Medical students learn thousands of facts about the human body, and every so often, one is so wild it overrides the exhaustion and makes them think, ‘Whoa, so cool.’ So when u/mathematica28 asked the doctors and med students of r/medicalschool for those moments, they didn’t hold back. Here are 19 facts that blew their minds:
1. “Sperm can get out of the uterus through the fallopian tube into the pelvic cavity. Everyone did a collective WHAT in lecture that day.”
Ivan-balvan / Getty Images
2. “Women with normal anatomy have a direct connection from the outside to their peritoneal cavity, through the vagina, uterus and fallopian tubes.”
Source: StatPearls | Kenhub
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3. “There have been cases of pregnancy from only one ovary and one fallopian tube — on opposite sides.”
4. “Neutrophils put sticky proteins on their chromosomes, then launch them at enemies in a suicide attack, all while bombarding the invaders with vesicles full of oxygen bleach. These are called NETs, or neutrophil extracellular traps.”
Source: PMC
5. “When you want to perform an action, the cerebellum gets a report on the current position of the body and the intended position from the frontal cortex, and subtracts the two to form a motor plan. But the cerebellum is also constantly updated about the speed and force of muscle contraction as the movement is happening, and it updates the plan in real time — fine-tuning and correcting the movement even as it’s occurring.”
Jose A. Bernat Bacete / Getty Images
6. “When I found out bone marrow transplants were just an infusion of cells through an IV — not an injection straight into the bone marrow — it blew my frickin’ mind.”
Source: Medscape
7. “Bone marrow treatment is mostly chemotherapy so intense it’s essentially at the LD100 of the drugs — the dose that would kill you. The only reason you survive is that they rescue you afterward with a reinfusion of stem cells.”
Source: ASH Blood
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8. “We commonly develop ‘cancerous’ cells, and our body finds them with super-intricate surveillance and kills them before they grow. I never realized our body fends off cancer every day!”
Source: PMC
9. “Amniotic fluid is composed of fetal urine, which is then swallowed.”
10. “Enterocutaneous fistula — an abnormal connection between the GI tract and the skin. Basically, it’s your intestine draining to the outside of your body.”
Source: StatPearls
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11. “The reversal agent for heparin is protamine sulfate — a basic protein derived from fish sperm. You’re welcome!”
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Source: Goldfrank’s Toxicologic Emergencies | ScienceDirect
12. “Any drug name ending in ‘-mab’ is a monoclonal antibody.”
Source: WHO INN
13. “Anastomoses — a natural cross-connection between two vessels or tubes. I literally had no idea that was a thing before anatomy.”
14. “Pattern recognition — once you see it, it’s incredible. If a drug is fat-soluble, small, and uncharged, it crosses membranes easily and works orally. Because it’s fat-soluble, it tends to collect in the liver and fatty tissue. That kind of pattern follows for a lot of drugs.”
Source: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry | dvm360
15. “Alcoholics get all kinds of vitamin deficiencies. They often don’t actually eat, and the alcohol itself blocks nutrient absorption. Serious alcoholics get a lot of their calories straight from the alcohol, but those are empty calories, which is part of why they end up so malnourished.”
Source: PMC
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16. “An infectious-disease doctor giving a lecture on HIV meds told the class he’d rather be HIV-positive than have insulin-dependent type 2 diabetes.”
Md Maruf Hassan / Getty Images
17. “Oxytocin and ADH evolved from gene duplication, so when you’re severely dehydrated, ADH release can cross-react with oxytocin receptors and push pregnant women into premature labor.”
18. “A surprising amount of disease is actually inflammation — our own macrophages going berserk. Pathogens, through their virulence factors, essentially trick our own system into hurting itself.”
Source: Nature Medicine
19. “One of the most emotional moments I’ve had in med school was reading one line in First Aid: ‘Smallpox eradicated worldwide by use of the vaccine.’ Reading further, smallpox killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century alone. So much suffering alleviated through basic knowledge of our own immunology. Truly cool stuff.”
Are you in medicine? Tell us the fact that blew your mind to learn. And if you’re not, let us know in the comments if any of these made you stop and think for a second!
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