Swallow. Do you feel a slight tickle at the back of your throat, a barely perceptible ache in your neck? Is your forehead just a little warmer than usual? Sure? Check again. Now take a deep breath, and try not to think about the weird pressure you’ve been feeling around your eyes for the past three hours. You’re probably just tired. Outbreaks caused by foodborne illnesses happen all the time—because only two people need to get sick for the CDC to consider it an official outbreak. That’s hardly cause for alarm.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Poisonous Foods You Love To Eat

So should you be concerned about parasites and pathogenic bacteria festering in your happy meal? Probably not. But then again . . . maybe you should.

10 Amoebiasis Dissolves Your Organ Tissues

If you’ve ever traveled to a different country and come back with a bad case of diarrhea, you probably picked up what the medical world calls “traveler’s diarrhea,” a relatively minor affliction caused by food that’s carrying bacteria from fecal matter.

Amoebiasis is similar, but much, much worse. Like traveler’s diarrhea, you get it by eating or drinking something with tiny quantities of fecal matter in it. Unlike bacterial traveler’s diarrhea, it’s caused by an amoeba called E. Histolytica. The amoeba enters your body through the digestive tract as a cyst, sort of like an egg. Once inside your warm, incubating stomach, the cyst hatches into a hungry amoeba. At this point, it attacks the layer of mucus lining your intestines.

The mucus lining is intended specifically to block parasites like E. Histolytica from getting through, and it usually works. But sometimes, the amoeba is able to dig all the way through to the soft tissue of your intestinal wall, where it begins secreting enzymes that break down the tissue’s proteins.

Once the intestinal wall is sufficiently dissolved, the amoeba slurps up the resulting goo and begins reproducing. Some newborn cysts are swept away in the bowel stream to continue the cycle elsewhere, while others hatch and grow in the same intestines, spreading, eating, and digging. It’s incredibly painful.

9 Ciguatoxins Reverse How You Feel Hot And Cold

Every time you eat fish, there’s a chance that you’ll die a horrible death. And while there are many ways for that to happen, one of the worst is via ciguatoxin. Ciguatoxins bioaccumulate, which means they build up as they move up the food chain. They’re produced by a type of plankton called a dinoflagellate, and by the time the toxin makes it through the gauntlet of coral, then herbivorous fish, then increasingly larger carnivores, and finally onto your dinner plate, the toxin has accumulated to biblical proportions. And that’s when things get messy.

You start to feel the toxin about two hours after eating a tainted fish—indigestion, nausea, and cramps are usually the first signs. If you’re lucky, it stops there (and it often does). But if you’re particularly susceptible to ciguatoxins, they go to work on your nervous system. You might get lightheaded, tingly, or short of breath. Your heart will be racing a mile a minute and your lips will go numb.

Finally, your neurological processes will start to misfire. One of the strangest examples of this is a reversal of your perception of hot and cold. Ice will feel like it’s burning while a lit stove will feel like, well, ice. It would almost make an interesting superpower if it didn’t signal complete neurological degeneration.

8 Cryptosporidium Corrodes Your Intestines

We’ve talked about cryptosporidium in the past. It’s usually found in contaminated drinking water, though it can also be transmitted through unwashed food. But we haven’t till now covered what happens after the bug gets inside you.

Cryptosporidium is a protozoan parasite that needs a living host to reproduce. It enters your body as microscopic oocysts, which hatch in your belly and travel through the digestive system into your intestines. There, they make a new home among your villi, a forest of tiny, finger-like tentacles that line the inside of your intestines and pull nutrients from the passing food.

But like humans on the world of Pandora, they’re not content to live among the trees. The longer they stay, the more they erode at the life-giving villi. Eventually, the intestinal wall is laid completely bare for long stretches, a condition known as villous atrophy. Give it enough time, and cryptosporidium will corrode the intestines right down to the naked tissue. The most common victims are children.

7 Salmonella Melts Your Bones

Salmonella is one of the most well-known pathogenic bacteria in the world; it’s why you always cook chicken before you eat it. Usually, salmonella stays in the gastrointestinal region, causing a few days of diarrhea and stomach cramps. But sometimes, it goes exploring. And when that happens, you’re in for a rough experience.

