Health is just one of those topics that everyone seems afraid to discuss.
I think a lot of us believe that if we bring it up, we'll jinx ourselves and end up with something that will leave us dead.
But we can't avoid our bodies.
They're all we've got.
So it's time for some adult talk about serious matters of health.
The more you know, the better prepared.
Because sometimes a headache, isn't just a headache.
RedditorFarAsICanTellwanted to discuss medical issues we should know more about, though it may scare us. Knowledge is power. They asked:
"What is a medical condition that is a lot more serious than it sounds/looks?"
In the end, I think the one thing that COVID will teach us, is how much more about staying healthy we need to know.
Gotta Go
poop GIFGiphy"Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Crohn's, Colitis, etc). People hear bowel and think 'Oh, that's just that pooping illness' but internal bleeding, intestinal obstructions, massive amounts of pain, ulcers... it's not an easy ride even for mild cases."
sticks1218
Clusters
"Migraines and cluster headaches. We might look okay on the outside, but it's completely debilitating. I lose a lot of my life to head pain, as I mainly work and lay in bed. I have lost touch with a lot of friends and family members due to last-minute cancelation plans. Some days, it's so bad I want to drill a hole in my head to release the pain. Clusters are worse."
"This is why I'm not a gun owner. It really sucks with this condition; it's really not considered a disability. So I have to force myself to work to live, but forcing it makes it worse, so quality of life really sucks. I have to warn new coworkers that if I start slurring, talking funny, or can't find words, that I'm not drunk and not having a stoke."
"I know there's tons of horrible diseases out there, so I try to tell myself it could be worse. It also really sucks when someone tells you to suck it up because it's just a headache. Ok, sorry, rant over."
turtle-girl420
People stop breathing...
"Asthma. People stop breathing. Tv and movies like to show it as a way of identifying a weakling, but it is a serious, deadly disease. It is also super not fun. Until my mid-20s I was hospitalized at least 2x a year because my emergency inhaler wasn't enough to make me start breathing again. I bought my own nebulizer, and it is the only reason I haven't been hospitalized since."
AtheneSchmidt
It's REAL!!
"The jokes about it never being lupus. It's surprisingly common and can be incredibly disabling."
mimacat
Exactly! 'In fact it’s frequently lupus!'”
"Where I live they have the annual lupus walk fundraiser outside in summer at freaking noon. I mean, if the leukemia and lymphoma society can do theirs at night surely the lupus folks can too! We aren’t supposed to be in the sun you nimrods! Thank you for coming to my TED talk."
"PS: I’m allergic to most sunscreen. It’s awesome."
Faeidal
Bad Moves
Sad A Christmas Story GIF by filmeditorGiphy"Parkinson's. It is a whole lot more than just shaky hands."
electrishian
"Dementia via a movement disorder - it's awful. Almost one of the grimmest things I can think of."
humanhedgehog
Migraines already freak me out. And anything bowel involved gets worse with age. I knew it.
Blurred Lines
"Usher’s Syndrome. It’s a syndrome that affects vision, hearing and balance. I’m a sufferer and I was born deaf, my vision is degrading, and I inherited it from my mother who has severe tunnel vision and a blurry vision in one of her eyes. People often refuse to believe that I’ll be blind later in life. They also refuse to believe my mother is registered blind since blah blah she still can see. It’s an awful syndrome, and limits me from certain activities."
owentattoosdrugz
The Lotion Life
"Eczema is awful. I’ve struggled with it my entire life and it can be rough! I hate it when I get a bad flair up, especially somewhere very noticeable like my face, and everyone and their mother has to comment on it/offer their insane remedy and ask 'have you tried putting lotion on it?!' It gets really hard to be polite after so many comments like that. Eczema SUCKS."
anniepoonannie1988
Flappy Bird
"Type 1 diabetes. I generally down play it to 'I can just take insulin and can eat whatever I want' because it's easier than explaining I'll be playing a game of Flappy Bird the rest of my life where if I get the dosage wrong I can die immediately and without warning, where if I don't have insulin for 3 days I die a horrible painful death, and if I ignore it I can go blind and lose the ability to digest food. And all the freaking beeping devices, all day every day. It's beeping at me right now. Oh, and insulin costs $600 a month, so that's cool."
