39 People Shared Their Most Shocking Body "Abnormalities" And It's Really, Really, Really, Really Fascinating
We previously covered a thread by u/Jesus-Chr that asked the Reddit community: "What's weird about your body?" The BuzzFeed Community then chimed in with their own body quirks and abnormalities. If you're squeamish, proceed with caution! Here's what people shared:
1."I have a rare condition in which my large intestine is smashed over to one side of my torso, and my small intestine is smashed over to the other side. The only reason we discovered this one day is because they decided to switch places, causing extreme pain. They have switched places a total of four times in my life. It's really painful and kind of gross hearing your goopy bits flop around inside of you."
2."My fingerprints have almost faded away. I'm 56 and can't use those fingerprint readers for anything. It happened to my mom, and now my 31-year-old daughter's prints are going. It's weird!"
3."My husband has a disorder called Congenital Mirror Movements (CMM) in his hands. For example, he can't wiggle his fingers on one hand without his other hand involuntarily doing the same. He saw a neurologist as a child, and although it's pretty rare, it doesn't really cause any issues. He says he wouldn't know if it did since he's always had it. He doesn't know what it's like to move one hand without the other following suit, which seems wild to me."
4."I pulled my belly button out from an innie to an outie when I was 5."
5."My birthmark is on my inner butt cheek, so it looks like I missed a spot when wiping."
6."I don't get brain freeze from cold drinks or slushies. Instead, I get 'back freeze' in a spot the size of a quarter just below my right shoulder blade. It's excruciating."
7."I'm an identical twin, and my body developed based on my sister's position, which was a mirror image of me. So, now I have situs inversus totalis, a condition where my organs are mirror images of a typical person's. In other words, my pancreas, gallbladder, heart, and liver are on the wrong side of my body. I had an echocardiogram not too long ago, and the doctor was so excited because it was her first time seeing it. Fun fact: If just the heart is affected, it's dextrocardia."
8."Several members of my family, including me, have a sort of allergic reaction to white pepper. The top of our heads itches. It's not bad, but it's very noticeable. We can always tell if there's white pepper in any dish we eat. I don't know anyone outside my family who has ever experienced this."
9."I have Clinodactyly, which means my pinkies are bent, and they've worsened with time. Now they're at a 50-degree angle. Also, I have three nipples."
10."I am biologically female. I was born female. I live in a female body. I am 100% male at the cellular level. My DNA is male. I no longer have the blood type I was born with. I had a stem cell transplant from a male donor. I have his blood type and DNA now."
11."My husband has a tooth that grew from the side of his gums under his tongue while in his 30s."
12."The two lower bones in my left arm are not connected to my elbow joint. They float, basically. By medical standards and scientific standards, I shouldn't be able to use my arm at all, but I can. It's tough to explain to people. I usually end up just showing the X-ray. They can't reattach them either."
13."My spleen started eating all of my platelets when I was 16. I had it taken out, then found out 10 years later that it had grown back to the size of a lemon. Had it removed again."
14."I still have baby teeth in my 40s. Some of my adult premolars never developed. Both my kids are normal, though. Since they're baby teeth, I must brush and floss religiously to keep them healthy."
15."My doc said my body breaks down toxins very quickly, so when I drink or even smoke weed, I have to overwhelm my system with it just to get an effect. I have elasticity in my ligaments, so I dislocate my shoulders, ankles, and hips easily. I must work on strengthening my ligaments every week to prevent them from loosening. Since I started that a year ago, dislocations have rarely occurred."
16."My teeth roots are all shaped like hooks — full-on candy cane shapes going in different directions. My dental X-rays are a Lovecraftian nightmare."
"One of my molar's roots took a 90-degree turn in my jaw. I had to have that one removed many years ago, and when they did it, they had to saw out part of my jaw. It took forever, and they had to give me like a billion shots to keep my face numb. I went back years later to get another tooth (normal roots) pulled, and I was surprised there was no saw and just pliers, and it only took a few minutes."
"I have crossed nerves in my mouth, so numbing my front teeth means numbing from canine to canine and my palate. It took six rounds of ineffective numbing for it to be diagnosed."
17."My body does not make its own antibodies. So, once a week for the last 15 years, I've had to get an infusion of antibodies pulled from plasma donations. If you donate plasma, thank you for keeping me alive! It's a genetic autoimmune disorder called common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) with associated lymphocytic granulomatous disease. When I was 20, my body just stopped making antibodies and started making B-cell granulomas. I almost died from the initial infection swarm, mainly pneumonia. Things have been surprisingly low-drama since I've been on antibody replacement therapy."
18."My eyes have been misaligned since birth. I've had two surgeries (one immediately after birth and one in high school) to try to correct it, but they are still misaligned by about one degree (possibly more now, considering it's been many years). This means I've never been able to use both eyes at once, so I do not have depth perception. People sometimes ask what it's like not having depth perception, and my response is, 'What's it like TO have depth perception?' Until the second surgery, I had to wear glasses, but afterward, my eyes were close enough that my brain could automatically choose which one to use based on the distance of whatever I was looking at. This is handy because one of my eyes is near-sighted, and the other is far-sighted, so I get both advantages. I'm also double-jointed in the hips and can put my feet behind my head, and I walk duck-footed thanks to my weird feet."