For some reason, rogue salmonella bacteria often migrate to the bones, especially leg bones that have a strong blood supply. The bacteria swim through your bloodstream until they reaches the marrow and cause an infection, a condition known as osteomyelitis.

Streams of white blood cells arrive to flush out the threat and begin releasing enzymes that have a very unique effect: They “lyse” the bone, or break down the cells into a fluid. The result is thick pockets of pus where solid bone once stood—prisons for the salmonella, where they’ll eventually undergo necrosis and die.

6 Yersinia Exactly Mimics Appendicitis

Yersinia bacteria are ingenious little monsters. They’re what’s known as facultative anaerobes—they breathe oxygen if there’s oxygen around; if not, a biological switch flips and lets them “breathe” through fermentation. And it all happens inside your body. You usually end up with yersinia after eating salad—the bacteria can survive at temperatures as low as 4 °C (39.2 °F), which lets it thrive on vegetables in restaurant refrigerators.

One of the most dangerous effects of a yersinia infection is pseudoappendicitis, which looks and acts exactly like regular appendicitis. In appendicitis, a major passageway in the appendix gets blocked, and over time the appendix fills with pus and mucus, expanding and putting pressure on the surrounding tissue. Eventually, it bursts, releasing that cesspool of fluids into the body cavities. Yersinia does the same thing, only the bacteria causes the initial blockage that makes the appendix swell.

5 Cryptococcosis Grows Mold On Your Brain

If you’ve ever needed a reason to wash your fruits and vegetables before eating them, here it is.

Cryptococcus neoformans is a fungus that’s found all over the world. Pick up a random handful of dirt and there’s a good chance some of this fungus will be living in it. Now drop that dirt and don’t take any deep breaths, because Cryptococcus is a merciless killer.

The fungus enters your body through your respiratory system, sending a cloud of basidiospores into your lungs and nasal passages. The first thing you’ll feel is a light tickle in your throat that quickly grows into a hacking cough. You’ll get a fever and some of the most intense headaches of your life. The fungus is now spreading across your lungs and releasing toxins into your bloodstream.

After a week or two, the fungus will spread to your central nervous system, sending fingers along your spinal cord that weave their way closer to your brain stem. There, the fungus spreads over your meninges, a thin layer of tissue that blankets the brain. You’ll begin to hallucinate. You may not die, but there’s a good chance of permanent neurological damage.

4 Trichinella Worms Create Colonies Inside Your Tongue

Trichinella is a parasitic nematode that lives in the bodies of omnivores—especially pigs, horses, rats, and humans. Since pigs are the only member of that group we eat regularly, trichinella is usually associated with raw or undercooked pork. And it’s devious.

The worm’s larvae live in cysts in the animal’s muscle tissue. When the animal is killed, packaged, and sent to the grocery store, the cysts hitch a ride down in the meat, waiting for an ideal place to wake up and begin reproducing. More often than not, that ideal place is a person’s stomach. The larvae make their way to the small intestine, latch onto its mucus lining, and begin pumping out babies. In the four weeks they’re alive, adult trichinella can produce more than 1,000 larvae.

These larvae are born diggers—their mouths are equipped with a stylet, a long serrated needle that tears the intestine’s walls so the larvae can swim into the bloodstream. There, they can pick and choose their destination like passengers on a subway. Ideally, they’re looking for thin, active muscle tissue. And nothing fits that description better than a tongue. Sometimes colonies of more than 1,500 worms form gram of tissue. And, sometimes, you never know they’re there.

3 Anisakiasis Forces You To Firebomb Your Own Tissues

In an undersea parallel to pork, squid meat often contains a dangerous parasitic nematode that migrates to humans when it’s not fully cooked. The worm in question is Anisakis simplex, a roundworm that lives in the gastrointestinal tract. Surprisingly, A. simplex by itself isn’t terribly harmful, unless you happen to have an allergic reaction to it. The real danger comes from what it forces your body to do.

Enter eosinophils, our second player in this diminutive drama of death. Eosinophils are a type of white blood cell that are mainly responsible for dealing with parasites. But like a bumbling detective in a David Zucker film, they end up doing more harm than good. Eosinophils mass around the nematodes and launch cytotoxins at them, toxins which do zero damage to the shell of the parasite. Instead, they hit the surrounding tissues and cause more damage than A. simplex could ever dream of doing.

