a little envious you all only have one inner voice to deal with. I got a Greek chorus.
My inner monologue is the only friend I have to talk to!
Took over 50 years for me to realise I have anaurelia and aphantasia. You don't miss what you've naver had.
I can't imagine my life without it. That, and not being able to "see" things in my mind that some describes to me or I read about. If someone says "red book" I see in my mind a picture of a red book. Describe a landscape and I can see everything from the waterfalls to the mountains, flowers and hills. Not seeing that would drive me crazy
I have many voices in my head most of the time they don't talk all at once
Load More Replies...Another "shower thought" you might have had is why some people are left-handed while others are right-handed, or why we even need to have one dominant hand.
Only about 10% of people are left-handed, and the vast majority are right-handed. Should we not have evolved enough by now for us to use both hands equally?
🎶 We never really studied the female body. 🎶.
Did you know scientists were given a grant to study endometriosis and instead of doing research on how to help those who suffer from it, they studied the attractiveness of people with it? And people with endometriosis were judged to be more attractive and have larger breasts? The article is now redacted at the request of the authors, who said this: "We conducted the study in good faith and according to correct methodology. We believe that our findings have been partly misinterpreted, but at the same time realize that the article may have caused distress to some people. Women's respect is a priority for us and we are extremely sorry for the discontent the publication originated." I will link the article below, BP hides links now.
My favorite is when d**g studies exclude women because hormonal cycles might have an effect on the results. As if that isn't information we might need in real life....
Given that women's hormone levels fluctuate for pretty much the whole of their life, that would cause a lot of extra work and, why would we want to spend that extra time and money on 51% of the population? /s
Load More Replies...It's only until a few years ago that feminine hygiene products were tested for their absorption levels with saline. No one thought to actually use blood.
On that note... it seems that according to maxi pad commercials, Women are full of windshield washer fluid.
Load More Replies...Hi been working in pharmacy for over 20 years. This is not true. Every trial I've ever seen outside of viagra trials women and notes the differences.
Load More Replies...I've done some research and understand some things. It's the female mind that I want to understand.
Muh ha ha ha! He tips up the table, gets out the straps, turns on the electricity.....
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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.
Our pediatrician described allergies as our immune system having a panic attack. I found that to be rather funny.
Actually makes it seem a bit more tolerable to think about it this way.
Load More Replies...Yep. When I was about 60 my immune system suddenly decided to attack the pigment on the inside of my arms (vitiligo). It stayed the same for several years, but has recently started to spread to my neck and legs.
Vitiligo is kinda wild. Some are born with it, some develop it, and all races. Cats and dogs can get it, as well.
Load More Replies...My immune system is currently attacking my lacrimal and salivary systems, my skin, my hair follicles, and my capillaries.
I have Fibromyalgia and in the past they said there is no genetic link, it's just caused by physical or mental trauma. No explanation why two people could go through the same thing and only one get it. They did think it was more likely in females though. Now there seems to be a general consensus there is a genetic link, which predisposes people and then they just have to see whether it's triggered. Considering my mum, sister and I, and likely my grandma, all have it I would definitely agree to that. It's a bit like my Coeliac's (another autoimmune condition) disease. When my brother was diagnosed with it, I had a genetic test done that showed one faulty gene out of two. That meant that while I didn't have it at the time, there was a chance I could get it at any time. I developed it about 10 years later, I think the trigger was either being mostly gluten free while living with my brother, then going back to eating more gluten, but who knows.
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.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe. Possibly the whole universe. If it was simple enough for us to understand it, we wouldn't be able to understand it!
Or get so used to it that it becomes "normal". By brain is so good at blocking out pain that I barely notice it at all. I only notice acute changes in pain level. If I break a bone, it'll hurt like hell, but if I leave it alone, my brain will just recalibrate that to zero, and I go on. It's not at all a good thing sometimes. It works in reverse, too. Only when I recover do I realize the extent of my pain.
Load More Replies...One thing that is known is that it's better to have brain that feels more like firm gelatin than like soft cottage cheese.
I got an eye infection that caused me to get terrible tinnitus and eustachian tube disfunction. I've been dizzy and feel like absolute shite daily because the virus must have traveled up my ocular nerve and damage a part of my brain. I live in agony. I call bs on the brain being resilient.
