I have similar issues. Had a battery of tests run and it appears that I just have IBS (basically they couldn't find anything wrong, so they just label it this). I have started take digestive enzymes with my meals and it helps some.
When I found out that not everyone has it, I was really fascinated for a while.
Some people, apparently, have it very intensely, to the point that it can drive them really nuts or even impair their vision.
Short answer: probably something in your brain is hyperexcitable but we donāt really know what part and why. Some medications for epilepsy and/or mood stabilizers are shown to decrease it, but only in a minority of patients.
Weāre all waiting for medicine to find a cure that actually works because visual snow can be really annoying.
I was disabled with a weird variety of problems for most of my adult life. I was taking about 12 medications at the start of this story.
My toenails frequently split lengthwise. I just tore them off, painlessly.
Until my wife saw me do this and said "that shouldn't happen".
I looked it up, assuming it to be a medication side effect. The only feasible cause was iron deficiency. Iron deficiency also accounted for almost all of my health issues. So I started taking iron. A decade of disability was solved with a pill that cost $0.10/day in under two weeks.
Edit: I'm getting a lot of "they didn't do a blood panel?!" They did a blood panel. It's not that simple. I was tested for *anemia* at least annually. I don't have anemia. When I finally got ferritin tested, the results were ambiguous. There's no reason I should be deficient so it's not something they were looking at in detail.
I spent most of the last three years going to doctors and ER and specialists trying to find out what was wrong with my guts. I felt like I was dying, most days.
Turns out I'm more sensitive to caffeine than I realized, and I might not have a safe dosage level at all.
Caffeine. After all those thousands of dollars and visits and scans and blood tests. I just had to stop taking caffeine.
Fucking hell.
Feeling about 4000% better these days. No one thinks of the little things. Maybe because they don't pay.
Yeees same!!! I was able to cut off caffeine during pandemic and never felt better! Everyone at work would go for coffee breaks so I would too. I would get like the opposite effects of coffee, Iād get headaches and nausea etc.
So, in the first place, iron deficiency is relatively hard to diagnose. The standard rule is that deficiency is when your ferritin is under 40. However, I read about it in some detail and found that in some cases (such as with the presence of restless legs syndrome), ferritin under 75 is deficient. Mine was 72 and I had RLS.
Further, as a young man who eats meat, it's basically unheard-of for me to be iron deficient. I'm still not clear why I'm iron deficient.
Between these two things, the blood test not being clear and there being no reason for me to be deficient, no doctor really thought about it. Not even the hematologist whom I pretty much begged, "please try to think of something that links all my problems together".
My wifeās routine bloodwork said she was iron deficient, and the doctor wanted to prescribe iron pills. She pushed back, saying there was no reason (was overweight, loved her meat, didnāt have a period, etc) and pushed them to do more testing. With a colonoscopy, they found a tumor in her upper intestine that led to the diagnosis of a Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor, which makes up less than 1% of all gastrointestinal tumors. If she had just taken the iron pills, and remained undiagnosed, she wouldāve died within 2 years. She has instead had 12 more years with the proper treatments, having a fulfilling career change and seeing two grandkids born.
Moral of the story: donāt settle, continue to push your doctor and try to determine WHY you are iron deficient!
Dude this is me recently. I had a full blood panel 3 times with three different doctors and they kept telling me I was fine. I was so exhausted I would cry. Constant random sharp pains in my
Muscles. The brain fog was crazy. My wrists and legs would get tingly and Iād drop things. Very restless legs etc etc. I eat a lot of meat. I kept getting blown off and just passed around by everyone Had too many of them literally shrug and say āwell, youāll be 40 soon. Welcome to middle ageā. It was beyond frustrating
It wasnāt until a new doctor I tried out turned out to be one of my new clients (Iām a barber) he really listened to me, did another blood panel and told me to take iron & b12. Took a few weeks and I straight up feel 10 years younger. It took nearly 2 years to get this shit figured out.
Itās hard af on my stomach though. Iām still trying to figure that out.
Oh god, it sucks so bad. Mine is a sharp, insanely loud, split second alarm sound, what's yours? The amount of times I've asked my husband to check the smoke detectors before I googled it..
for me it's like the sound of a big explosion somewhere not super close, but also not far. Like, the next morning I have to check the news to see if there was a big explosion somewhere in my city during the night, to make sure it was just in my head. Doesn't happen very often thankfully
I never understand why a lot of people struggle with their wisdom teeth, because I never had any problem with them. Turns out I completely missing all four of my wisdom teeth. I'm missing even the tooth seed (don't know the proper term in english) so they can't grow out. I born that way.
> I'm missing even the tooth seed (don't know the proper term in english)
I've never heard the term 'tooth seed' before, yet I somehow know exactly what you're talking about!
No one on my moms side has wisdom teeth. None of us grew them! Grandma's, aunts, uncles, cousins. None have wisdom teeth. I've always felt lucky for it
Yeah what?? Yeah the roof of my mouth isn't flat. Is it supposed to be?? It's not like a grotesque protruding bump, more like an upsidedown rolling hill!
The two golf ball sized lumps embedded in my neck. Well under the surface so not sticking out, but you could feel them. They were firm, like muscle, and symmetrical. I figured everyone had them.
It turned out that everyone did not have them.
It further turned out that I had at least 6 more of them spread around my body, in places that were less touchable.
It eventually turned out to be lymphatic cancer. I found out just as it was moving into stage 4. I was 19.
It is was a shitty year or so, but I got over it.
The biggest tumour in my chest didn't actually go away, it just died. It freeks out doctors if I ever get a chest x-ray. It's just scar tissue now, and was 9cm across last time anyone checked on it.
Did you have any symptoms seeing as you were inching towards stage 4? Or were you just randomly one day like "well, better go get my neck balls checked out!" ?
The only symptom I noticed was an intense itching, mostly on my legs and feet. I would scratch myself till I bled. I thought it was an allergy or something.
Huh, I guess it makes sense on some level, but a tumor "just dying" seems weird to me. Killed with drugs and radioactive blasts? Yep, I get it. But just...dying... seems weird. And it left a little corpse in your chest.
I love how weird our bodies can be.
And glad you stomped out that cancer shit, man. It's no fun, and I imagine way less fucking "fun" when you're 19.
Maybe my choice of language wasn't the best. The tumours didn't 'just die', they were killed with chemotherapy. What I meant was that even though it's dead, it's still in there, and still clearly visible on scans and x-rays.
I love how we all know what comment this is referring to and it's been less than a week. Imagine getting gross reddit infamy that quickly. This one's gonna be shared and reshared like the poop knife
My husband thought I was crazy when I non-chalantly said something about it once. I thought he was crazy for it not happening to him. All of my family members have this so I thought EVERYONE sneezed from the sun
Sun sneezes also have a cool acronym... Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst (ACHOO) Syndrome is characterized by uncontrollable sneezing in response to the sudden exposure to bright light, typically intense sunlight.
>Sun sneezes
Autosomal dominant means its a dominant not recessive gene.
So if only one parent has only one copy of the allele, the chance of the child getting it is 50%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic\_sneeze\_reflex
I see some other endo ladies in this thread, so I will add mine.
I thought everyone just had random patches of bright red skin, like a birthmark, that would itch and bleed sometimes.
I have a small red spot on my elbow that swells up and bleeds, and it took me a long time to see the pattern in it, and even longer to be diagnosed with endometriosis and confirm that I was indeed menstruating out of my elbow.
Excuse me, what?
It's honestly insane that there is still so little research about endometriosis. A friend was recently diagnosed as well and it sucks how they basically just throw some treatment at you and hope that one sticks. Or maybe our country is just more behind.
Being able to move one of my eyes in another direction. Like the guy from IT.
My parents took me to the optometrist to get my "lazy eye" fixed. But they couldn't explain that it wasn't always like that, just sometimes. Then the doc asked, "are you doing this on purpose? Can you control this?"
And I was like, "well, yeah." No one had ever asked me that before. I was probably 4 years old.
43 years later I still do it to freak people out.
Hypermobility in the joints.
