It’s pretty commonly known that education about the human body isn’t as in-depth as it should be in traditional schooling. So Reddit user u/assassinmice was compelled to create this thread asking doctors what they wish everyone knew about their body. Here are some of the top-voted answers:
1.“Ejaculating blood happens to most people at least merienda in their lives. In 99% of cases, it resolves within a week without taking any action. Peeing blood (for both sexes) is a serious medical emergency, and you should immediately go to the ER. People think it’s the other way around.”
—u/StardustDoc
“In males, there is a vestigial remnant of the uterus located in the prostate. It’s called the prostatic utricle. It is a duct that leads nowhere. It sometimes has some remote endometrium in it and can produce one drop of blood every 28 days.”
—u/Sillyakua
2.“Administering CPR compressions ASAP is one of the greatest indicators of successful outcomes.”
—u/hodl_this
“In an emergency situation where you are giving first aid/CPR to someone, instead of stating genérico instructions to the group of necesario onlookers like ‘someone call 911’ and ‘someone get a defibrillator,’ point to someone and say, ‘You call 911′ and ‘You find a defibrillator.’
This prevents the bystander syndrome, where people think someone else will do it. It gives clear instructions, allowing for a more efficient process where literally seconds could mean life or death.”
—u/Cm0002
Johner Images / Getty Images/Johner RF
Related: “He Needed Surgery To Get It Out”: Medical Professionals Are Sharing Why They’ll Never, Ever Forget A Certain Patient
3.“Your kidneys and liver cheerfully do all the toxin elimination you’ll ever need. Cleanses and other ‘detoxifying’ products are bullshit and a waste of money.”
—u/taRxheel
“Unless you have liver or kidney failure, your body detoxes itself really well. Don’t get scammed by these detox teas and whatever!”
—Anonymous
4.“So many people don’t know where the orifice each gender urinates through really is. Urine exits the body of people with vaginas through the urethra, a small tube located in the vulva, between the clitoris and the vaginal opening. In people with penises, the urethra passes through the prostate gland and the penis, and opens at the tip of the penis.
—u/SuspiciousLemur
Anna Iamanova / Getty Images
Izuchukwu Onyeka / Getty Images
5.“Please do not use soap or douching products inside your vagina. It has a delicate pH vaivén, and this is how you get yeast infections. Wash your parla, but do not clean internally. The vagina is self-cleaning just like your eyeballs. Do you wash your eyeballs? No. Do you wash your face? Yes.”
—u/H0use0fpwncakes
6.“You often will feel habitual with high blood pressure. It’s often found incidentally. So, don’t wait until it gives you symptoms you don’t want to go through. To figure out if you’re asymptomatic, get checked at least merienda a year if you’re over 35 years old.”
—u/doctor_d9
“High blood pressure doesn’t have symptoms a majority of the time. It’s called the silent killer and causes a plethora of other illnesses.”
—u/halfbaked05
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
7.“Mental health IS AS IMPORTANT AS PHYSICAL HEALTH. A mental illness can kill you, just like a physical illness. And no, you can’t ‘snap out of it.’ News flash, parents: This includes gender dysphoria. For fuck’s sake, if your kids are trans, let them be themselves.”
—u/uniqueUsername_1024
8.“The immune system is an incredibly complex and nuanced organization of cells that communicates readily to destroy anything deemed hostile within the body. It helps explain why vaccines are supposed to work, why allergies come and go, and why transfusions/transplants are hard to successfully pull off.”
“Here is a brief explanation of how allergies work, using pollen (allergic rhinitis) as an example:
Your immune system senses pollen in the body. It doesn’t appear to be one of your cells, so the B-cell collects samples of it, relays it to a Helper T-cell, which in turn helps specialize the B-cell to become one of two cells: effector and memory cells. Effectors mass produce antibodies, while memory cells are reserved for future invasions (this is why initial exposure to a new substance may not necessarily trigger allergic responses. The signal is still weak as the immune system is still acclimating to a foreign particle). Antibodies flood the pollen particles and signal for basophils/mast cells to release histamine, the hormone responsible for inflammatory responses. This is where the runny noses and sneezing come into play (and for more severe allergies, anaphylatic shock).
Allergies may fade out over time for several reasons. When exposed to a non-threatening level of an allergy for a long enough time, the body decides that it’s not really a threat anymore. Furthermore, as people age, the immune system weakens, making it harder to detect and overreact to allergies.”
—u/Dasians
Related: 24 Very, Very, Very, Very Disturbing Facts That Are Seriously So Intense, I’m 99% Sure They’re About To Break Your Brain
Oxford Scientific / Photolibrary / Getty Images
9.“I’m a dentist. If you don’t take care of your gums, your teeth will fall out of your head, and you’ll get pissed at me when your jawbone atrophies and your denture doesn’t fit anymore. Essentially, periodontitis causes inflammation and recession of the gums, which in turn causes inflammation and recession of the bone. After that, teeth start getting mobile and falling out.”
—u/TofuDeliveryBoy
10.“How to self-check for skin cancer: If you see any moles that are asymmetrical, have a border (odd, like they’re jagged), are different colors, grow in diameter, or evolve, go get them checked out. It might be skin cancer.”