"Some of the theories think it's because of the way our brains are wired," says American evolutionary psychologist and behavioral geneticist, Dr. Nancy Segal, adding that "Handedness does seem to have a genetic component that is inherited but there's no simple pathway from parent to child we're able to figure out."
Segal told CBS News that "lefties" often have a more dominant right side of their brain, while righties have a more dominant left side of their brain.
"Why is still a mystery," reports the outlet.
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 😩.
Then you throw in some nice mid life hormonal changes and everything that you learnt or did to manage your conditions changes.
I’ve been on the Lupus merry go round for over 40 years now. It’s almost impossible to cope at times.
*Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Take a guess why I know how to spell it... 🙃
Although I know I am immuncompromised, and it takes me months or years to heal from injuries (Permanant damage from Long COVID and lots of fibrosis). I never considered autoimmune disorders, until my new Dr. mentioned it during our first meeting last week. I was going over all my health conditions, the ones I get treated for and the ones I just deal with. Now I gotta learn about a whole class of diseases that are mostly guessing.
How placebo meds have actually made a big difference in disease treatment.
I basically had the insides of my mouth cut open to extract a tooth that was deep inside. The night after that happened, I took an antacid instead of a painkiller but the placebo effect allowed me to sleep well
A couple of wonderful things about the placebo effect is that it can help without harming, and it can still work for some people when they know they are being given a placebo. If it is an inconvenient illness, I'll ask the doctor to prescribe me a placebo, and explain why. If it's serious, I want proper treatment. :o)
Placebo knee surgery has a 60% success rate. There's an excellent National Geographic article from a few years back on the topic.
In the same that the Nocebo effect can give people "reactions" to vaccines.
Your mental health has a significant impact on how efficiently the body works, and a placebo treatment is an extension of that.
Placebos don't work on me, in fact even functional medicine rarely seems to work on me too. I have to see medical numbers change before I will even believe that meds will work, because painkillers just make me sleepy and annoyed, antihistamines give me distonia, medical fish oil did nothing (but Crestor worked), and even my semiglutide hasn't made me "loose weight" because I am a real diabetic 2 and just use it to get my numbers into the green.
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).
my Auntie died of MND its horrible seeing how she changed her and my mum are identical twins but before she died she look like she was about 10 years older its a very cruel disease
Maladie de Charcot in French. A BIL of mine died of it before he was 55. When he became too disabled by it, he chose terminal sedation.
So glad self euthanasia is legal in Colorado, because if I was diagnosed with ALS, I would check out.
My grandfather died of this when I was, like 5. It was terribly sad and hard to watch.
Eating falce morel seems to be one way. So never eat that, or any strange mushrooms!
Then there's the issue of dreaming... Why do we do it? What's the point?
“Humans spend nearly a third of their lives asleep, yet science has still very little understanding of how and why we dream,” reveals Health and Wellness expert, Caleb Backe.
According to thehealthy.com, dreaming occurs during REM sleep, and our heart rates increase when we dream. As with other mysteries, scientists are divided about what purpose dreaming actually serves.
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.
A neurosurgeon discovered the switch. While operating, he inadvertently disconnected the claustrum (a netlike organ that connects most areas of the brain). His patient, who had been awake and responsive, shut off like a machine. When he reconnected the claustrum, she resumed responding and had no memory of being shut off like C3PO.
Basically we humans are born with no ability or skill. We have to learn even to walk or use a bathroom. And consciene is basically languaje. "And your languaje is your world".
Yes, talking to yourself and talking to others, communicating. Consciousness is communication and community, we need it in order to survive. Otherwise we would live and die without even knowing. Knowledge of ourselves and the world we live in. However I also believe that every living thing on the Earth has a conscious- ness some more aware than others and communicating in their own unique ways. It is even posited that AI could even develop consciousness through language!
Load More Replies...There is no scientific nor philosophical conclusion on what consciousness is, or indeed what it isn't. Again, it's too complex for us to understand.
How acetaminophen works. For the record, I'm not in any way talking about autism here.
Why would Autism have anything to do with painkillers? No respected medical studies have proven anything causes people to become autistic outside of genetic predisposition.
RFK Jr was just grasping at straws. After decades of study by legitimate clinicians, all of a sudden RFK has the answer, no medical knowledge needed. Baloney! What is scary is that so many people will believe him.