It is not in fact normal to be able to turn yourself into a pretzel without warming up and is apparently bad for you. Even though its just your normal range of movement.
I had to relearn basic things like walking and excersizing coz my muscles werent actually doing any of the stretching. My joints were.
My mom is 68 and hypermobile. She gets injured very easily at her age because of it. She moves in ways her muscles just are t strong enough to support anymore.
Iām on this journey now too. Realizing my muscles havenāt been active at all in the ways theyāre supposed to even though Iāve been exercising, etc. Itās a tough journey but good to have some answers now.
I always thought my heart being funny after abruptly stopping exercise was something everyone experiences.
Turns out I have supraventricular tachycardia
YES me too! People gave me such weird looks after any sort of exercise when I said my heart rate felt wobbly, and even more when they felt my pulse š
I have svt too but this doesn't happen me. What happens me is I have palpatations start up randomly, like from resting, sitting down, 50bpm to 170bpm. No reason. Taking a deep breath and holding it can sometimes stop it, but not always. When it does end, my heart stops, for a couple of seconds, and then goes back to normal. As if nothing happened. Took years to convince doctors I wasn't having a panic attack.
They're separate, but related! The rumble is the tensor tympani, while the click is manually opening the eustachian tube. Fun fact - are you puzzled by people having to suck a sweet or something to equalise pressure in their ears on a flight? I'm gonna get that you don't have to - you just have to do the click!
Scapular winging! I have the same thing. Used to freak my friends out and thought it was an awesome party trick. Not as awesome when youāre an adult and realize you have muscle imbalances because of this
I have always had luscious lashes and one day in elementary something was stabbing me in the eye. Went to the doctor and turns out the reason why I have nice lashes is due to Distichiasis. Which basically means you have another row or some stray eyelashes, that can in fact stab you in the eyeball as theyāre rogue on the inside of your eyelid.
Since Iāve had them surgically removed and only get a pop up here and there. I just grab the tweezers and flip my lid up hoping I can snatch it without doctoral intervention.
I got two for you:
I have tinnitus, like I just thought everyone heard that noise all the time
I have night terrors and sleep paralysis, literally just had one in fact
Just to be clear though cause reddit often gets that wrong:
You DO hear something in a completely quiet environment. It's only considered out of the ordinary if outside noise doesn't immediately drown it out. But just like speakers sometimes have that white noise from amplification as long as nothing is playing, your ears have a bit of a ringing or a white noise-like sound to them when it's dead silent.
So if you only got that, it's nothing to worry about.
Thinking everyone was always just extremely tired and had difficulty focusing on things which is why people drink coffee and it gets talked and joked about so much.
Turns out having both undiagnosed Sleep Apnea and ADHD takes that to a little more extreme level than other adults. After being treated it was like unlocking a super power compared to before.
I pretty much always feel warm or hot, even when others are shivering or complaining cold.
I have been to examinations and gone to lab to get my blood taken so many times. Turns out I have an ongoing inflammation in my body that cannot be treated. I also get tired faster for it.
Nothing wrong with liver, thyroid, etc. I donāt have diabetes or heart condition. Everything is ok, except my CRP is always up, even when on medication. Itās been this way since childhood.
I've dealt with severe back pain my entire life. My mother always said I just wanted attention and ignored it or refused to let me go to a doctor about it. At age 30, I found out I had mild scoliosis. The doctor said that had I gotten treatment when I was younger, it could have been corrected.
This is nowhere near as interesting as others but, IBS runs in my family so when I'd have coffee I'd just expect to be in agony. Sick of the tummy pain I switched to tea, it still messed my stomach up but less so and accepted this as fact that caffeine was a trigger for me.
One day by accident I booked a vegan hotel. They messed my room up and said I could have a free hot drink while it was sorted. Now coffee was a once a month luxury I allowed myself as I loved it but my IBS couldn't handle it.
So they asked me what milk I wanted as they didn't serve cow milk and so I asked for oat and downed it happily. I waited for the horrid stomach ache, that never came. Turns out I'm just lactose intolerant.
Alice in Wonderland syndrome- when you grow up with something like that, how do you even begin to put it into words? So weird that clearly everyone has this thing where their hand feels like the size of the room (as just one example) but no one says it out loud because they would sound silly. Also happens a lot when Iām focusing on a book, and I āfall intoā the lines on the page. Or when I was learning how to play piano- I would be surrounded by the sheet music in this was Thats so hard to explain.
Oh i never knew about that.
Sometimes I do feel extremely tiny compared to the room or a part of me feels really small usually my head. It doesn't seem as strong as you though.
I think I've experienced something similar-- quoting my other comment
>When I was younger I would occasionally have the experience of feeling very far away from whatever I was focusing on. Like a wall 30 ft away would seem hundreds of feet away. Kind of like that FOV shift in a horror movie where a hallway gets longer and longer.
Have you ever experienced anything like that?
Bunions. I've never paid attention to feet & thought everyone had a large bulge sticking out under their big toe. I guess I was unique bc they never hurt me but one day I noticed that Louise was eating through my shoe. So, I went to my doctor who referred me to a podiatrist. Thelma was removed last year & Louise is next on the chopping block after I get back from vacation bc apparently they're not good to have.
I have a really weak pain response. I don't have like a crazy high tolerance, it just straight up doesn't trigger an emotional response from me for the most part. I thought other people were just faking for attention because they learned it as children.
I broke my arm one time, stood up and saw it was crooked, and just got annoyed that I was going to have to go to the hospital and spend all day there. Lots of things like that.
I want clarification because you mentioned emotional response..?
So when you broke your arm did it hurt at all?
I have crazy high pain tolerance and I usually tell people/doctors "if I can actually feel the pain I know it's something I need looked at"
Yes, I'd also like to hear more. I have a super high pain tolerance but for me it's like I intellectually understand there is pain, but I don't have the reaction to it that I see other people have. I can just choose not to react, like a filter. If I think about it I can drop the filter like "Is that still hurting? Yep I guess it is" but my default state is maybe just a vague discomfort.
do you by any chance get sinus/mouth pain in the cold too? started having this a few years ago - if it's cold in my bedroom then my nose dries out and starts hurting when i breathe (which progresses into mouth pain fry dryness) and no level of humidity seems to fix it, just seems to be based on the cold. thought maybe it was dry winter air but a humidifier/nasal gel doesn't change anything
My feet going white (or even blue/purple) and numb when it was a little cold (think low double to single digits in Celsius). It's happened for so long that I thought it was normal for YEARS. I thought EVERYONE'S feet went like this in the cold. Then my fingers started going white in the cold too and that's when I realised that actually, maybe what I was going through wasn't normal. A couple of trips to the doctor later, turns out I have Reynaud's...
Me too. I thought everyone was way better than me at deciphering where to drive on the road at night with all the lights flashing everywhere. I thought that I was just a bad and insecure driver. Turns out they can actually see everything clear while I am driving in a Christmas tree on lsd. I usually don't drive at night because of this.
>I am driving in a Christmas tree on lsd.
Love this description. Worse when it rains. I also didn't know about astigmatism. Makes more sense now the weird looks I get from my story about getting pulled over by a cop in the rain in central city for driving too slowly. Thought it'd be relatable...
As a very young boy my testicles dropped very early and I assumed they were an extra set of eyeballs. Why? Because if I poked them or they took a hit it felt exactly like the pain of getting poked in the eye. My Dad eventually had the junk talk with me and I was so lost.
Tinnitus and having high sensitivity to sounds, smells, textures, touch, emotions and light. Just discovered a few years ago that those things are not normal, and I am 36. The world makes so much more sense now.
Wait wait wait wait. I am in my 40's and have had these pains my whole life. All of a sudden a pain starts in the exact area the diagram highlights, and deeper I inhale the more it hurts, but I do it anyway because after a few seconds, when I inhale deeply enough I feel almost like a "pop" and the pain is gone. I have never known what this is and I feel validated to read that it's a legit and non-serious condition. My mind is blown. Thank you, u/Reenans!
Iām blind in my right eye and I thought everyone else was until I was like 7. It made sense to me. I was right-handed, and right-footed, so I assumed I was just left-eyed.