19."I've heard of kidney stones and gall stones, but I didn't know about salivary duct stones until I got one. Mine was in a more unusual location for a stone: the duct in my cheek instead of the ones under your tongue. If you've ever had your mouth water so hard that it actually hurts just behind your jaw under your ear, it felt like that but magnified. I was able to work the stone out of my cheek."
20."I have a condition where the cartilage in my knees is slowly disintegrating. So basically, my kneecap grinds against my joints whenever I bend it. Sometimes, my kneecaps slide out of place, and I must pop them back in. My doctor said I'll probably need both knees replaced in my 30s."
21."I have an extra pair of ribs, and both my kidneys are on my right side. [I found out about my kidneys] through an ultrasound. I came in with a gynecological issue that had nothing to do with the kidneys, and boom. I was randomly told (and shown) that I have them on the same side. Seeing an empty space where the left kidney should be was wild. [The extra set of ribs are] at the bottom of my rib cage. Unfortunately, I already have a short torso, so the distance between my pelvis and bottom ribs is small. It's completely unnoticeable, though."
22."I was getting custom molded ear plugs made to block out the sound of our next-door neighbor and his (at least) three different alarms that go off between 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. I have always struggled with the normal foam earplugs and have never quite been able to get them to fit properly or have much sound-deadening taking place when I did manage to get them crammed into my lugholes. The audiologist taking the impressions of my ears commented that I have 'unusually narrow ear canals.' Guess that explains the problems with other earplugs!"
23."I know what human spinal fluid tastes like. Last year, a sinus specialist discovered I had a seven-millimeter hole in the wall between my left sinus cavity and my cranial cavity. I have no clue exactly how long it's been there, but I've had a 'runny nose' for as long as I can remember. It was spinal fluid. Very salty. I got it patched up, and after some wild headaches, while my cranial cavity regulated the pressure, I'm doing much better. I've seen replies of people having the same symptoms. I highly encourage you to see a specialist because CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) leaks are how meningitis can happen. Tell your doctor that the liquid is clear and watery and has a very salty taste. Those are the hallmarks of CSF."
24."I have a vein in my arm that I can pick up through the skin with the index finger and thumb of the opposite hand. It's wild."
25."I have a little stump on my pinky that's an extra finger. The doctor wrapped thread around it when I was born."
"Cool! I was born with 11 fingers as well (an extra pinky), although it didn't look the way it should. They made one pinky out of the two, but a small piece of nail from the extra pinky stayed behind and now grows out of the side of my pinky, near the joint. I have to clip that mini nail sometimes because it's so sharp."
26."I have a tic disorder, and one of my tics is flexing that ear muscle that makes me hear like a kind of static and drowns out loud noises."
27."My hair grows with strips of colors. It's brown, blonde, and white in striped segments. I also have pretty distinct Blaschko's lines on my right arm because one pattern is freckled, and the other is not. It could be chimerism. I found out I was intersex at 22. What my doctors thought was a cyst behind my ovary my entire life turned out to be a fully formed testicle. That was a surprise, to say the least. I had my son at 19, so I was genuinely confused that was possible. I fell out of insurance for a while and never got a genetic test. Made sense why my hormone levels were off in my teens — high testosterone and DHEAS — so chimerism kind of fits the bill."
28."I have a sliding rib that I can pop back and forth like a fidget toy."
29."My right ear has a little point at the top, like an elf. My son's right ear has a notch like it's missing the extra I have. Weird!"
30."I can sleep with my eyes fully open, and apparently that's weird to people."
31."I have Trochlear Groove Dysplasia. There's a groove in your knee that your kneecap sits inside. My left knee is almost totally flat and doesn't have a groove. This means my kneecap is very prone to dislocating. I'm currently dealing with a major dislocation that's likely going to lead to my third major surgery on it. Seeing as I'm only 30, I'm unsure how this will go as I age."
32."I have a condition called scapular winging that makes me pop out my shoulder blades on command. I call them my little wings. I can move them and basically flap them. It's caused by nerve damage somewhere. It does not harm me or my body except if I do it too much, which can cause shoulder issues."
33."I have a straight line of freckles from my shoulder, down my arm, to my middle finger."
34."The right side of my head hair has started turning silver, but I have almost no silver hair on the left side. I also randomly became allergic to almost everything I used to eat daily."
35."I can pop my sternum. Now and then, I get a feeling in my chest. If I stand up straight and open my arms wide, wider, way back, I eventually reach a point where the shoulders almost hurt, and there is suddenly a loud pop right in the exact middle of my chest as if the sternum has a seam down the middle and it opened a bit. There is a feeling of things loosening up, the same way that cracking your knuckles makes them feel more flexible."
36."I can wiggle my ears, dilate my eyes on command, and make my eardrums vibrate to help damper loud noises, but I can't think in pictures and color."
37."I had seven wisdom teeth."
38."I have incredibly loose ligaments, but I’m super inflexible because my muscles have all tightened up to act as ligaments to protect the joint."
39.And: "My uterus is inverted, meaning it’s tilted the opposite way than normal. I also have calcium deposits that come out of my bottom jaw under my tongue. I got both of these traits from my mom, except her calcium deposits are huge compared to mine. I can also wiggle my ears."
Wow — I am genuinely fascinated and fighting the urge to WebMD all my own quirks and abnormalities! Do you have any unique body features you'd like to talk about? Feel free to share in the comments or reply anonymously using this form!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