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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.
Information processing, long-term data storage, RAM cache clearing, trash emptying.
It’s something like jpg or mp4 compression of all “video” and stripping sound from images and storing them in the areas that deal with those parts. When you remember it all gets decompressed and stitched together again. And since brains like to mostly merge very similar memories as one item to strengthen the “recall” all your memories will be a little different from what actually happened. And every time that slightly different memory is stored again over the old one. That’s why witness statements are so fragile and can accidentally (or purposefully) be manipulated if the interviewer doesn’t choose their was very carefully.
Load More Replies...'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.' - same here! I have dreams about a place that I have never been, in very rich detail. It has a stable, a river, a lake, and rooms filled with costumes as well as a stage and an industrial type kitchen. Has anyone else ever been there? :-) PS: No particular reason why there would be a stage - I'm not an actor or anything¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The houses I dream of often have huge, elaborate bathrooms, spa style. One had an enormous aquarium with dolphins, wrapped in a winding staircase.
Load More Replies...fun fact your brain is incapable of making up faces so anyone you see in a dream is someone you have seen in real life
Nah. When I was about 15, my brain made up à face of à handsome blond young man. I kept that face in my memory for years, until I saw it for real... on my grown-up eldest son.
Load More Replies...In my dreams, I'm always in a house that I've never owned and it's usually an older house that always has some structural problem, abandoned buildings or streets that are fully normal looking but I'm the only one there, on the top floor of an office high-rise fully powered up but it's just me, etc. Oh, and always a canal or river next to them or through the landscape.
Fun fact, dreams are generated by the half of the brain that doesn’t do reading. That’s why anything with text on it will be in random combinations of letters and will most of the time trigger you waking up as soon as you try to decipher it as more of your brain goes online in the attempt to make something of it.
Whilst I’m sure you’re correct, I know people say you shouldn’t be able to but I can confirm I often see clear words and although rarely, full written sentences in my dreams, also times on a clock and not woken/not always immediately realised I was asleep. I wonder if any others here have? I know if you see clocks you’re supposed to be able to use it to start lucid dreaming. I do lucid dream but I can’t control when it will happen.
Load More Replies...I myself like to escape into dreams when my reality causes so much anxiety. If you couldn't sleep and dream, you would hallucinate in order to make up for the deficiency, your brain trying to make sense of the glut of information and trash eliminating.
Some people play storytime or make up plays as kids so grow up being creative enough to imagine stories visually. Playwrights, film directors, choreographers, stage directors, probably a lot of others that think out action and dialogue in their mind.
"A popular theory suggests that dreaming is how your brain sorts through the memories of the day, deciding which ones are valuable and which are irrelevant," reports the site.
"Other scientists, though, believe that dreaming actually serves no real function and that it’s just what our unconscious mind does when untethered by our awake selves," it adds.
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.
Anxiety for me gives me the sh!ts, some mornings im too scared to leave the house incase I explode in my underwear
That makes sense. Serotonin is produced in the gut after all.
Load More Replies...I can testify to the part in the last paragraph about the connection between mind and body. Whenever I'm stressed it affects my digestive system (I won't go into details).
I know the feeling. When I get upset, stressed or anxious it goes straight to my stomach. Used to happen to my mam as well.
Load More Replies...Stress and anxiety absolutely, 100% contribute to IBS symptoms. Not only do I experience them (guaranteed to be a gut mess within 18 hours or major stress), I also work for a colorectal surgery practice and discuss these kind of things with our practitioners quite often. The microbiota dysfunction is more closely related to IBD, Crohn's Disease, Diverticulitis et al. Those are the effects in the lower half of the GI tract. The upper half (I am not so schooled in that) experiences GERD, heartburn, ulcers etc.
I had acute eczema on my fingers for several months, tried everything, consulted several medical professionals, used all the creams, hydrocortisone/steroids. I started drinking a nutrition shake every day and it was completely gone within a month
I am not surprised at all. I had bariatric surgery and cut out virtually all carbohydrates to focus on almost pure protein diet. Within 6 months, the couple of irritating but harmless warts on a couple of my fingers completely disappeared. Now, 3.5 years later, as I have re-introduced carbs over the past year, here come warty growths back. NOTHING surprises me anymore. The connection between our internal systems is amazing.