And since the threat is still there, they call in reinforcements, until the entire site is a flashing barrage of crossfire that hits everything but the intended target. And you can die from that.

2 Brucellosis Slowly Rips Your Spinal Cord Apart

There’s a laundry list of alternate names for Brucellosis, including Maltese fever and Bang’s disease. All of them are really the same thing: an infection of brucella bacteria, which is usually found in soft cheese and unsterilized milk. To inject some optimism into this list, Brucellosis is fairly rare, and you’re unlikely to get it if you drink pasteurized milk.

But now for the bad news: It’s a chronic condition that lasts for life, and it can tear your spine in half. See, one of the major complications of Brucellosis is a spinal condition called arachnoiditis, and the combination of those two often leads to syringomyelia, a condition where cavities begin to appear along the spine. The cavities expand over a period of years, forcing apart the spine’s discs and rupturing the whole column along several points. Ouch.

1 The Chicken Superbug Triggers Cellular Suicide

Calling the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that’s being found all over chicken a “superbug” is great for shock value, but it’s really just another version of E. Coli. That being said, it’s still something to watch out for, because it’s causing a surprisingly high rate of hemolytic-uremic syndrome.

Hemolytic-uremic syndrome is the wholesale suicide of red blood cells. Most cells in the body are programmed to be able to self-destruct when needed. It’s called apoptosis, and it usually serves a purpose. For example, when you were still an embryo, your fingers were meshed into a single clump until the cells in between the individual digits underwent apoptosis and allowed your fingers to separate.

But E. Coli contains something called Shiga toxin, which hacks the programming of red blood cells and forces them to commit suicide. The result is near-total kidney failure. Since we’re having trouble stopping this new breed of E. Coli with antibiotics, complications like this are becoming more common. Right now, it’s estimated that about 50 percent of chicken in stores has the superbug.

Who’s hungry?

Most media attention focuses on illnesses that affect large swaths of people—the epidemics and pandemics. But, as strange as it sounds, there are certain ailments and mental disorders that only affect members of a particular tribe or region.

Even in Western medicine, many of these illnesses and disorders lack any tangible cause, explanation, or treatment. Most of the affected tribesmen attribute these ailments to a spirit, curse, or witch.

10 Uppgivenhetssyndrom

Uppgivenhetssyndrom is a bizarre illness that only affects refugee children from former Soviet or Yugoslav states who now live in Sweden. The children suddenly develop the illness whenever they realize that their family is about to be deported to their original country. The kids exhibit coma-like symptoms and refuse to move, talk, or eat. They just remain in their beds as if they were dead.

In a well-documented case, one of two sisters from Kosovo lost her ability to walk a day after hearing that her family was about to be deported. The other sister soon joined her, and they remained in the coma-like state for two years. Children in this condition only return to their normal selves when the Swedish government reverses the deportation notice and allows their family to stay in the country. Even so, the children take months to recover.

In another well-documented case, a boy spent three extra months in bed after his family had a deportation notice reversed and was granted a residency permit. He opened his eyes and sat up but needed support to straighten his head.^[1]

9 Amafufunyana

Amafufunyana is a disease unique to the Zulus and the Xhosas of South Africa. It often involves a person’s stomach speaking a language that the person doesn’t understand.

Among the Xhosas, for instance, there are claims that the stomach speaks Zulu. The stomach also delivers threats and dishes out orders to the victim. One woman’s stomach told her that she would never have a child. It also threatened to afflict her with seizures and kill her. Another girl was told to jump in front of a moving car.

Sufferers often experience nightmares, fatigue, and sleep difficulties. They also become angry, highly agitated, and prone to suicide. Sometimes, they even start talking in another voice.

Native healers believe that the disease is the result of a curse. The person responsible for the curse supposedly takes ants from a dead person’s grave, makes it into poison, and feeds it to the would-be victim. Once eaten, the victim begins to hear his stomach talking.

Between 1981 and 1983, amafufunyana affected over 400 schoolchildren in South Africa. The pupils suffered swollen stomachs and started running about, kicking chairs and desks. Their stomachs reportedly spoke Zulu, saying they were sent to possess the children.^[2]

Three women were blamed for the incident. Two fled, but the last was caught and almost killed by the angry children. The children were arrested and charged with assault. But they behaved so erratically in court that the case was adjourned five times.