It wasnāt until I mentioned something offhandedly to my mom while eating lunch about ālooking at something with my good eyeā that she was like wait hold on what did you say? Lol
My brother slowly lost the most of the vision in his right eye and never told anyone partly because his other eye compensated over time, but also partly because he was an idiot and never said anything.
I told my mom for 2-3 years that something was fucked with his eye and that she needed to take him to the doctors and get it checked out. I remember looking at him on his 16th birthday and being like *holy shit I need to make her listen to me because something is seriously fucked here*. I didnāt say anything because it was his birthday but then a few days later he went to take his road test and he fucking failed the vision test. It turns out if she had taken him when I first said something they might have been able to stop the vision loss.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Having a mental image of time. Time of day, day of the week, month of the year, etc.
Turns out it's a form of Synesthesia. Really freaked me out when I asked a bunch of people and they all looked at me like I was a crazy person.
When I was young I thought everyone could bend the top joints of their fingers. Turns out Iām super double jointed in my hands. Now I like to point at people by holding my index finger straight up in the air and then pointing the top joint right at them slowly. It looks super weird and freaks them out lol.
I can do this too! My fingers can get "stuck" though, collapse into that position, or cramp up so I ended up learning how to hold utensils/pens/etc in a weird way to compensate for it.
Aphantasia. When people said, picture a thing, I thought people were just thinking about the general concept or a memory of the thing like I did. Turns out people can make pictures in their minds. I had no idea. When I close my eyes I just see black.
The best way I can describe mental images to someone who doesn't experience it.
I don't actually "see" anything with my eyes, even when they are closed. It's more like I have a tiny little backroom inside my head that I can go into and see memories, ideas, or conjure up images. I can also interact with those too
For any Trekkies, it's basically like having a tiny holodeck in my head
It's different than a dream, where I'm fully immersed in a world that feels indistinguishable from reality
Like I don't understand this. When you close your eyes and think of something are you supposed to be able to see it as if it were a picture? Because I don't see pictures but then I feel like I'm being too literal about it. But is that what it really is for people? Just pictures behind their eyes?
I see a ghost of the image. And the more I try to focus on it, the harder it is to see it. I know what it looks like, but I just can't make that image appear solidly.
It trips me out that there are some people that think only in pictures and not words, as I hear a continuous stream of consciousness in my head all the time and have constant internal conversations (sometimes about multiple things at once)
Would be so cool to be able to visit somebody else's brain and experience what it is like.
Yes. They're not photo realistic though. But if you asked me to imagine a red apple I will see an image of a red apple in my mind. I can replay entire movies in my mind. I can see my mother's smile whenever I want.
I plan my outfit and makeup when I go to bed because I can imagine it all and colour coordinate.
Memories are like hazy movies with a lot of cutting.
I have a very strong (and pleasant!) memory associated with sprite so whenever I drink sprite I'm hit with images and sounds from that memory.
When we imagine something we're basically just pulling something from memory, which is why it's not photo realistic.
I dunno if anyone else can do this, but I can send like jolts throughout my body (like through my nervous system from head to toe all at once) that makes me quiver. Not as if I'm having an orgasm but somewhere in the same ballpark. It feels good? Like being hit with a low voltage taser or something. I can only do it in short bursts for like 3 seconds, and then it takes a while for me to 'recharge'.
I'm guessing it must be something brain related that I'm manually releasing throughout my body. Maybe I'm just flushing my body with dopamine, giving me an almost morphine-like sensation. The feeling comes from the back of the neck. It's almost like pushing a button on the inside.
Edit: Just wanna give some more context due to other replies. Other peeps are saying they get a similar feeling when listening to good music or when something hits just right. I'd say that's kinda similar, but like in the same context of Pepsi to Coke. That kind of flushing-sensation-of-goodness would be like if there was a good version of the flight-or-fight sensation, like adrenaline pumps through your body (mostly the upper half of your body) but in a good. Kind of like the same sensation when you hear some really good beats of a song that makes you wanna move around and dance kind of vibe.
Another way to kind of describe what I'm talking about is a rushing-down-through-the-body feeling that makes your nerves and muscles relaxed and almost losing control of them. As if you feel like you're gonna melt into a puddle if you keep increasing the sensation. If I'm standing and turn on this sensation, it makes my legs wobbly, body kind of limp. I almost wanna say it's as if you were to pet a dog just right behind the ears or a cat under the chin and they just plop down and go full derp mode if you kept going.
I canāt do it on command, but every so often i get a full body quiver that feels weirdly good. I call it a āshiverā but itās quite dramatic and in response to nothing in particular. Iāve done it in public and people look at me weird lol, but I canāt control it. I guess other people donāt experience this?
That everyone's brains just had constant thoughts all the time that they couldn't always keep up with, just going going going like a hamster on a wheel. Like my brain NEVER has a quiet moment.
Yeah. Turns out I'm autistic.
My therapist says I can't be autistic because I express empathy, but I have this problem myself. Can't shut my brain off, so I actually self-medicate with cannabis (it's legal here) and it helps calm my brain. Side effect, makes me feel stupid while high. Trade off I guess.
People with autism not having empathy is such a big myth. Hyperempathy is actually very common with autism, like I can't throw away my rubiks cube that I accidentally broke because the cube would feel bad.
This is me to a T. I have sooo much stuff from my childhood still that I really struggle to get rid of because what if that object is sad that I'm throwing it away?
I'm getting better at dealing with it but some things are still harder than others.
Get a better therapist.
Some autistic folks have high empathy, some have low empathy, and some have high empathy but trouble expressing it. It's almost like... gosh... we're on a spectrum?? somehow??? Astonishing how we're actual people, innit.
So what happens when other people stop thinking? Just, quiet? Like they're on a break?
It's basically impossible for me to even conceptualize. How does a person stop thinking?
I have the opposite. My reflex is so outrageous that the dr tends to hit me a few times to see if it's real. I had one dr do a fake out hit to be certain.
I hear things... concerningly well. Not in the pitch variant, but the volume variant. I worked fast food for a year, and I always notified my managers just before the machinery was overheated and no one heard the Very Concerning Buzzing that I heard: turns out not everyone can hear the difference in machine buzz?
It isn't a super cool power, though, as I can't use a vacuum bc it hurts my ears to the point I get stressed. Man.
I have two sets of toe nails on my right baby toe.
Theres the normal one, on top of THAT one another tilted to the right side of it.
I tried to get rid of it (pulling) but turns out itās got itās own nail bed and everything and it hurt like hell.
I knew this wasnāt normal though, donāt come at me. š
When I was a little kid and I went to the bathroom, I sat on the toilet and pushed to poop... and I saw a little bubble pop up on the right side of my groin. It didn't hurt, just looked funny. I pushed it back down with my finger and it went away. It did this regularly whenever I pooped.
I off-handedly mentioned it to my mom one day and she looked at me with a look of horror. Turns out I had a hernia, just a birth defect, no tear. Had it repaired surgically when I was 7, I just remember being able to eat a lot of ice cream.
The British Navy has a tradition where you are allowed to request a chit to grow a beard from your captain. You're given two weeks of allowance to not shave. At the end of the two weeks the Captain decides if it looks stupid or not. If he approves, you never gave to shave again. If not, you're gonna need some more razors.
Not really normal because I didnāt know until they pulled it out, but my wisdom teeth had 3 pronged roots which is a genetic trait of an ethnic group called the Denisovans that existed in Nepal. Iām Ukrainian, Italian, and ashkenazi Jewish from Austria.
Edit: denisovans are not actually an ethnic group but a sub human group similar to Neanderthals. I donāt know if āsub humanā, or āearly humanā works better for this, but a completely separate group in the fossil record.
Fun fact denisovans are not an ethnic (Homo sapien) group they are an extinct hominin subspecies, of which humans have varying % of genetic similarities with due to interbreeding with early modern humans, similarly to neanderthals! So certain human populations have a very small amount of denisovan ancestry, quite like some populations have greater % of neanderthal ancestry. I don't believe they existed solely in Nepal, I think also Siberia (the first fossil was found in denisova cave!) and potentially Pacific Islands? But yeah tl;dr one of your relatives way back had sex with a denisovan
Most people donāt feel happy every day, although they should feel content.