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Exactly why we need sleep and how it works. We have a general sense, but can’t explain it beyond the brain needs it.
Because you have to turn if off, then back on again, just like a computer.
We sleep because we feel sleepy. Why do we feel sleepy? Because our brains need a few hours of sleep daily. Exactly why, who knows.
Circadian rhythm just controls what time of day you feel sleepy (as well as lots of other things). It is not the reason we sleep though.
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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.
White blood cells are produced in the bone marrow so that explains why your bones hurt. Antihistamines block histamine receptors. Histamine receptors can sense pain and cause swelling so this is not a mystery. We know why.
Chronic, incurable medical conditions are the testing labs for off-label medication use.
Very true. I have terminal cancer and volunteer for trial d***s. One is now for sale/distribution. My cancer markers decreased dramatically. If I can help others, why not? I don't receive financial gain, btw.
Load More Replies...Pretty sure I had drúgs to stimulate white blood cell production, but I don't remember it causing my bones to hurt. I do remember the taste of metal in my mouth when receiving cysplatin (it contains platinum).
Cysplatin is a chemo d**g. I can’t remember off the top of my head what the medication to increase white blood cell production was, but I know I had to inject it about three days after my last chemo treatment. Also cysplatin does horrible things to your kidneys. If you’re on it, be sure and drink lots of water even if you feel nauseous
Load More Replies...It is great when medications intended for one purpose also work for another. I am on an antidepressant, which does help with my anxiety, but was also prescribed for my fibromyalgia pain and to help me sleep. The lower doses are usually used as an antidepressant, the middle doses help with sleep, and higher for pain (iirc).
Apart from the general mysteries about the human body, there are many individual medical cases that still remain unsolved. Take the girl who never aged, for example...
As Reader's Digest reports, Brooke Greenberg passed away in 2013, at the young age of 20. "But she didn’t look like your average 20-year-old because her body had stopped developing at the age of 5. Her hair and nails were the only parts of her body that continued to grow year by year," reads the site.
Migraines.
No idea if this is appropriate for you, but it helped me. (Oooh that sounded so spammy. I didn't mean it that way.) Magnesium supplements help keep my migraines at bay. It might help you.
Load More Replies...I had blinding migraines since I was 8yo and they went away for the most part after my hysterectomy at age 32. I am having a sort of menopause because they left an ovary in to avoid needing HRT. I am having blinding migraines again. For me it's hormonal. I guess I will have to get back on the pill at age 53.
Acetaminophen(paracetamol), ibuprophen, and caffeine. Doesn’t always work completely but will definitely take the edge off enough that I can cope
I used to take paracetamol, and codeine (back when it was easier to get prescriptions for codeine) which didn't really help the pain but made me sleep and usually by the time I woke up the migraine had passed.
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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!
They don't call it colic anymore. It's acid reflux and, according to our pediatrician, it's caused by an underdeveloped sphincter between the stomach and esophagus. It's not a birth defect, it's just that it's full development isn't necessary until after birth. That's why it takes a few weeks to a few months for it to stop.
Thanks for saving me from having to type that out, this BP article is full of weak and out-dated "facts".
Load More Replies...I had to do soy-based formula for one kid, then all the way down to rice based formula for the other. Most of the time, colic is a tummy issue. I know that won't help every mummy at her wits end, but hopefully it will help a few...I remember those years of fussy babies abd exhaustion, its so hard. I know this can also be hard when your goal was breast feeding. Juat remember, a fed, healthy baby is the goal. 🥰
My daughters both had to cut all dairy from their diets as their babies seem to have a milk protein allergy. Once they cut dairy out the babies were much better and stopped being so "colicky"
Load More Replies...I was a colicky baby according to my parents. I was also the youngest of five kids so my parents had pretty much dealt with all kinds of kid issues by then.
It took months of no sleep and cluster feeding for my friend to finally be told to give her first baby gripe water for her colic. As soon as she tried that she fed and slept really well.
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.
This is why I loved math when I was in school but didn't care for science. With math you can know when you have the correct answer, but science is not that concrete.
As a math teacher, I used to tell the theology teachers that we both dealt with absolute truths - but we had proofs for ours.
Load More Replies...The thing about engineering is the object either works or it doesn't. Biological matter is so intertwined with so many causes and effects affecting everything else, it's like untangling a tangled ball of yarn.