8 Running Amok

In English, the phrase “(to) run amok” refers to the act of behaving in a wild and unruly manner. Or rather, it means “to go crazy.” The phrase is actually from “running amok,” an illness peculiar to the natives of Malaysia, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. A person suffering from “running amok” exhibits violent and unpredictable behaviors and may even commit suicide.

Running amok has been documented for about 200 years and is regarded as a mental disorder in Western medicine. It is believed to be a consequence of the isolation of the native tribes and is compounded by their spiritual beliefs. However, natives believe that it is caused by a spirit taking over the body.^[3]

The only cure for running amok is to kill the victim. This is dangerous because the victim will also attempt to murder the person trying to kill him. Another treatment is to just let the patient be. If he does not commit suicide, he could recover. However, the patient often develops amnesia and cannot remember all that happened.

7 Hikikomori

Hikikomori is a mental disease peculiar to Japanese youths. It means “withdrawal” or “pulling in” and kicks in when the youth withdraws from everyone and locks himself up in his home for months, doing almost nothing other than thinking. Some young people even exhibit traits of obsessive-compulsive disorder and repeatedly clean their rooms or cut themselves. Most victims are at least 25 years old, and 80 percent are male.

Sociologists believe that hikikomori is caused by Western influence on the Japanese labor market. Ideally, Japanese students get jobs immediately after graduating from college and remain there for the rest of their lives. However, some break this cycle and get jobs after high school or do not get jobs immediately after graduating from college. When this happens, they find it difficult to return to the same level as their colleagues who did not break the cycle.

A study sponsored by the Japanese government revealed that 236,000 Japanese suffered from hikikomori in 2010. The government does not really understand the disease. It funded research that only caused more confusion because it couldn’t even give a proper definition of the disease. The lack of classification means that victims do not get effective treatment.^[4]

6 Wendigo Psychosis

Wendigo psychosis is a mental disorder that causes the victim to develop a taste for human flesh. It is supposedly unique to northeastern Native American tribes. We say “supposedly” because the disorder lacks any concrete documentation, causing some to believe that it was made up. Some anthropologists believe that Wendigo psychosis was a general name for mental illness.

No one has ever seen a person suffering from Wendigo psychosis who was actually eating someone. In the early 1900s, missionary J.E. Saindon met a woman suffering from the disorder. The woman had no interest in eating flesh. But she avoided strangers because she was afraid that she would kill them. The only reason she wanted to kill strangers was because she feared the same strangers also wanted to kill her.

Other accounts of Wendigo psychosis are mostly controversial. One is about a man who reportedly killed and ate members of his family after the death of his eldest son. Another is about a man called Jack Fiddler who was tried and executed for curing someone with the disorder. By cure, we mean he killed the person.^[5]

5 Hwa-byung

Hwa-byung (“fire disease”) is specific to Koreans. It refers to the boiling emotions felt by a person suppressing his anger. As a result, it is also called “suppressed anger syndrome.” Koreans believe hwa-byung lasts from the time a person starts suppressing his anger until he reacts when he can’t take it anymore. At that point, the person tends to engage in long, detailed talks.

Sufferers often complain of a boiling sensation in their chests or bodies. They also become dizzy, depressed, angry, weak, irritated, paranoid, and fatigued. In addition, they suffer from headaches and blurred vision.

Hwa-byung is common among poor Koreans and Korean women between the ages of 40–50. The women often develop the disorder due to childlessness or pressures put on them by their in-laws. These women also experience hwa-byung when they discover their husbands are cheating on them.^[6]

4 Pibloktoq

Pibloktoq is also called “Arctic hysteria.” It was first detected in 1892 and is peculiar to the Inuit tribe living in the Arctic region. Sufferers often become agitated, shouting and tearing off their clothes before running naked in the freezing temperatures. This continues for hours until they collapse and sleep it off. They have recovered by the time they wake up.

The Inuit believe that pibloktoq is the result of someone becoming possessed by a spirit. In fact, they rate the illness positively since the victim could receive revelations from those spirits. As a result, victims are often left alone unless they endanger themselves.