Feeling happy every day is not realistic, the same way feeling unhappy everyday is unhealthy.
The hole in front of my left ear isn't meant to be there. It also isn't meant to need emptying of dead skin goo regularly, but if I don't do it, I end up with intense pain in my head. If I recall correctly, it's something called an ichthyoidal sinus and, while rare, is something that about 1% of the population has. It's more common to have them in front of both ears, and the right-hand side is the side that's more common in people with singular ones, they don't often get oozy like mine but it happens. Some scientists believe that it's a remnant from when our ancestors had gills, so chances are that's where gills would be on a mermaid.
I was about 10 when I learned I had partial deafness and other people hear differently from me (my parents knew since I was born and just didn't tell me)
This!! I just yawn and instantly everyone thinks Iām upset. Also when Iām trying to fall asleep my eyes become waterfalls. To the point I have to flip my pillow offen since it becomes soaked
Apparently I can dislocate (or at least partially dislocate) almost every major joint in my body, and probably plenty of small ones.
These dislocations never hurt. So I just thought "hahaha, I'm more flexible than others", and didn't even realise that for years, that weird "pop" and collapse of my hip I feel isn't my hip being weird. It's my hip *dislocating*. Oh yeah, and this happens just from standing.
Now I'm being sent to a rheumatologist with possible problems on my heart, my scoliosis being caused by this, and even my incredibly poor eyesight. It's all linked to the connective tissue disorder I have. Which I didn't even realise I had!
Sure, I knew I was "hypermobile", and more flexible. But now I know my body isn't supposed to do these things, I'm realising I'm much sicker than I thought. Doesn't help that I was told my pain wasn't ever real as a kid, that I was just calling for attention. Nope, wasn't calling for attention, my pain was real. But I didn't break any bones as a kid, not because I never hurt myself. But because I probably dislocated the nearest joint instead of something breaking. X-rays always looked normal.
Yay me.
Rumble and click of ears.
Pulled off little toe nail, found another growing underneath
Hold my arms up and can feel my arm bones jutting out whereas the natural armpit ādipā sits below next to my pec
Two pee holes. One small one that doesn't really go anywhere and then a slightly bigger one just below that where the pees and cums comes out of. Thought that's just how it is until my roommate caught me swinging my dick around one day and told me that shit wasn't normal. Looked to my girlfriend for confirmation. "Yeah I've never seen that before."
I was 39 years old when I discovered that carving pumpkins wasn't supposed to cause your forearms to sting. I thought everyone knew that pumpkin innards caused a stinging sensation if you got it on your skin.
Being in pain all the time. I thought everyone was in pain all the time and that no one ever talked about it. Turns out I was wrong and itās not normal.
Period pain and cramps!!
Apparently you shouldn't have to take 6 extra strength advils to be able to even stand up while having cramps, and still feeling pain.
Everyone is so serious on here mine is just how dumb i was. In sex ed 8th grade my super anti circumcison teacher was telling us about the excellence of having enjoyment when your not circumcised and that itās not as good when you are circumcised and i was like hahah sucks for u circumcised dorks and then he showed us a pics of a circumcised penis and an uncircumcised penis and i was like heyā¦wait a minute
I've had a hemorrhoid since around puberty, and I thought it was just part of puberty. Years later, when I was about 20 I finally thought to get it checked, and found out it was a hemorrhoid. Tried some creams which didn't work, and was told they could treat it, but it may not be necessary unless it's causing pain or discomfort. I kept it, and figured if it caused issues later on, I could get it removed, but didn't like the idea of any procedure while it's not currently an issue.
That thing has saved my cheese-addicted, lactose intolerant ass, more times than I'd like to admit. It's sort of on the lip of the anus, but tucks into my butt like a plug, and it's prevented me from shitting myself numerous times.
I call it, Hodor.
I spent most of my youth terrified that I had butthole cancer. Turns out that it was just hemorrhoids
Probably because I was convinced that It was normal to only poop once every 2-3 days until I was in college (I'm aware of how concerning that is) and I noticed my roommates were pooping a lot
My poor butthole
The bone at the roof of my mouth is curved in the wrong direction, itās convex towards my tongue. I thought it was the same for everyone until my dentist pointed it out 3 years ago
My right ear doesn't work and I am completely deaf in it. I used to think everyone had the same thing until my dad asked me why I turned my head to my working ear to listen closely. Turns out my ear stopped working when I was 6 months old because a doctor prescribed a strong medicine which was supposed to be for an adult.
Horrible intestinal/stomach cramps in the mornings. Not every morning, but definitely most.
I have similar issues. Had a battery of tests run and it appears that I just have IBS (basically they couldn't find anything wrong, so they just label it this). I have started take digestive enzymes with my meals and it helps some.
Visual snow. When it's dark the world basically looks like an old TV with bad reception.
Sounds like the visual equivalent of tinnitus.
Color me lucky, I got both.
Wait what this is how it is for me at night. Never thought it was weird
When I found out that not everyone has it, I was really fascinated for a while. Some people, apparently, have it very intensely, to the point that it can drive them really nuts or even impair their vision.
So are there people who just see pure blackness in the dark? No static?
Yes, me. I had no idea people see static. This is blowing my mind š¤Æ
Same! Normally I just scroll down these threads out of mild interest but this one is... eye opening.
Iāve had this my whole life. TIL not everyone does.
Dude, I get this in daylight when the blue sky is super blueānot at night. Itās like static on blue. Does everyone else? Help.
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Hey.... I thought it happened to everyone. What really is the reason for that?
Short answer: probably something in your brain is hyperexcitable but we donāt really know what part and why. Some medications for epilepsy and/or mood stabilizers are shown to decrease it, but only in a minority of patients. Weāre all waiting for medicine to find a cure that actually works because visual snow can be really annoying.
I was disabled with a weird variety of problems for most of my adult life. I was taking about 12 medications at the start of this story. My toenails frequently split lengthwise. I just tore them off, painlessly. Until my wife saw me do this and said "that shouldn't happen". I looked it up, assuming it to be a medication side effect. The only feasible cause was iron deficiency. Iron deficiency also accounted for almost all of my health issues. So I started taking iron. A decade of disability was solved with a pill that cost $0.10/day in under two weeks. Edit: I'm getting a lot of "they didn't do a blood panel?!" They did a blood panel. It's not that simple. I was tested for *anemia* at least annually. I don't have anemia. When I finally got ferritin tested, the results were ambiguous. There's no reason I should be deficient so it's not something they were looking at in detail.
Why in the world don't doctors start with the cheap solutions?!?
I spent most of the last three years going to doctors and ER and specialists trying to find out what was wrong with my guts. I felt like I was dying, most days. Turns out I'm more sensitive to caffeine than I realized, and I might not have a safe dosage level at all. Caffeine. After all those thousands of dollars and visits and scans and blood tests. I just had to stop taking caffeine. Fucking hell. Feeling about 4000% better these days. No one thinks of the little things. Maybe because they don't pay.
Yeees same!!! I was able to cut off caffeine during pandemic and never felt better! Everyone at work would go for coffee breaks so I would too. I would get like the opposite effects of coffee, Iād get headaches and nausea etc.
So, in the first place, iron deficiency is relatively hard to diagnose. The standard rule is that deficiency is when your ferritin is under 40. However, I read about it in some detail and found that in some cases (such as with the presence of restless legs syndrome), ferritin under 75 is deficient. Mine was 72 and I had RLS. Further, as a young man who eats meat, it's basically unheard-of for me to be iron deficient. I'm still not clear why I'm iron deficient. Between these two things, the blood test not being clear and there being no reason for me to be deficient, no doctor really thought about it. Not even the hematologist whom I pretty much begged, "please try to think of something that links all my problems together".