It's a phenomenon that doctors just could not explain, no matter how hard they tried.
"Numerous DNA studies showed no abnormalities in her genes associated with aging, nor did her parents have a history of abnormal development. Plus, all her sisters were normal and healthy," Reader's Digest notes, adding that scientists refer to her condition as Syndrome X, a metabolic syndrome.
"Yet her unusual condition remains unexplained by science," the site concludes.
Most things related to pregancy. Also pathologies like eclampsia is not wekk understood. Babies are also pretty wild. .
wekk = well - the letter "k" is next to the letter "l", therefore, simple typo!
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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. .
ADHD gives me an amazing super power I can be looking at someone while they are talking to me and not hear a thing they say
And at the same time solve half a dozen problems that don't affect me, reflect on the decor, plan what I'm going to have to dinner, then have some kind of socially appropriate reaction to what the person said.
Load More Replies...I've just started methylphenidate for ADHD, as the psychatrist put it "we don't know how it works, but it works".
But it doesn’t always work for all people. One daughter could think her way from point A to point B without side trips through the rest of the alphabet. For the other daughter, it caused more problems than it fixed. Everybody is different
Load More Replies...It took me until the age of 47 to be diagnosed. It was thanks to menopause that it was identified as the hormonal fluctuations ramped up my ADHD symptoms.
I think that was the trigger for my mum's symptoms getting worse, though she wasn't diagnosed until she was 60. She was sitting in on my sister who was doing the test and was answering yes to all the questions too.
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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.
As I mentioned in a comment earlier: Researchers were given a grant to study endometriosis! And they used it to to study the attractiveness of people with it!
Quite frankly, they should have been required to pay back the grant money. It should then have been given to a group who were actually going to try to make women's lives easier.
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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.
a sense left over from when we were less evolved to detect predators maybe
This one is actually just about us falsely believing that we can feel it and confirmation bias. If you get a feeling that someone's staring at you and you look, but no one's there, then you forget about it. But if there is someone looking at you, you remember that you had that feeling, and get convinced that you felt them looking.
Quantum physics - things change their nature when they're observed? Feel free to correct me.
Actually humans also have some measure of bat sense too, echo location. And some have magnetic locational sense too.
Load More Replies...Personal opinion, we detect the cessation of breathing noise. But you're right, we don't know.
Not everybody can do this try sometime. Stare at the back of someone's head and see if they turn. I, however have this ability myself.
I've read that it's because we have a wider field of vision that we're consciously aware of, so our brain signals that something's going on outside where we're looking.
Aura. The field has been penetrated. It has been proven in scientific studies of ESP.
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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.
Once you get to term, a nice bumpy car ride triggers labour nicely. Works for pets too.
My suggestion to expectant mothers is to write a big long list of all the wonderful things you'd like to do before the baby arrives, and start doing them. The baby's sure to come along and disrupt the plans. :o)
I never thought of it as disruption, just a change of plans. Both of my children were very much wanted and planned, so I was very happy to give birth.
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Not a doctor, but I haven't been able to get an answer for why we yawn or why it can be 'contagious'.
I was always told that it was to increase oxygen/decrease carbon dioxide... Not saying that is the truth, but how it was always explained away
*We yawn for several reasons, most notably to cool down the brain and to help transition between states of alertness like from sleep to wakefulness. While it is often associated with being tired or bored, these are seen more as triggers than the primary function. Contagious yawning is linked to empathy and social communication, suggesting an ancient form of communication to sync a group's alertness *
It even happens between humans, dogs, and horses. Or maybe with the horses it was because both of us were tired after a competition, LOL.
I yawned when I saw this picture. And then I yawned again thinking about when I yawned before.
Ur yawning because you are tired. The brain tells the lungs it needs more oxygen so you take a super deep breath when you yawn.
Why carbon decided one day it has stuff to do.
C H O N, four of the commonest elements in the universe. Four of the commonest elements in the human being.
This! And the fact that carbon has essentially 6 electrons to share with other elements makes it wildly able to form complex chemicals like proteins.
Load More Replies...Perhaps because nitrogen was out at a party and oxygen hasn't done the dishes? W*f
Massage therapist here, and I have one. You know when you have those places that hurt when pressed into? If you press into them and hold pressure, they go away sometimes and sometimes they don't. We don't know why. We don't even really know what those areas of pain (when you press on them) really are.