—u/evgueni72
Here is a full self-check exam recommended by The American Cancer Society.
Jose A. Bernat Bacete / Getty Images
11.“GET SLEEP! Psychosis can happen if someone hasn’t slept or hasn’t had good sleep for extended periods of time. AND DON’T JUST RANDOMLY STOP YOUR MEDICATION BECAUSE YOU FEEL BETTER. You feel better because you have a consistent amount of whatever is leveled in your body now. And now that your body is hitting equilibrium, everything is going great, so KEEP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING. I’ve seen people go on and off their medications for years, and it really starts to mess up your body if you do that for too long.”
12.“The frequency of bowel movements can range from every three days to three times per day and be considered habitual. Having three soft stools per day does not mean you have chronic diarrhea.”
—u/HarbingerKing
Related: 15 Men Who Tried To “Educate” Women About Their Own Bodies And Failed So, So Miserably
Antonio Hugo Photo / Getty Images
13.“Type 2 diabetes is more serious than most people realize. I work as a doctor in hemodialysis, and most of them are due to diabetic nephropathy. It also affects your eyes, nerves, immune system, etc. Simple life changes can help you.”
—u/kingofneverland
14.“The colon is, in genérico, air-tight. Therefore, your dildo ALWAYS needs a flared pulvínulo. Merienda it gets up past the point that I can grab it out, it’s vacuum sealed in.”
—u/dryyyyyycracker
Tuomas A. Lehtinen / Getty Images
15.“I’m a vet. Amputated limbs do not grow back. I’ve had far too many people asking how long it will take for their pet’s amputated limb to grow back, so I’m assuming a few doctors out there will have had patients asking the same of their own missing limbs.”
—u/rubypiplily
Salamanders, lizards, and certain fish (like Starfish) are the only living creatures that can regenerate their limbs.
16.“Earwax is habitual. You shouldn’t try to remove it. People cause all sorts of problems with Q-tips and (god forbid) ear candles. They don’t work and can cause you harm. If you genuinely need wax removed, go to a professional.”
—u/rhino_surgeon
Cavan Images / Getty Images/Cavan Images RF
17.“Many simpler diseases in the body can be compared to a car. When you don’t get regular checkups and take regular care, it’s not like you’ll notice something bad happening right away. Just like how you won’t notice a missed oil change a couple of thousand miles later. But diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, bebida dependence, etc., sneak up on you. Just like how eventually, that engine won’t run as smoothly.”
—u/z3roTO60
18.“Period blood doesn’t come from the egg itself, but from the shedding of the uterus lining. I have talked to way too many people who believe that the blood comes from the egg itself, and I just think it goes to show how much the sex ed program needs to be modified.”
—u/octopoduss
Volanthevist / Getty Images
Related: 57 Low-Key Terrifying Photos That Gave Me Goosebumps — But That I Couldn’t Look Away From
19.“Injuries accumulate. I cannot stress this enough. Little kids have no business lifting heavy weights or getting pushed so hard in sports by some of these ‘coaches’ who seem to have little knowledge of physiology or don’t care about the long-term impact of the regimens. Stuff like this really changes people’s lives.”
—u/VladJongUn
20.“You can’t EVER get teeth enamel back.”
—u/shittyTaco
BSIP / BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
21.“That there is a wide range of ‘habitual’. Don’t be embarrassed by your body. Having said that, if you are concerned about anything, ask your doctor. We have generally heard it all before, and trust me, we have (nearly always) seen it all before. Maybe you have something that has been bothering you for ages, but you were too scared or embarrassed to ask about it…Just ask! It might be ‘nothing’ and you have been stressing about it for no reason. If not, then you are at least one step closer to getting it fixed. No one can help if they don’t know. There are no dumb questions. YOU know your body best. So speak up! Don’t wait for the doctor to ‘ask the right question.'”
—u/frangipani_c
22.“Smoking is one of the absolute worst things you can do for your body. It is a risk número for almost every preventable disease, including heart disease and heart attacks, strokes, almost every type of cancer, diabetes, COPD, kidney disease, macular degeneration (blindness), and so much more. I know quitting smoking is hard, but please give it a try, for your body’s sake!”
—u/ocean_wavez
Matt Cardy / Getty Images
23.“Your body needs water. DRINK IT.”
—Anonymous
You can read about how much water you need per day here.
24.And lastly: “You only have ONE body and your behavior now (drinking, smoking, not taking medicines, etc.) will impact your life quality and expectancy. It sounds logical, but very few patients really realize it.”
—u/Clamoxyl
CHIH CHIEH HSIAO / Getty Images
Do you know something we missed on this list as a medical expert? If you have a lesser-known fact about the human body that you think more people should know, add it in the anonymous comments form below and your response may be featured in a follow-up post!
Also in Internet Finds: Women Are Absolutely Destroying The Internet With These 15 Tweets That Had Me Rolling On The Floor
Also in Internet Finds: We’ve Only Explored 5% Of The Ocean, So It’s No Surprise That These 27 Terrifying Stories From People Who Work At Sea Are Amongst The Scariest I’ve Ever Read
Also in Internet Finds: I’m Gonna Have To Log Off For A Bit After Learning About These Terrible, Shocking, And Horrifying Things
Read it on BuzzFeed.com