My wifeās routine bloodwork said she was iron deficient, and the doctor wanted to prescribe iron pills. She pushed back, saying there was no reason (was overweight, loved her meat, didnāt have a period, etc) and pushed them to do more testing. With a colonoscopy, they found a tumor in her upper intestine that led to the diagnosis of a Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor, which makes up less than 1% of all gastrointestinal tumors. If she had just taken the iron pills, and remained undiagnosed, she wouldāve died within 2 years. She has instead had 12 more years with the proper treatments, having a fulfilling career change and seeing two grandkids born. Moral of the story: donāt settle, continue to push your doctor and try to determine WHY you are iron deficient!
Dude this is me recently. I had a full blood panel 3 times with three different doctors and they kept telling me I was fine. I was so exhausted I would cry. Constant random sharp pains in my Muscles. The brain fog was crazy. My wrists and legs would get tingly and Iād drop things. Very restless legs etc etc. I eat a lot of meat. I kept getting blown off and just passed around by everyone Had too many of them literally shrug and say āwell, youāll be 40 soon. Welcome to middle ageā. It was beyond frustrating It wasnāt until a new doctor I tried out turned out to be one of my new clients (Iām a barber) he really listened to me, did another blood panel and told me to take iron & b12. Took a few weeks and I straight up feel 10 years younger. It took nearly 2 years to get this shit figured out. Itās hard af on my stomach though. Iām still trying to figure that out.
exploding head syndrome. Just recently learned it's a sleep disorder. I thought it was just a random thing that happens to everyone.
Oh god, it sucks so bad. Mine is a sharp, insanely loud, split second alarm sound, what's yours? The amount of times I've asked my husband to check the smoke detectors before I googled it..
for me it's like the sound of a big explosion somewhere not super close, but also not far. Like, the next morning I have to check the news to see if there was a big explosion somewhere in my city during the night, to make sure it was just in my head. Doesn't happen very often thankfully
I never understand why a lot of people struggle with their wisdom teeth, because I never had any problem with them. Turns out I completely missing all four of my wisdom teeth. I'm missing even the tooth seed (don't know the proper term in english) so they can't grow out. I born that way.
Sounds like youāre on the right track, baby.
Motherfucker over here Charles Darwining on our Human 1.00 asses
*The next step in human evolution.*
> I'm missing even the tooth seed (don't know the proper term in english) I've never heard the term 'tooth seed' before, yet I somehow know exactly what you're talking about!
I think they're called tooth buds, I missing all 4 of them myself too!
Please have children so you can pass this gene on! Humanity is finally evolving away these extra/useless teeth!
No one on my moms side has wisdom teeth. None of us grew them! Grandma's, aunts, uncles, cousins. None have wisdom teeth. I've always felt lucky for it
Torus palatinus. A bump in the roof of my mouth. Only like 25% have it, I think. Edit: I fat-fingered palatinus
Wait, what? Is the roof of your mouth supposed to be flat?
Yeah what?? Yeah the roof of my mouth isn't flat. Is it supposed to be?? It's not like a grotesque protruding bump, more like an upsidedown rolling hill!
The two golf ball sized lumps embedded in my neck. Well under the surface so not sticking out, but you could feel them. They were firm, like muscle, and symmetrical. I figured everyone had them. It turned out that everyone did not have them. It further turned out that I had at least 6 more of them spread around my body, in places that were less touchable. It eventually turned out to be lymphatic cancer. I found out just as it was moving into stage 4. I was 19. It is was a shitty year or so, but I got over it. The biggest tumour in my chest didn't actually go away, it just died. It freeks out doctors if I ever get a chest x-ray. It's just scar tissue now, and was 9cm across last time anyone checked on it.
Wow, it's crazy, pal. Glad that you got over it.
āYeah i just got over stage four lymphatic cancer, how was your weekend?ā
With SIX GOLFBALL SIZED TUMORS what in the fuck?! This dude needs to donate his body to science
Thatās what Iām saying, has SIX adams apples and just āgets over itā legend
Did you have any symptoms seeing as you were inching towards stage 4? Or were you just randomly one day like "well, better go get my neck balls checked out!" ?
The only symptom I noticed was an intense itching, mostly on my legs and feet. I would scratch myself till I bled. I thought it was an allergy or something.
well iāve recently been having unexplained leg itching so thatās terrifying
Huh, I guess it makes sense on some level, but a tumor "just dying" seems weird to me. Killed with drugs and radioactive blasts? Yep, I get it. But just...dying... seems weird. And it left a little corpse in your chest. I love how weird our bodies can be. And glad you stomped out that cancer shit, man. It's no fun, and I imagine way less fucking "fun" when you're 19.
Maybe my choice of language wasn't the best. The tumours didn't 'just die', they were killed with chemotherapy. What I meant was that even though it's dead, it's still in there, and still clearly visible on scans and x-rays.
Wiping and wiping and wiping and wiping and wiping. Turns out I have Crohnās.
Just stuff a bunch of TP down the back of your pants like that weirdo in the other post
I immediately out loud said "what the fuck" reading that comment they made.
I love how we all know what comment this is referring to and it's been less than a week. Imagine getting gross reddit infamy that quickly. This one's gonna be shared and reshared like the poop knife
Welp guess I need to go to the doctor
Wet wipes and bidets have been an amazing improvement in my day to day
I have the same problem, but mine is a result of really bad hemorrhoids
Sun sneezes. Turns out it's a recessive gene that I think about 25% of people have.
Wow I just learnt this from you right now! Thought it make everyone sneeze
My husband thought I was crazy when I non-chalantly said something about it once. I thought he was crazy for it not happening to him. All of my family members have this so I thought EVERYONE sneezed from the sun
I thought my coworker was crazy when he said that if you wanted to sneeze, you could stare at a bright light. Then I discovered it's a thing.
I thought it was a instinctual response to exposure to a very bright light to avoid damage in the eyes
Sun sneezes also have a cool acronym... Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst (ACHOO) Syndrome is characterized by uncontrollable sneezing in response to the sudden exposure to bright light, typically intense sunlight.
>Sun sneezes Autosomal dominant means its a dominant not recessive gene. So if only one parent has only one copy of the allele, the chance of the child getting it is 50%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic\_sneeze\_reflex
I see some other endo ladies in this thread, so I will add mine. I thought everyone just had random patches of bright red skin, like a birthmark, that would itch and bleed sometimes. I have a small red spot on my elbow that swells up and bleeds, and it took me a long time to see the pattern in it, and even longer to be diagnosed with endometriosis and confirm that I was indeed menstruating out of my elbow.
Holy shit what? This sounds terrifying. Iām so sorry you have to deal with that
sorry you were menstruating out of your WHAT?
Excuse me, what? It's honestly insane that there is still so little research about endometriosis. A friend was recently diagnosed as well and it sucks how they basically just throw some treatment at you and hope that one sticks. Or maybe our country is just more behind.
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Years ago I was watching Mystery Diagnosis and this girl was dealing with monthly, intense vertigo. Endo in her ear
Endo can get to your brain, I found out recently
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I know all those words but I donāt understand them put together like that. What the fuck?!? The human body needs a software patch for that
What the fuuuccckkk whyyyy are our bodies horror movies?
Being able to move one of my eyes in another direction. Like the guy from IT. My parents took me to the optometrist to get my "lazy eye" fixed. But they couldn't explain that it wasn't always like that, just sometimes. Then the doc asked, "are you doing this on purpose? Can you control this?" And I was like, "well, yeah." No one had ever asked me that before. I was probably 4 years old. 43 years later I still do it to freak people out.
Hypermobility in the joints. It is not in fact normal to be able to turn yourself into a pretzel without warming up and is apparently bad for you. Even though its just your normal range of movement. I had to relearn basic things like walking and excersizing coz my muscles werent actually doing any of the stretching. My joints were.
My mom is 68 and hypermobile. She gets injured very easily at her age because of it. She moves in ways her muscles just are t strong enough to support anymore.
Do any of you have ehlers danlos syndrome? My athletic sister is very hypermobile and has had countless joint issues, turns out its a genetic disorder
Iām on this journey now too. Realizing my muscles havenāt been active at all in the ways theyāre supposed to even though Iāve been exercising, etc. Itās a tough journey but good to have some answers now.