So what is it when you're just sitting and it feels like someone just pushed a needle into a random place on your body?
Nerve signal glitch.. i get them a lot. Can also feel like a bug bite, but its your nerves.
Load More Replies...Is this anything like the flow of Chi energy around the body, & how to interrupt it using pressure points in some martial arts?
No one knows what causes essential tremors.
Why are they called "essential" tremors? I'm sure that everyone who has them would prefer not to. Same for "essential hypertension". And, along with these questions, what is an "occasional table" the rest of the time?
"Why is it called “essential”? This means it exists alone, without a related illness or injury."
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The mechanism of the photic sneeze reflex - why some people sneeze when they go out in bright light.
Prosit edit: found this explenation on YT 𝗁𝗍𝗍𝗉𝗌://𝗐𝗐𝗐.𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗍𝗎𝖻𝖾.𝖼𝗈𝗆/𝗌𝗁𝗈𝗋𝗍𝗌/𝟫𝗅𝟦𝗀𝗈𝗃𝖹𝖢𝖡𝟤𝖨
A hypothesis is that it has something to do with the trigeminal nerve which is also known as the information highway nerve as it collects a lot of information from the face area
I find it really interesting that I and two of my brothers get it, but our other two siblings don't.
If my sneeze just won't be released, one look into a bright light will do it.
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.
My dad is like that. He was an engineer who fixes things, and sees the doctor as a body engineer. Unfortunately there's no fix for Alzheimer's.
Fibromyalgia.
I have fibromyalgia and I am constantly in pain. The pain gets worse when it gets cold and every simple common pain becomes a thousand times worse. I'm bed now and my whole body hurts. I feel pain every day, all the time.
26 years now I've had fibro, and there's not much more information about it now than there was then. The only hint I could offer researchers is that cannabis edibles reduce the pain, but opioids do not. (However, edibles won't help unless you chance to have the stomach enzyme required to make the THC and CBD bioavailable.)
My sister swears by edibles for her pain. I can't handle cannabis at all, gives me similar symptoms to eating gluten.
Load More Replies...I know someone with this and had it for about 20 years, not a single doctor believed it actually existed and said it was all in their head until around 2 years ago.
I was diagnosed in 2009 (probably had it since 1997 but I was a kid and doctors thought I was making up symptoms or there was no connection) and at that time I was told that it had only been 5-10 years since doctors in America began to agree it wasn't purely a mental condition, but where we were in Australia, doctors had only begun believing this 5 years earlier at a maximum (there were still lots that weren't on board). I was really lucky to be referred to a rheumatologist who had started a specific fibromyalgia clinic. She has always been great, keeping updated with new information and running her own studies (there was one my mum was part of but I was too young or ineligible for some other reason).
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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.
Gabapentin a d**g commonly given for Epilepsy/Seizures. It's mechanism of action in any medical text is "unknown" but it's life changing for some people.
Epilepsy is a serious illness that can k**l when that person has an episode. And now I am remembering when the Pokemon cartoons caused epilepsy to a lot of people due to a light patron. It was a mistake that nobody see it coming.
Nowadays even the news bulletins (UK) say 'warning, there are flashing images in this next section'.
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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.
Lithium (despite side effects etc) is still the gold standard for long term maintenance of bipolar.
Load More Replies...There are many things that can bring tears to your eyes. But why strong emotions bring tears is a mystery.
Why identical twins, where the embryo splits at the beginning of pregnancy, occurs.
There is supposedly no genetic cause, but it happened twice to my great grandmother.
How we lose accommodation ( our ability to read small print). We have a lot of theories but no concrete explanation as to why. The lens continues to grow throughout our life but it becomes more biconvex which should add plus power to the eye but it doesn't. The ciliary muscle remains functional well into the 90th decade. The lens zonules remain attached and functional throughout life. We think it's a change of all the above. But, no smoking gun. This is why you can ask 10 different eye doctors why we lose our ability to read small print and each have a different reason why.
90th decade... we're living to 900 now, because I didn't sign up for that
I definitely do not want to live to my 90th decade. Yikes! Yeah needing a magnifying glass to play Sudoku annoys me.