Researchers believe that pibloktoq is caused by several factors, including the fat of animals eaten by the Inuit and a lack of vitamin A. The extremely cold weather is also considered to be a possible factor. European sailors stranded in the Arctic region in the 19th century suffered from the illness, and so do the sled dogs of the Inuit.^[7]

3 Wild Pig Syndrome

Wild pig syndrome (aka the wild man syndrome) is exclusive to the young men of the Gururumba tribe of New Guinea. Sufferers suddenly become aggressive and behave irrationally, stealing anything they can lay their hands on and shooting arrows at random people. After a few days of continuous display of irrational behavior, the sufferer runs into the bush. There, he recovers and returns as a normal person.^[8]

Members of the Gururumba tribe believe that wild pig syndrome is caused by the bite of the ghost of a dead person. The irrational actions exhibited by the victim prove that he is incapable of coping with the frustrations of life and is unable to control his behavior.

2 Grisi Siknis

Grisi siknis is a mental disorder that occurs among the Miskito population of Nicaragua. Sufferers often remain in a coma-like state until they suddenly burst into a fit of rage. During this fit, they use weapons to fight off unseen enemies and try to flee from the community with their eyes closed. They also become exceptionally agitated and require up to four people to hold them down.

Grisi siknis often affects groups of tribesmen at once. In one incident, 60 people in one community suffered from the malady at the same time. In Western medicine, grisi siknis is believed to be a form of mass hysteria and is often treated with anticonvulsant drugs and antidepressants, which never work.^[9]

Members of the Miskito tribe believe that grisi siknis is the aftereffect of a curse and often turn to traditional healers for treatment. Investigations conducted after an outbreak in the 1950s concluded that it is just hallucinations. Apparently, someone deliberately added hallucinogenic drugs into the tribe’s water supply.

1 Shenkui

Shenkui is an illness peculiar to the Chinese. It is described as the loss or the fear of the loss of male energy, which the Chinese call yang. Sufferers believe that they’re becoming deficient in yang and masculinity by losing their semen. Supposedly, this happens by masturbating, having excessive sex, experiencing wet dreams, or passing white urine.

Sometimes, the kidney takes the blame. In Chinese traditional medicine, the kidney is believed to be responsible for turning blood into semen. As a result, a shortage of semen is sometimes attributed to a weak kidney.

To avoid losing their yang, Chinese men develop pa-leng and pa-feng, the phobias for cold and wind, respectively. To combat the problem, these men wear warm clothing and eat hot food.^[10]

Two things are often very true of the modern world. No one wants to get sick, and no one wants to see the doctor. Getting sick makes you feel bad, so that’s a given. But there is ample evidence that people in need of doctors avoid care for a variety of reasons ranging from nervousness to lack of access or lack of insurance and so on. And there’s also a certain percentage of people who think they can save time and frustration by managing their healthcare at home with some DIY methods. It just doesn’t always work out.

10. Using a Plunger for Constipation 

Constipation is a symptom of numerous conditions. But regardless of the underlying cause it’s characterized by an inability to maintain proper bowel function such that going to the washroom is difficult or even impossible, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. It can get very serious if untreated for a long enough period.

In 2019, doctors wrote about a man who had been constipated for four days and sought to fix the problem on his own. Yes, there are plenty of at-home remedies for this condition but rather than use any of those, the 56-year-old chose to use the one tool we all associate with making stuck poop get unstuck: the plunger.

The patient had a history of both alcoholism and mental illness which might explain his dangerous choice. According to the paper it was the first time such an injury had ever been recorded. The man did not use the handle as you might think but rather he used the plunger as intended, sealing it and using forced air in an attempt to force out the blockage resulting in a serious perforation to the colon.

9. Self Infecting with Hookworms for Allergy Control

For some people, allergies can be brutal. Most people manage their seasonal allergies with medications that can last for a day or two at a time. You can also get shots from a doctor to help deal with symptoms. But what if you learned of another more permanent way to make symptoms go away? How extreme an allergy cure would you be willing to try?

People who suffer from parasitic infections often don’t demonstrate any allergy symptoms. This is because parasites, like tapeworms or hookworms, have an immunosuppressant effect on their hosts. The parasites don’t want to be fighting off your immune system, so they dial it back. That, in turn, prevents your body from overreacting to allergens which is what causes those annoying allergic reactions in the first place.

