62 Weird Medical Facts That Turned Out To Be True

Terminal lucidity.

A very ill comatose or unresponsive patient who suddenly becomes awake, alert and talk interactive. Some will even be able to carry on conversations. It can last minutes to hours.

Inexperienced providers and family members often mistake this as "bouncing back" but instead is a sign of imminent death.

What's really interesting is we have no idea how or why this happens.

Euphorbch:

I had a super cool chat with an Alzheimer's patient very close to the end of his life where he was entirely lucid, and it remains one of the most intense?? incredible?? Moments of my life more than a decade later.
He used to cry for his (passed way) wife and call me Florence, and one night he'd called for his wife and I popped the lamp on and chatted to him for a minute to see if he wanted water etc, and then he said "oh, stay with me, I'm here, I'm here and usually I'm not, I know (wife) is [passed away] and I know your name is not Florence and I NEED you to stay with me while I'm here, please please please" and so we chatted about my life a little and his life and wife and kids a lot, and then about two hours later he told me he was going again and went back to how he usually was. He passed pretty shortly after. I cried the entire conversation and for about three days after it, and it will still make me cry if I think about it too hard. It was really awesome.

I can't believe this one needs to be said out loud, but vaccines do NOT in fact, cause autism.

Puzzleheaded_Ask1816:

I wasn't vaccinated until I was in my teens and I was autistic long before that. Checkmate antivaxxers.

LankyGuitar6528:

My anti-vaxx parents didn't get me "done". Instead I got all the diseases those shots would have prevented - Mumps, Measles, Chickenpox and lord knows what else. I think I avoided polio but it's actually asymptomatic in the majority of people so who knows. I'm 65 and decided I didn't want to bring anything home to the new grandbaby...so I went in for my shots last fall. The doc said "what are you here for?" I said "same as these guys..." (pointing to a room full of babies). I asked the doctor "So is adult onset autism a thing?" He didn't laugh. I thought that was a brilliant joke. I guess half his day is spent telling people vaccines don't cause autism.

Nobody has mentioned the one that always shows up on these threads:

When doctors operate on intestinal stuff, they just jam everything back in. The intestines writhe and wiggle around by themselves until they are back into place correctly.

Fearlessleader85:

Apparently, my great, great aunt was born premature "with her guts hanging out", which i believe would refer to omphalocele, but this happened in the very early 1900s in the extremely rural inland PNW, and doctors were not common, nor were cars. Her mom thought she was going to pass away, so she didn't really want anything to do with her, but her dad didn't want to give up. So he just stuffed her organs inside her as best he could and wrapped a cloth around her belly kinda tight and then carried her around in some type of small box. He took her everywhere, the fields, hunting, everywhere. And surprisingly, she lived. And she was none the worse for wear, her abdomen closed up and her "guts" stayed in and she lived a very long and normal life.
It wasn't until she was in like her late 60s when she was having some sort of relatively minor procedure, might have been a colonoscopy or maybe she got appendicitis or something, but they realized nothing was quite where it was supposed to be. Her liver wasnt quite the right shape and stuff was all jumbled up.
I think she passed away in her mid 90s. So, apparently, yeah, those organs don't really need to be in a specific orientation.

Chiropractic is bunk science. It is not regarded as a mainstream branch of medicine. The origins of chriopractic is wild. The fact that you can earn a doctorate in it is because of powerful lobbying.

The reason why people like going to a chiropractor is because getting your back c*****d feels good. It's also why they crack your back no matter what you are there for. You may feel better temporarily, but you are only treating the symptoms, not the cause like a physical therapist would do. And if you listen to the founder of chiropractic, joint manipulation can cure diseases, which is absurd.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Antibiotics DOES NOT CURE common cold or general flu. Antibiotics only work against bacteria, NOT VIRUS.

Enough-Researcher-36:

And taking antibiotics excessively or unnecessarily can cause C. Diff, which is highly contagious and gives you extreme, severe, painful, unstoppable diarrhea.
That being said if you are given antibiotics, finish the entire course even if you feel better. The chances of you actually getting C. Diff off one course of abx every now and again is pretty low.

