This in reality made me schedule my annual medical examination .
A few weeks ago, Reddit userImmediate_Hair_3393turned to the popularAsk Redditpage andasked doctors,“What do wenotknow about the human body?”
A ton of doctors (and other healthcare professionals) of various specialties replied, and their answers ranged from interesting to weird to a little bit horrifying. So, I decided to share them with you! Here are some of the best:
1.“We apparently don’t know preciselyhowour bodies can distinguish gas from poop. We have some ideas, we know there are a ton of nerve endings in the area, but the precise mechanism of our bodies telling our brains, ‘This is a fart, let loose’ isn’t really understood.”
2.“One of the few ABSOLUTES in medical science is that nobody born blind has ever developed schizophrenia.”
— u / beboleche
3.“I’m a dermatologist. We don’t know what exactly causes itching, like the molecular pathways for it. That’s why it can be so hard to find a good treatment when a patient comes in for itchy skin.”
4.“I’m an anesthesiologist. We still don’t really know why inhaled volatile anesthetics like sevoflurane, the principle anesthetic agent used to maintain general anesthesia, work.”
5.“I tell my residents that only about 40% of what we do is evidence-based. Much of what we do is based on flimsy evidence, or grossly inadequate follow-up.”
6.“I’m a sleep specialist. While we do have some good theories about some of the functions of REM as far as how it affects the brain and health, we still don’t fully understand the purpose of dreaming.”
7.“OBGYN here: We still don’t know exactly what makes labor start. We know all about the mechanics and physiology, but we don’t know what makes the average uterus say it’s ‘go time.'”
8.“We don’t fully understand the omentum’s function. For years it was thought to be just connective tissue in the gut, but now we’ve learned it’s a whole organ affecting the gut-brain axis that we have very little understanding of.”
9.“The gut microbiome. While it’s well-known that the gut plays a huge role in digestion, researchers are discovering just how much our gut bacteria affect other parts of our health, like mood, immunity, and even brain function.”
10.“I have a very niche answer: we don’t know what is supposed to naturally bind to the area in which benzodiazepines work.”
11.“Apparently we know next to nothing about fibroids, which like 75% of women have at some point in their lives. That’s great, considering that the largest one ever removed was 100 pounds, so not exactly a minor issue.”
12.“There are smell receptors in the nose for things that don’t exist. They’re called ‘orphan olfactory receptors.'”
13.“The placenta is the only human organ grown for a specific purpose and discarded when it is no longer needed.”
— u / bourbonmangattan
14.“Not a doctor but a speech pathologist. We still don’t fully understand what causes people to develop a stutter. We know there’s sometimes a genetic link and that some children do it as a developmental stage that they grow out of. It’s very difficult to treat.”
15.“We don’t know what kind of ramifications menopause really has on the female body.”
16.“We don’t know what causes endometriosis or how to treat it effectively. The leading theory is ‘retrograde menstruation,’ which occurs in 80-90% of women. OK…so why do 80-90% of women not have endometriosis?”
17.“We don’t understand the pathophysiology of preeclampsia or what causes the onset of labor.”
— u / bpm12891
18.“I’m a PA, retired after 40+ years of clinical practice and academic work. I can tell you that the more we learn, the more we realize there is left to learn. The placebo effect is real. We don’t know exactly how, but it does work; and not just with pain relief.”
19.“There are a lot of theories but no concrete answers on why identical twins split.”
20.And finally: “We don’t know why people get certain kinds of cancer. My aunt had lung cancer (which was thankfully caught and treated early) even though she never smoked, and no one knew exactly why.”
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21.
Note : Responses have been edited for distance / clarity .