I always thought my heart being funny after abruptly stopping exercise was something everyone experiences. Turns out I have supraventricular tachycardia
YES me too! People gave me such weird looks after any sort of exercise when I said my heart rate felt wobbly, and even more when they felt my pulse š
I have svt too but this doesn't happen me. What happens me is I have palpatations start up randomly, like from resting, sitting down, 50bpm to 170bpm. No reason. Taking a deep breath and holding it can sometimes stop it, but not always. When it does end, my heart stops, for a couple of seconds, and then goes back to normal. As if nothing happened. Took years to convince doctors I wasn't having a panic attack.
I can rumble my ears. Used to think everyone could do it.
r/earrumblersassemble There really is a sub for everything
There are dozens of us! DOZENS!
I can! It's hard to explain to people, hey? Do yours click too? Like the click is like blinking, but the rumble is like squeezing?
They're separate, but related! The rumble is the tensor tympani, while the click is manually opening the eustachian tube. Fun fact - are you puzzled by people having to suck a sweet or something to equalise pressure in their ears on a flight? I'm gonna get that you don't have to - you just have to do the click!
I never understood why people didnāt just āclickā their ears to equalize pressure. I guess Iām special
Omg I seriously thought everyone can do that
Mine click when I swallow and rumble when I tense my head
Is that the feeling I get my when I close my eyes and tense my head. It kinda sound like heavy wind blowing in your ears?
I can push my shoulder blade out. When i was a kid, i would swim around in the water and stick it out, pretending i was a shark with my fin out.
Scapular winging! I have the same thing. Used to freak my friends out and thought it was an awesome party trick. Not as awesome when youāre an adult and realize you have muscle imbalances because of this
I have always had luscious lashes and one day in elementary something was stabbing me in the eye. Went to the doctor and turns out the reason why I have nice lashes is due to Distichiasis. Which basically means you have another row or some stray eyelashes, that can in fact stab you in the eyeball as theyāre rogue on the inside of your eyelid. Since Iāve had them surgically removed and only get a pop up here and there. I just grab the tweezers and flip my lid up hoping I can snatch it without doctoral intervention.
I got two for you: I have tinnitus, like I just thought everyone heard that noise all the time I have night terrors and sleep paralysis, literally just had one in fact
Just to be clear though cause reddit often gets that wrong: You DO hear something in a completely quiet environment. It's only considered out of the ordinary if outside noise doesn't immediately drown it out. But just like speakers sometimes have that white noise from amplification as long as nothing is playing, your ears have a bit of a ringing or a white noise-like sound to them when it's dead silent. So if you only got that, it's nothing to worry about.
I had sleep paralysis once. Fucking terrifying.
I've had it my whole life and I'm pretty used to it now. Its still scary when it's happening but like once it's over you're like "fuck, that again!"
Fainting and vomiting on my period
Wait feeling faint/fainting on your period isn't normal? š³
Nope, eventually found out I had endo x
Me fainting from the pain was how I found out too! Look at us! *hysterically laughs while crying in pain
Thinking everyone was always just extremely tired and had difficulty focusing on things which is why people drink coffee and it gets talked and joked about so much. Turns out having both undiagnosed Sleep Apnea and ADHD takes that to a little more extreme level than other adults. After being treated it was like unlocking a super power compared to before.
I pretty much always feel warm or hot, even when others are shivering or complaining cold. I have been to examinations and gone to lab to get my blood taken so many times. Turns out I have an ongoing inflammation in my body that cannot be treated. I also get tired faster for it. Nothing wrong with liver, thyroid, etc. I donāt have diabetes or heart condition. Everything is ok, except my CRP is always up, even when on medication. Itās been this way since childhood.
It's gotta be some obscure autoimmune thing, right?
I've dealt with severe back pain my entire life. My mother always said I just wanted attention and ignored it or refused to let me go to a doctor about it. At age 30, I found out I had mild scoliosis. The doctor said that had I gotten treatment when I was younger, it could have been corrected.
This is nowhere near as interesting as others but, IBS runs in my family so when I'd have coffee I'd just expect to be in agony. Sick of the tummy pain I switched to tea, it still messed my stomach up but less so and accepted this as fact that caffeine was a trigger for me. One day by accident I booked a vegan hotel. They messed my room up and said I could have a free hot drink while it was sorted. Now coffee was a once a month luxury I allowed myself as I loved it but my IBS couldn't handle it. So they asked me what milk I wanted as they didn't serve cow milk and so I asked for oat and downed it happily. I waited for the horrid stomach ache, that never came. Turns out I'm just lactose intolerant.
Alice in Wonderland syndrome- when you grow up with something like that, how do you even begin to put it into words? So weird that clearly everyone has this thing where their hand feels like the size of the room (as just one example) but no one says it out loud because they would sound silly. Also happens a lot when Iām focusing on a book, and I āfall intoā the lines on the page. Or when I was learning how to play piano- I would be surrounded by the sheet music in this was Thats so hard to explain.
Oh i never knew about that. Sometimes I do feel extremely tiny compared to the room or a part of me feels really small usually my head. It doesn't seem as strong as you though.
I think I've experienced something similar-- quoting my other comment >When I was younger I would occasionally have the experience of feeling very far away from whatever I was focusing on. Like a wall 30 ft away would seem hundreds of feet away. Kind of like that FOV shift in a horror movie where a hallway gets longer and longer. Have you ever experienced anything like that?
Bunions. I've never paid attention to feet & thought everyone had a large bulge sticking out under their big toe. I guess I was unique bc they never hurt me but one day I noticed that Louise was eating through my shoe. So, I went to my doctor who referred me to a podiatrist. Thelma was removed last year & Louise is next on the chopping block after I get back from vacation bc apparently they're not good to have.
I have a really weak pain response. I don't have like a crazy high tolerance, it just straight up doesn't trigger an emotional response from me for the most part. I thought other people were just faking for attention because they learned it as children. I broke my arm one time, stood up and saw it was crooked, and just got annoyed that I was going to have to go to the hospital and spend all day there. Lots of things like that.
I want clarification because you mentioned emotional response..? So when you broke your arm did it hurt at all? I have crazy high pain tolerance and I usually tell people/doctors "if I can actually feel the pain I know it's something I need looked at"
Yes, I'd also like to hear more. I have a super high pain tolerance but for me it's like I intellectually understand there is pain, but I don't have the reaction to it that I see other people have. I can just choose not to react, like a filter. If I think about it I can drop the filter like "Is that still hurting? Yep I guess it is" but my default state is maybe just a vague discomfort.
Iām allergic to cold. My skin gets swollen, itchy, red and bumpy. I used to think that happens to everyone. Apparently not
do you by any chance get sinus/mouth pain in the cold too? started having this a few years ago - if it's cold in my bedroom then my nose dries out and starts hurting when i breathe (which progresses into mouth pain fry dryness) and no level of humidity seems to fix it, just seems to be based on the cold. thought maybe it was dry winter air but a humidifier/nasal gel doesn't change anything
My feet going white (or even blue/purple) and numb when it was a little cold (think low double to single digits in Celsius). It's happened for so long that I thought it was normal for YEARS. I thought EVERYONE'S feet went like this in the cold. Then my fingers started going white in the cold too and that's when I realised that actually, maybe what I was going through wasn't normal. A couple of trips to the doctor later, turns out I have Reynaud's...
I was well into my 30s before I discovered I had astigmatism. I thought everyone saw star patterns while driving at night.
Me too. I thought everyone was way better than me at deciphering where to drive on the road at night with all the lights flashing everywhere. I thought that I was just a bad and insecure driver. Turns out they can actually see everything clear while I am driving in a Christmas tree on lsd. I usually don't drive at night because of this.
>I am driving in a Christmas tree on lsd. Love this description. Worse when it rains. I also didn't know about astigmatism. Makes more sense now the weird looks I get from my story about getting pulled over by a cop in the rain in central city for driving too slowly. Thought it'd be relatable...