Voluntarily making a rumbling noise on my ears when I want to and it drowns most external noise. My family and friends did not believe me. Almost gaslit me into thinking its not real and that its just in my head. Years later I found a reddit community of other people being able to do it too. That was also when I found out that not everyone can control a certain muscle in the ear that causes the rumbling sound. Its very useful when people doesn't wanna shut up. I call it my built in noise cancelling.

Candid_Reading_7267:

I can do it too. It happens when I close my eyes really tightly.

Your brain can literally convince your body it’s sick just because it’s bored and anxious.

Olealicat:

As someone with an autoimmune issue. This hits.
Random hives for just thinking about hives.

FriendshipCute1524:

I've learned if you say "I'm fine" enough your brain can sometimes go "Ohh, Word?" And you just don't get sick. Like when you get those "I'm getting sick" chills and feels, Just say I'm fine. Sometimes it just works.

Mittelschmerz.

Some women can feel the exact moment our follicle explodes and releases the egg during ovulation. Mine feels pretty painful but others just feel a pop 🍾.

cc_bcc:

I get this. Mines more of a deep ache vs a cork pop. Its annoyingly painful and uncomfortable, but also a useful data point to know where I'm at in my cycle.

I’m an EMT on the 911 side working with a medic, and I’ve witnessed a few things that sound straight up like fiction. I’ve had a couple patients who were in asystole (no heartbeat at all) suddenly get ROSC (return of spontaneous circulation).


In one case we worked the patient all the way to the hospital. We pushed epi and other meds en route, the ER team took over, ran lines, bagged them, did everything by the book… and nothing worked. Eventually the ER stopped, called time of death, and everyone stood down.

Then, minutes later, the patient had a heartbeat.
No shocks. No new meds. Nothing changed. They were dead, and then they weren’t.

It’s completely baffling to watch. No one in the room had a good explanation for it, and from what I understand, medicine doesn’t really have one either. It’s one of those things you see in this job that messes with your head, because it shouldn’t happen, but it absolutely does.

When surgeons cut part of the skull away to relieve brain swelling, they 'store' the piece of skull in the abdomen to keep it sterile. The skull fragment will be returned to its original place when the swelling has gone down.

My lecturer told us this yesterday and I find it amazing.

SpaceTrash42069:

Operating Room nurse here. It can also be placed in a sterile container and is taken to “the bone bank” where it’s kept in a temperature controlled environment until it can be put back on the person’s skull.

Commotio Cordis.
During normal heart rhythm there’s a 40 millisecond window (during the t wave) where a sudden physical impact to the chest can cause v-fib, cardiac arrest and death.
Happens to about 20 people per year, mostly in sports (ie. Baseball or hockey puck to the chest at exactly the wrong moment)

TabsAZ:

Was a famous incident of this a few years back with the NFL player Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills who went into cardiac arrest after being hit in just the right spot making a tackle during a game. He recovered over the subsequent year and was able to continue his career.

Assuming proper treatment, most doctors would prefer to get HIV than become diabetic.

Bolognahole_Vers2:

HIV is more easily treatable, and causes less complications these days, than diabetes.

Anyone, after any sickness, has the ability to develop Guillain Barre syndrome. Your immune system attacks sick cells and then keeps right on going destroying your healthy cells until you can’t use your limbs or lungs anymore. And then you can die.

HamHockShortDock:

We are starting to find connections between viruses and immune disease or other conditions. We are now pretty sure there is a connection between Mononucleosis/Glandular Fever and Multiple Sclerosis. There has been an uptick of T1 diabetes after Covid infections. Mylagic Encephalomyelitis is nearly proven to be a post viral condition and new hyper detailed MRIs have shown brain discrepancies in diagnosed patients. This condition was previously treated more like mental illness!

Nobody who was born blind has ever gotten schizophrenia. Scientists aren’t sure why.

