Ever watch a period piece movie or TV show where the well intentioned doctors used maggots in hopes of cleaning a wound? Or when lobotomies were the tried-and-true method of relieving mental disorders? We’ve come quite a long way in terms of medical progress since those days, but in other ways, we are just as much making our best guess about how the human body actually works as we were in the maggot days.
Even doctors can admit that many biological ins-and-outs remain a mystery, which can be frustrating as a patient when you’re told to take certain medications “because it helps” this or that ailment, without actually knowing why. But at the same time, you have to kind of marvel at how much there is yet to discover, even within us. It only further shows the need to continue investing in medical research, but that’s a different conversation.
Recently, several doctors online shared many things that we still don’t really know about the human body, and some of the answers were pretty surprising:
“I’m an anesthesiologist. We still don’t really know why inhaled volatile anesthetics like sevoflurane, the principal anesthetic agent used to maintain general anesthesia, work. We kind of have an idea of maybe how it happens, but really we don’t know. It’s commonly said in my field that whoever figures this out will win the next Nobel prize in medicine.”
Weird…but effective. Photo credit: Canva
That’s interesting. And now for something a tad grosser…
“We apparently don’t know precisely how our bodies can distinguish gas from poop. We have some ideas, we know there are a ton of nerve endings in the area, but the precise mechanism of our bodies telling our brains ‘this is a fart, let loose’ isn’t really understood. What blows my mind is, it’s distinct enough that we even pass gas while asleep. That difference must be wired DEEP!”
We don’t know how our bodies know, but thank goodness they do. Photo credit: Canva
Quite a few answers pertained to some topics we might never actually solve.
“The Role of Our DNA: We’ve sequenced the human genome, but a large part of it remains unexplained.”
Seems pretty important. Photo credit: Canva
“I’m a derm. We don’t know what exactly causes itching, like the molecular pathways for it. That’s why it can be so hard to find a good treatment when a patient comes in for itchy skin.”
Trial and error.Photo credit: Canva
“I’m a sleep specialist. While we do have some good theories about some of the functions of REM as far as how it affects the brain and health, we still don’t fully understand the purpose of dreaming. Like, why do we dream at all and why do dreams have a narrative instead of random incomprehensible imagery? Unfortunately this is unlikely to even be solved..”
Maybe our brains get bored while we’re out and want to watch a self-made movie? Photo credit: Canva
There were a few mysteries that pertain specifically to women’s health. Historically, women’s health research has been significantly underfunded and understudied, so this is fairly unsurprising.
“OBGYN here: we still don’t know exactly what makes labor start. We know all about the mechanics and physiology, but we don’t know what makes the average uterus say it’s ‘go time.’”
When the body knows, it knows. Photo credit: Canva
“Apparently we know next to nothing about fibroids, which like 75% of women have at some point in their lives. That’s great, considering that the largest one removed was 100 lbs- so not exactly a minor issue. There are theories about different hormones and what things put you at higher risk, but aside from having surgery to have your existing ones removed, there is basically no information on what you can to do prevent them from coming back.”
It’s a big deal and we need to understand it. Photo credit: Canva
There was also talk of how our gut—how we process nutrition, and how that affects our mental health—is somewhat of a final frontier in medicine.
“We don’t know the precise mechanism by which B12 deficiency causes nerve damage. We know that it happens, but not why.”
B12, the final frontier.Photo credit: Canva
“Not MD but PhD, right now we are working on the connection between our intestinal microbiome and neuropsychiatric disease and brain aging. For instance, people with inflammatory bowel disease are more likely to develop dementia and experience co-morbid anxiety and depression, but we don’t know why.”
“The Gut Microbiome: While it’s well-known that the gut plays a huge role in digestion, researchers are discovering just how much our gut bacteria affect other parts of our health, like mood, immunity, and even brain function.”
Some say we have two brains: in the head and in the gut.Photo credit: Canva
For those who have ever taken anti-anxiety medication…
“Benzodiazepines, BZD, are medications like Xanax and Valium. They produce anti-anxiety effects. And they have a very distinct chemical shape to fit into the BZD site in a group of five proteins. But we don’t know what is supposed to go there. Many medications are analogs of naturally binding molecules that we copy and then use to create an effect. The BZD site is for something, we just don’t know what.”
By and large, mental health is still the Wild Wild West for medical professionals, it seems.
“Doctor here. Off the top of my head, here’s a few deceptively big ones:
- Psychiatry is still shockingly infantile in our understanding of human disorders. It’s constantly in a state of flux, we don’t understand a lot about the meds we currently use, and the diagnostic criteria for disorders still changes as we realize “hey maybe all these behaviors aren’t the same source disorder”. It’s incredibly hard to diagnose when the criteria is largely based on self report and subjective observations.
- To a lesser degree than #1, neurology is still learning a lot. It’s further because you can observe more objective findings in neuro than psych, but we still struggle a lot with how brains function.”
Aren’t we all just brains trying to understand ourselves? Photo credit: Canva
And yet, another doctor writes:
“One of the few ABSOLUTES in medical science is that nobody born blind has ever developed schizophrenia.”
Goes to show, we might be in the age of information, but there is still so much of the unknown to marvel at. Hopefully it keeps us humble and curious.