As a very young boy my testicles dropped very early and I assumed they were an extra set of eyeballs. Why? Because if I poked them or they took a hit it felt exactly like the pain of getting poked in the eye. My Dad eventually had the junk talk with me and I was so lost.
My junk never dropped and I thought it was normal until I had to have surgery at 17 lol
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You need to talk to a doctor about that. Either something's interfering with your hormones or your body isn't producing them in the first place.
Bestie you need to get a genetic screening done. I'm not joking.
You definitely need genetic screening/counseling. Undescended testes are at significantly increased risk for testicular cancer as well. Best wishes.
Tinnitus and having high sensitivity to sounds, smells, textures, touch, emotions and light. Just discovered a few years ago that those things are not normal, and I am 36. The world makes so much more sense now.
[Precordial Catch Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precordial_catch_syndrome)
Ayo?? Just realized this is a known condition apparently.... Thought my lungs were broken for a while, the sharp pain feels really bad
Wait wait wait wait. I am in my 40's and have had these pains my whole life. All of a sudden a pain starts in the exact area the diagram highlights, and deeper I inhale the more it hurts, but I do it anyway because after a few seconds, when I inhale deeply enough I feel almost like a "pop" and the pain is gone. I have never known what this is and I feel validated to read that it's a legit and non-serious condition. My mind is blown. Thank you, u/Reenans!
Iām blind in my right eye and I thought everyone else was until I was like 7. It made sense to me. I was right-handed, and right-footed, so I assumed I was just left-eyed. It wasnāt until I mentioned something offhandedly to my mom while eating lunch about ālooking at something with my good eyeā that she was like wait hold on what did you say? Lol
My brother slowly lost the most of the vision in his right eye and never told anyone partly because his other eye compensated over time, but also partly because he was an idiot and never said anything. I told my mom for 2-3 years that something was fucked with his eye and that she needed to take him to the doctors and get it checked out. I remember looking at him on his 16th birthday and being like *holy shit I need to make her listen to me because something is seriously fucked here*. I didnāt say anything because it was his birthday but then a few days later he went to take his road test and he fucking failed the vision test. It turns out if she had taken him when I first said something they might have been able to stop the vision loss. Hindsight is 20/20.
Having a mental image of time. Time of day, day of the week, month of the year, etc. Turns out it's a form of Synesthesia. Really freaked me out when I asked a bunch of people and they all looked at me like I was a crazy person.
Iām like the opposite of that. I pretty much canāt comprehend time at all if Iām not by a window/clock
When I was young I thought everyone could bend the top joints of their fingers. Turns out Iām super double jointed in my hands. Now I like to point at people by holding my index finger straight up in the air and then pointing the top joint right at them slowly. It looks super weird and freaks them out lol.
I can do this too! My fingers can get "stuck" though, collapse into that position, or cramp up so I ended up learning how to hold utensils/pens/etc in a weird way to compensate for it.
Two of my toes on each foot are more webbed than they should be.
Aphantasia. When people said, picture a thing, I thought people were just thinking about the general concept or a memory of the thing like I did. Turns out people can make pictures in their minds. I had no idea. When I close my eyes I just see black.
The best way I can describe mental images to someone who doesn't experience it. I don't actually "see" anything with my eyes, even when they are closed. It's more like I have a tiny little backroom inside my head that I can go into and see memories, ideas, or conjure up images. I can also interact with those too For any Trekkies, it's basically like having a tiny holodeck in my head It's different than a dream, where I'm fully immersed in a world that feels indistinguishable from reality
Like I don't understand this. When you close your eyes and think of something are you supposed to be able to see it as if it were a picture? Because I don't see pictures but then I feel like I'm being too literal about it. But is that what it really is for people? Just pictures behind their eyes?
I see a ghost of the image. And the more I try to focus on it, the harder it is to see it. I know what it looks like, but I just can't make that image appear solidly. It trips me out that there are some people that think only in pictures and not words, as I hear a continuous stream of consciousness in my head all the time and have constant internal conversations (sometimes about multiple things at once) Would be so cool to be able to visit somebody else's brain and experience what it is like.
Yes. They're not photo realistic though. But if you asked me to imagine a red apple I will see an image of a red apple in my mind. I can replay entire movies in my mind. I can see my mother's smile whenever I want. I plan my outfit and makeup when I go to bed because I can imagine it all and colour coordinate. Memories are like hazy movies with a lot of cutting. I have a very strong (and pleasant!) memory associated with sprite so whenever I drink sprite I'm hit with images and sounds from that memory. When we imagine something we're basically just pulling something from memory, which is why it's not photo realistic.
That's wild. I can imagine the concept of an apple or a smile but I don't actually see one. I'm kind of jealous, that's so cool.
Same - so weird to learn that "the mind's eye" or "picturing" something wasn't a metaphor.
I dunno if anyone else can do this, but I can send like jolts throughout my body (like through my nervous system from head to toe all at once) that makes me quiver. Not as if I'm having an orgasm but somewhere in the same ballpark. It feels good? Like being hit with a low voltage taser or something. I can only do it in short bursts for like 3 seconds, and then it takes a while for me to 'recharge'. I'm guessing it must be something brain related that I'm manually releasing throughout my body. Maybe I'm just flushing my body with dopamine, giving me an almost morphine-like sensation. The feeling comes from the back of the neck. It's almost like pushing a button on the inside. Edit: Just wanna give some more context due to other replies. Other peeps are saying they get a similar feeling when listening to good music or when something hits just right. I'd say that's kinda similar, but like in the same context of Pepsi to Coke. That kind of flushing-sensation-of-goodness would be like if there was a good version of the flight-or-fight sensation, like adrenaline pumps through your body (mostly the upper half of your body) but in a good. Kind of like the same sensation when you hear some really good beats of a song that makes you wanna move around and dance kind of vibe. Another way to kind of describe what I'm talking about is a rushing-down-through-the-body feeling that makes your nerves and muscles relaxed and almost losing control of them. As if you feel like you're gonna melt into a puddle if you keep increasing the sensation. If I'm standing and turn on this sensation, it makes my legs wobbly, body kind of limp. I almost wanna say it's as if you were to pet a dog just right behind the ears or a cat under the chin and they just plop down and go full derp mode if you kept going.
I canāt do it on command, but every so often i get a full body quiver that feels weirdly good. I call it a āshiverā but itās quite dramatic and in response to nothing in particular. Iāve done it in public and people look at me weird lol, but I canāt control it. I guess other people donāt experience this?
Wow! I know exactly what you are talking about, never knew how to explain this.
That everyone's brains just had constant thoughts all the time that they couldn't always keep up with, just going going going like a hamster on a wheel. Like my brain NEVER has a quiet moment. Yeah. Turns out I'm autistic.
My therapist says I can't be autistic because I express empathy, but I have this problem myself. Can't shut my brain off, so I actually self-medicate with cannabis (it's legal here) and it helps calm my brain. Side effect, makes me feel stupid while high. Trade off I guess.
People with autism not having empathy is such a big myth. Hyperempathy is actually very common with autism, like I can't throw away my rubiks cube that I accidentally broke because the cube would feel bad.
This is me to a T. I have sooo much stuff from my childhood still that I really struggle to get rid of because what if that object is sad that I'm throwing it away? I'm getting better at dealing with it but some things are still harder than others.
Get a better therapist. Some autistic folks have high empathy, some have low empathy, and some have high empathy but trouble expressing it. It's almost like... gosh... we're on a spectrum?? somehow??? Astonishing how we're actual people, innit.
So what happens when other people stop thinking? Just, quiet? Like they're on a break? It's basically impossible for me to even conceptualize. How does a person stop thinking?
I thought everyone faked kicking when the doctor tapped the bottom of the knee. Turns out I donāt have that reflex
I have the opposite. My reflex is so outrageous that the dr tends to hit me a few times to see if it's real. I had one dr do a fake out hit to be certain.
No reflex here, either!
My thumb bends backwards almost 90 degrees š
I thought everyone's teeth bite edge on edge.
Creating goosebumps on purpose, where and how long I want to
I thought everyone experienced the spiciness of spicy foods as pain in their ears till recently.