CrackSammiches
Brutal Effects
"All the autoimmune diseases. The amount of pain suffered is incomprehensible. The medications can be brutal with side effects, and can cause other issues. The impact on families and the mental health of the patients is almost always negative. Most of the diseases are degenerative, and there is no cure for any of them."
mykidsarecrazy
“what are you deaf?”
deaf american sign language GIF by Nyle DiMarcoGiphy"Deaf/HOH backstory: both sides of my family have back hearing backgrounds. My father is deaf and my mom's side just has bad hearing in general. I had good hearing most my like until I was about 14ish. Discovered I have progressive hearing loss and I’ll eventually go completely deaf."
"It just sucks cause It’s so hard to communicate and do most things like a normal person and most people don’t understand that. For example when I ask someone to repeat myself and they say “'what are you deaf?' Yeah I f**king am."
Proper-Type7899
In the Head
"Migraines."
"Edit: I have a combination of vestibular and vascular migraines. Since pain, dizziness, visual aura, photophobia and phonophobia are not visible symptoms, others who have never experienced migraines will never be able to understand why it's to be taken seriously. People have to understand that a migraine can also be a symptom of something worse."
sweettooth_92
Horrible
"Shingles."
Back2Bach
"It can infect your eye and cause blindness. It can cause such severe pain and debility, you require long term nursing care (nursing home). Shingles are horrible."
Secret_Choice7764
"My fiancé's grandmother had it near her eye and it spread to her brain and she died. Awful illness."
Alone-Blueberry
"get stomachaches sometimes"
"GERD. Can't count the number of people who say I just 'get stomachaches sometimes' or 'everyone gets heartburn.' I have esophageal scarring and have a restricted diet just so I don't spend days in agony because I decided to drink a sprite. I had a feeding tube attached to my stomach for years because I couldn't swallow and everything irritated my esophagus."
"My concerns weren't taken seriously by doctors and I spent two weeks in a hospital struggling to convince them I wasn't anorexic. Even my voice is affected, I sound raspy to various degrees all the time."
PeculiarInsomniac
Snooze
seth meyers lol GIF by Late Night with Seth MeyersGiphy"As a narcoleptic: people tend to think it's funny/quirky that I will fall asleep randomly but get all serious when I'm suddenly lying asleep in the middle of a crossroad."
evoli21
Bodily Functions
"Hypothyroidism. People think it just makes you fat, but if your thyroid stops working it can wreck your life. So many bodily functions are controlled by your thyroid. Every weird symptom I had for years can be explained by my thyroid going out, from years long exhaustion to depression to my hair falling out to muscle aches to anemia to shortness of breath to brain fog to intermittent double vision. There are more. Those are just the most prominent ones for me."
PetLemur
under research...
"PCOS. Horribly unpredictable and often painful menstrual cycles, chronic fatigue, anxiety, depression. Keeping to a specific diet works for a week or so and then all of a sudden doesn’t. It’s also horribly under researched so the only guidance from doctors I’ve ever received is 'usually we tell PCOS patients to lose weight but you don’t have weight to lose so idk.'"
megpal426
Adapt Correctly
"Hashimoto‘s or any thyroid disease. The thyroid essentially controls your entire metabolism. The dosage of medication needs to be adapted throughout your life (especially in the beginning it‘s weekly blood tests). And if the dosage is wrong you can have all sorts of lovely symptoms including but not limited to:"
"Not being able to focus, brain fog, being extremely tired/exhausted, weight gain/loss, hair loss, shaking, digestive issues, menstrual cycle issues, etc."
little_mealmaid
Miserable
"How about OCD. People think it just makes them quirky and particular. I've seen it where people end up harming themselves, and can't function in society. Or how about carpel tunnel? It can make your life miserable, but people just make fun of it for whacking off too much."
ooo-ooo-oooyea
restless
assist jimmy fallon GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonGiphy"Restless Legs Syndrome. Yes it is real, and yes it disrupts one's life, especially the ability to sleep. Lack of sleep then leads to a whole host of other conditions."
Mymoggievan
something more...
"Snoring!!!"
lostinrandomworld
"Often a sign of something more serious, like apnea, which can impair cognitive function, cause weight gain, and trim years off your life."
BudgetHero
"If you snore, you may also quit breathing for seconds at a time. Get a sleep study. Sleep apnea causes problems with the cardiovascular system, neurological system, etc. Snoring seems annoying and sometimes funny, but it's not."
711spaceace
Are y'all taking notes. Stay informed... to stay alive.
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Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.