I don't know the cause, but my ophthalmologist told me not to get laser corrective surgery for short sightedness because it increases the likelihood of needing reading glasses later in life. I wasn't going to anyway, because I already had three laser surgeries to repair a hole in my eye.
I had to read almost the entire thing before it became clear that eyes were the topic.
We lose the ability to read small print? I can read the 6pt font on my computer from a foot away. Is that not normal? I'm almost 70. Of course, my distance vision is c**p.
Before computers, heck before writing and reading, people had better far-seeing sight and didn't have as much close-seeing work as we do now. Especially staring at a screen without breaks, which puts pressure on your eyes, and that does affect vision
Your scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception.
Ophthalmologists know. The rest is how the brain hallucinates and fills in the missing dimensional sense.
And your scientists have?? Where are you/they from and care to share such knowledge?
Frozen shoulder! We know who it tends to affect (mainly middle aged people, diabetics), but the why isn'tfully understood.
I was heading in that direction, with both rotator cuff and bicep tendonitis bilaterally. My rheumatologist gave me some exercises. I do them regularly and they keep things under control.
Interesting! Would you share the exercises please? Thank you!
Load More Replies...Here chiropractor (at least Swedish and at least for one case) could help! So please do not refer to other countries chiropractors. Medics said its just to wait. First shoulder took over year? Chiropractor fixed the other in a few visits. This is why I think Swedish chiropractors can do good stuff..
What's the difference between a Swedish chiropractor and a non Swedish one? Honest question.
Load More Replies...Just the brain full stop. Our understanding of how brain leads to "us", is laughably weak.
it wanted to be called brian, but the researcher misspelled...
Load More Replies..."If you use your mind to examine your mind, how can you avoid confusion?" - Buddhist saying
The human body is so incredibly complicated that it’s a miracle it’s able to function at all.
To add to that, a miracle that a human body functions in every stage of growth from a single cell right up to a full grown adult.
There is no such thing as a miracle. But perhaps OP meant that as a figure of speech.
And yet, most people are able to make one quite easily, with help!
I’m an anesthesiologist. And … we don’t really know how a lot of anesthetic agents actually work.
Genetics. How was I born with my grandmother's chestnut hair color, my Dad's green eyes and small hands, and my mother's hips and beautiful fingernails? There are six of us. We all look different with pieces of other relatives showing up in facial features, hair color etc.
Yes? Just some recombinations with the genes from the xx and the xy contributors? Or do they mean how some genes can become certain things? That is the interesting question! Not how we get the genes from our parents. But where do the language of genes come from?!
Load More Replies...I consider myself the luckiest of five kids, in terms of my hair. I got the colour and curls from my mum, but my hair is thicker like my dad's so not just frizzy like mum's. My sister's is straighter like dad's but fine and blond like mum. My brothers all pretty much have exact copies of my dad's hair, though two didn't live long enough to know if it would darken as much in adulthood.
A large gene pool, thankfully. One of nine kids all look so different from each other, and my parents.
The question of what exactly causes birth to start is unknown.
I don’t think we’ll ever fully understand the human mind.
We would need a far more complex mind to do that. And we still wouldn't be able to understand THAT!
Why are men?
And men should better understand their role in all of it.
Load More Replies...Medicine is a science, and like all science it changes daily based on new information. What we KNOW now was not what they KNEW then and they will KNOW more in the future. All we can hope for is that people keep pushing for answers and don't fall stagnant.
Great answers above. All of them. I'll add one, why do humans get lung cancer from smoking when all normal laboratory animals don't?
There have been questions raised as to a link between smoking and car pollution, but I can't remember where I heard it.
Load More Replies...There is so much that we didn't know until the human genome was fully sequenced. It was only after this that we were able to find out what the condition my brothers had was (20 & 12 years after they died). It was so rare that our paediatrician had only seen one other patient with what he thought was the same thing, and that was in a different country. Now there are somewhere between 75 and 150 cases known world-wide. It just blows my mind that it is only by looking at one set of genes that they could see were both faulty (from a muscle biopsy taken prior to their death) that it could be identified. And it was a one in four chance that my parent's children would have both of them being faulty, and two of five kids had it. The other three of us have a two in four chance of being carriers and one in four chance of not. Thankfully, it being so rare means anyone we want to reproduce with is unlikely to be a carrier, even if we are.