PLUMPUFFI:

I vaguely recall there is a condition that whilst not schizophrenia, born blind people can hallucinate seeing, and often quite well, think its double barrelled and begins with L, but will have to look....

birthdaycheesecake9:

I think they’d maybe track down someone who was already diagnosed with schizophrenia and then lost their vision.
I imagine the manner in which they lost their vision would matter a lot (e.g., injury to the visual cortex vs to the eye, trauma vs a disease or syndrome).

awildkylaappeared:

Hello, resident psychiatrist here. Anecdotal, but I had a patient with schizophrenia who took a firearm shot wound to the eye, then infection took the other eye out (brain unscathed). Sure enough, not being able to see made his paranoia worse. Though he had a small amount of insight into his hallucinations before the injury (hear a voice, see that nobody is in the room -> question the hallucination), without sight he could no longer even begin to differentiate what was reality and what was not. No matter how much we optimized his meds he just couldn't come back from it. He was terrified.

Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor who managed to reduce the mortality of women after birth from 12,3% to 1,27% simply by disinfecting hands and tools. 

And now comes the twist: people *hated* him for this. Some doctors managed to get him out of business in austria and it is even a theory that his death was a conspiracy.

FullMoonMooon:

Just to add to the Semmelweis lore, he was working in a location where the doctors went between the birthing ward and the autopsy room. The doctors hated hearing that they should wash their hands between handling the deceased, and assisting childbirth.

The Placebo effect usually has a therapeutic effect on disease, even when the disease is entirely physiological, and even when you know the medication is a placebo.

NoRequirement3066:

I have a vague suspicion that the reason healthcare involved so much arbitrary mysticism for so much of human history before practical medicine took over is less about it taking a long time to develop science and more to do with the fact that “wizard shaman guy casts a spell to make you feel better” actually just does make you feel better.

Rotationplasty. In some scenarios where above the knee amputation is required, rather than simply c*****g off the whole limb, surgeons can reattach your foot to your thigh, backwards, so that your ankle joint can replace your knee and it will be easier to use a prosthetic leg.

Impossible_Bowler923:

How does it work with bending the foot down to the prosthetic like that? I mean, I'm sure any type of amputation surgery feels terrible and takes a lot of recovery, but the diagram I saw looks crazy, like. The foot can do that???

Toasterferret:

Yeah, the neurovascular bundle is kept intact, and the tendons/muscles from the front of the foot/shin get hooked up to the hamstrings, and the Achilles gets hooked up to the quads. So they have dorsiflexion still which is what gives them the ability to use the ankle as a pseudo-knee.

COVID causes vascular, immune, and neurological injury. It’s not just a cold.

WorldnewsModsBlowMe:

Calling COVID a "respiratory disease" really did a huge disservice.
It's an endothelial disease. It affects tissues lining the insides of hollow organs, which is why you get gastrointestinal, cardiac, pulmonary, and other systemic damage.

thesaltedradish:

Covid gave me heart issues while I had it. Scary stuff. I've never felt my heart beat that fast before.

Cardigan_Gal:

Covid gave my husband heart failure and a permanent left bundle branch block. Before covid he was a fit 40 something guy in training for a triathlon. He's never been overweight or smoked or drank his whole life. He also has massive amounts of calcification in his coronary arteries now and he's not even 50. No family history. And no, he did not get mrna vaccinated. He got the J & J shot.
Covid gave me the trifecta: vascular damage, neurological issues and multiple autoimmune diseases. Lucky me.

You have a tiny itty bitty crystal in your ear called otolith. It's in a pool of gelatine substance, and surrounded by sensory hair cells. It is responsible for managing your balance, vertigo, detecting your head tilt, acceleration etc.

Sometimes it can move and "get stuck", making you feel dizzy weirdly e.g. only when laying on a bed.

It's also extremely easy to cure its misalignment, you can literally watch an instructional video and do it with a help of a friend.

chandrian7:

When my grandmother called me from the ER to tell me that my grandpa needed the crystals in his head realigned, I assumed she had talked to someone in the waiting room about it and I told her to just wait until the doctor tells them what’s wrong. She corrected me that it had been the doctor who told her this and, before googling, I thought that her doctor might be insane. Crazy stuff, bodies. 

One of the symptoms of receiving the wrong blood type in a transfusion is an impending sense of doom.

SnowedAndStowed:

Angor Animi is the medical term for a sense of impending doom. It’s most strongly associated with pulmonary embolisms but can be from a variety of things including transfusion reactions.