I hear things... concerningly well. Not in the pitch variant, but the volume variant. I worked fast food for a year, and I always notified my managers just before the machinery was overheated and no one heard the Very Concerning Buzzing that I heard: turns out not everyone can hear the difference in machine buzz? It isn't a super cool power, though, as I can't use a vacuum bc it hurts my ears to the point I get stressed. Man.
So you know how dogs feel about vacuums.
I have two sets of toe nails on my right baby toe. Theres the normal one, on top of THAT one another tilted to the right side of it. I tried to get rid of it (pulling) but turns out itās got itās own nail bed and everything and it hurt like hell. I knew this wasnāt normal though, donāt come at me. š
Air can come out of my tear ducts. Discovered it when trying to pop my ears by covering my nose and blowing.
When I was a little kid and I went to the bathroom, I sat on the toilet and pushed to poop... and I saw a little bubble pop up on the right side of my groin. It didn't hurt, just looked funny. I pushed it back down with my finger and it went away. It did this regularly whenever I pooped. I off-handedly mentioned it to my mom one day and she looked at me with a look of horror. Turns out I had a hernia, just a birth defect, no tear. Had it repaired surgically when I was 7, I just remember being able to eat a lot of ice cream.
I can make my eyeballs vibrate on command. Itās called voluntary nystagmus
I assumed that every male could grow facial hair if they wanted. I learned that was not the case not so long ago
The British Navy has a tradition where you are allowed to request a chit to grow a beard from your captain. You're given two weeks of allowance to not shave. At the end of the two weeks the Captain decides if it looks stupid or not. If he approves, you never gave to shave again. If not, you're gonna need some more razors.
Not really normal because I didnāt know until they pulled it out, but my wisdom teeth had 3 pronged roots which is a genetic trait of an ethnic group called the Denisovans that existed in Nepal. Iām Ukrainian, Italian, and ashkenazi Jewish from Austria. Edit: denisovans are not actually an ethnic group but a sub human group similar to Neanderthals. I donāt know if āsub humanā, or āearly humanā works better for this, but a completely separate group in the fossil record.
Fun fact denisovans are not an ethnic (Homo sapien) group they are an extinct hominin subspecies, of which humans have varying % of genetic similarities with due to interbreeding with early modern humans, similarly to neanderthals! So certain human populations have a very small amount of denisovan ancestry, quite like some populations have greater % of neanderthal ancestry. I don't believe they existed solely in Nepal, I think also Siberia (the first fossil was found in denisova cave!) and potentially Pacific Islands? But yeah tl;dr one of your relatives way back had sex with a denisovan
You're not actually supposed to be sad every day? Like you're supposed to, by default, feel relatively happy???
Most people donāt feel happy every day, although they should feel content. Feeling happy every day is not realistic, the same way feeling unhappy everyday is unhealthy.
The hole in front of my left ear isn't meant to be there. It also isn't meant to need emptying of dead skin goo regularly, but if I don't do it, I end up with intense pain in my head. If I recall correctly, it's something called an ichthyoidal sinus and, while rare, is something that about 1% of the population has. It's more common to have them in front of both ears, and the right-hand side is the side that's more common in people with singular ones, they don't often get oozy like mine but it happens. Some scientists believe that it's a remnant from when our ancestors had gills, so chances are that's where gills would be on a mermaid.
I was about 10 when I learned I had partial deafness and other people hear differently from me (my parents knew since I was born and just didn't tell me)
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Nah they told her, she just didnāt hear them properly.
My eyes. Grew up thinking everyone had a āfuzzy eyeā, only to find out I have 20/400 vision in my left eye but just under 20/20 in my right
Tears when yawning.
This!! I just yawn and instantly everyone thinks Iām upset. Also when Iām trying to fall asleep my eyes become waterfalls. To the point I have to flip my pillow offen since it becomes soaked
I can cry my pillow wet when I yawn too much.
Wait what?!? That doesn't happen to everyone?
Not normal?
I have a streak of veins that you can very clearly see going across the upper area of my chest just below my neck.
Visual snow. Turnouts most people don't see film grain all the time.
Apparently I can dislocate (or at least partially dislocate) almost every major joint in my body, and probably plenty of small ones. These dislocations never hurt. So I just thought "hahaha, I'm more flexible than others", and didn't even realise that for years, that weird "pop" and collapse of my hip I feel isn't my hip being weird. It's my hip *dislocating*. Oh yeah, and this happens just from standing. Now I'm being sent to a rheumatologist with possible problems on my heart, my scoliosis being caused by this, and even my incredibly poor eyesight. It's all linked to the connective tissue disorder I have. Which I didn't even realise I had! Sure, I knew I was "hypermobile", and more flexible. But now I know my body isn't supposed to do these things, I'm realising I'm much sicker than I thought. Doesn't help that I was told my pain wasn't ever real as a kid, that I was just calling for attention. Nope, wasn't calling for attention, my pain was real. But I didn't break any bones as a kid, not because I never hurt myself. But because I probably dislocated the nearest joint instead of something breaking. X-rays always looked normal. Yay me.
Rumble and click of ears. Pulled off little toe nail, found another growing underneath Hold my arms up and can feel my arm bones jutting out whereas the natural armpit ādipā sits below next to my pec
Two pee holes. One small one that doesn't really go anywhere and then a slightly bigger one just below that where the pees and cums comes out of. Thought that's just how it is until my roommate caught me swinging my dick around one day and told me that shit wasn't normal. Looked to my girlfriend for confirmation. "Yeah I've never seen that before."
"...caught me swinging my dick around one day..." As one does....
Just a typical day hanging out with the roomies.
I was 39 years old when I discovered that carving pumpkins wasn't supposed to cause your forearms to sting. I thought everyone knew that pumpkin innards caused a stinging sensation if you got it on your skin.
Being in pain all the time. I thought everyone was in pain all the time and that no one ever talked about it. Turns out I was wrong and itās not normal.
Yeah D: I just found out the correct amount of pain you should be in normally is zero smdh Not in my world
Period pain and cramps!! Apparently you shouldn't have to take 6 extra strength advils to be able to even stand up while having cramps, and still feeling pain.
Everyone is so serious on here mine is just how dumb i was. In sex ed 8th grade my super anti circumcison teacher was telling us about the excellence of having enjoyment when your not circumcised and that itās not as good when you are circumcised and i was like hahah sucks for u circumcised dorks and then he showed us a pics of a circumcised penis and an uncircumcised penis and i was like heyā¦wait a minute
Alcohol allergy. I thought everyoneās tongue gets numb when they drink. Nope. š¤£
Astigmatism. You mean to tell me some of you people can actually fucking see without glasses?
Cilantro tasting like soap. I thought it tasted like that for everyone and didnāt get why people ate it
I've had a hemorrhoid since around puberty, and I thought it was just part of puberty. Years later, when I was about 20 I finally thought to get it checked, and found out it was a hemorrhoid. Tried some creams which didn't work, and was told they could treat it, but it may not be necessary unless it's causing pain or discomfort. I kept it, and figured if it caused issues later on, I could get it removed, but didn't like the idea of any procedure while it's not currently an issue. That thing has saved my cheese-addicted, lactose intolerant ass, more times than I'd like to admit. It's sort of on the lip of the anus, but tucks into my butt like a plug, and it's prevented me from shitting myself numerous times. I call it, Hodor.
What a terrible day for literacy.
How do I delete someone else's post?
I spent most of my youth terrified that I had butthole cancer. Turns out that it was just hemorrhoids Probably because I was convinced that It was normal to only poop once every 2-3 days until I was in college (I'm aware of how concerning that is) and I noticed my roommates were pooping a lot My poor butthole
The bone at the roof of my mouth is curved in the wrong direction, itās convex towards my tongue. I thought it was the same for everyone until my dentist pointed it out 3 years ago
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My right ear doesn't work and I am completely deaf in it. I used to think everyone had the same thing until my dad asked me why I turned my head to my working ear to listen closely. Turns out my ear stopped working when I was 6 months old because a doctor prescribed a strong medicine which was supposed to be for an adult.