Last year, my 68-year-old partner was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease also known as ALS. Speaking and swallowing were two of his challenges. His collapse was swift and catastrophic, and neither the riluzole nor the medical staff did much to aid him. He would not have survived if our primary care physician hadn't given him attentive care and attention, as the hospital center didn't provide any psychological support. His fall was abrupt and catastrophic. His hands and legs gave way to weakness in his arms. This year our family physician suggested using ( UINE HEALTH CENTRE ) ALS/MND protocol, which my husband has been receiving for a few months now. and it has changed everything., he no longer requires a feeding tube, sleeps soundly, works out frequently, and is now very active. In the hopes that it could be useful, I thought I would relate my husband's tale; in the end, you have to do what suits you the best. We got the ALS/MND herba formula from ww w. Uinehealthcentre. net
ALS Formula treatment from Aknni herbs centre, It has made a tremendous difference for me (Visit ww w. aknniherbscentre.c om). I had improved walking balance, increased appetite, muscle strength, improved eyesight and others.
My first ALS symptom occurred in 2016, but was diagnosed in 2018. I had severe symptoms ranging from shortness of breath, balance problems, couldn't walk without a walker or a power chair, i had difficulty swallowing and fatiue. I was given medications which helped but only for a short burst of time, then I decided to try alternative measures and began on ALS Formula treatment from Aknni herbs centre, It has made a tremendous difference for me (Visit ww w. aknniherbscentre.c om). I had improved walking balance, increased appetite, muscle strength, improved eyesight and others.
Quite a few duplicate posts above, but just proves that medicine is more of an art than an exact science.
Medicine is a science, and like all science it changes daily based on new information. What we KNOW now was not what they KNEW then and they will KNOW more in the future. All we can hope for is that people keep pushing for answers and don't fall stagnant.
Great answers above. All of them. I'll add one, why do humans get lung cancer from smoking when all normal laboratory animals don't?
There have been questions raised as to a link between smoking and car pollution, but I can't remember where I heard it.
Load More Replies...There is so much that we didn't know until the human genome was fully sequenced. It was only after this that we were able to find out what the condition my brothers had was (20 & 12 years after they died). It was so rare that our paediatrician had only seen one other patient with what he thought was the same thing, and that was in a different country. Now there are somewhere between 75 and 150 cases known world-wide. It just blows my mind that it is only by looking at one set of genes that they could see were both faulty (from a muscle biopsy taken prior to their death) that it could be identified. And it was a one in four chance that my parent's children would have both of them being faulty, and two of five kids had it. The other three of us have a two in four chance of being carriers and one in four chance of not. Thankfully, it being so rare means anyone we want to reproduce with is unlikely to be a carrier, even if we are.
Last year, my 68-year-old partner was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease also known as ALS. Speaking and swallowing were two of his challenges. His collapse was swift and catastrophic, and neither the riluzole nor the medical staff did much to aid him. He would not have survived if our primary care physician hadn't given him attentive care and attention, as the hospital center didn't provide any psychological support. His fall was abrupt and catastrophic. His hands and legs gave way to weakness in his arms. This year our family physician suggested using ( UINE HEALTH CENTRE ) ALS/MND protocol, which my husband has been receiving for a few months now. and it has changed everything., he no longer requires a feeding tube, sleeps soundly, works out frequently, and is now very active. In the hopes that it could be useful, I thought I would relate my husband's tale; in the end, you have to do what suits you the best. We got the ALS/MND herba formula from ww w. Uinehealthcentre. net
ALS Formula treatment from Aknni herbs centre, It has made a tremendous difference for me (Visit ww w. aknniherbscentre.c om). I had improved walking balance, increased appetite, muscle strength, improved eyesight and others.
My first ALS symptom occurred in 2016, but was diagnosed in 2018. I had severe symptoms ranging from shortness of breath, balance problems, couldn't walk without a walker or a power chair, i had difficulty swallowing and fatiue. I was given medications which helped but only for a short burst of time, then I decided to try alternative measures and began on ALS Formula treatment from Aknni herbs centre, It has made a tremendous difference for me (Visit ww w. aknniherbscentre.c om). I had improved walking balance, increased appetite, muscle strength, improved eyesight and others.
Quite a few duplicate posts above, but just proves that medicine is more of an art than an exact science.