One researcher who noticed this, and had serious allergies, made himself the guinea pig in his own experiment. He infected himself with hookworms to see what would happen. For two years, with a hookworm happily living in his guts, he lived allergy-free. 

It’s not a medically accepted treatment by any means and comes with many dangers, but researchers are hoping they can determine how parasites cause this reaction and duplicate it, minus the worms.

8. George Boole’s Wife Treated His Illness with Buckets of Water

George Boole was one of the most important mathematicians and logicians in history. Boolean algebra got its name from him. He taught himself Greek, German and French while he was still in his teens, so it’s safe to say his genius was diverse and impressive.  However, neither he nor his wife was well-versed in medicine.

When Boole was 49 he was walking to work as a college professor and, for two miles, he walked in a cold rain. Then he lectured in his wet clothes. Shortly thereafter he came down with a bad cold and a fever. 

In an effort to make him better, Boole’s wife believed the treatment needed to mimic the cause. So, while George was sick and bedridden, she continually tossed buckets of water on him. Needless to say, the cure failed and Boole died a short time later.

7. Bleach Enemas for Autism

If you haven’t had a daily dose of outrage today, this one ought to do it for you. In 2019, it was revealed that a small group of parents with autistic children were discussing ways to “treat” their children in private Facebook groups. One of these treatments, an alleged cure for autism, involved dosing the kids with bleach. 

Autism is not an infection or virus that has a known cause or cure in the sense that something like food poisoning or a headache might. And, even if it did, bleach is toxic and not a cure for anything. That said, many of the parents in these groups still believed their children had infections, or viruses, or allergies, or were poisoned by something else. Most of us have heard the various conspiracies around autism over the years to get some idea of what might have been going on.

The “treatments” shared by parents ranged from dosing the kids with their own urine to turpentine to the very popular chlorine dioxide, or bleach, which could be administered as an enema, orally or in baths. That’s effectively a chemical torture. 

One product being sold was called Miracle Mineral Solution, a strong sodium chlorite mix that needed to be mixed with citric acid to form industrial strength bleach. The FDA issued a warning about it back in 2010. Warnings were still being issued in 2019. 

During the pandemic it was marketed as a cure for Covid. Colombian officials at that time linked it to seven deaths in America. 

6. The Carolina Reaper Was an Attempt to Cure Cancer

Aside from cats and memes and a half dozen other choice items, if there’s one thing the internet loves it’s hot stuff. Just look at Hot Ones! Spicy is always popular. And while pepper farmers are always creating new and face-melting hybrids to destroy the human palate, the reason behind some of these peppers may not be what you think. In specific, the Carolina Reaper pepper wasn’t invented just to make you feel like your tongue was on fire. 

Guinness certified the Carolina Reaper as the hottest pepper in the world in 2017 with an average Scoville rating of over 1.5 million. For some perspective, sriracha hot sauce is usually 1,000 to 2,500 at most. But Ed Currie, the man behind the Reaper, had another goal in mind for his pepper.

Currie comes from a family where cancer is common. His original goal for the Reaper was cancer treatment. Currie thinks capsaicinoids, the compounds that give peppers heat, can help cure the disease so he was developing new ones. Currie had been diagnosed with cancer in the past and has overcome thyroid and skin cancer. Since taking up eating hot peppers he’s had nothing come back, which fuels his belief he’s onto something. 

5. Goat Wet Nurses Helped Stop the Spread of Syphilis

Once upon a time, goats were far more involved in child rearing than they are today. To be specific, they were sometimes used as wet nurses. Back in the times before bottles and formula, feeding a child was sometimes much harder than modern people think. If the mother was unable to breastfeed, options were very limited. Wet nurses were employed in many places but they weren’t always available or affordable either. And, on top of that, there was a complication when it came to something like syphilis.

If either a baby or a wet nurse had syphilis, they were a danger to the other. So goats were sometimes used to help stop the spread of the disease. A goat could be used as a wet nurse without fear of disease spread. This could limit the spread of the disease and also ensure babies got fed, which was basically a win-win. 

4. A Teenager Cut Off His Own Hand To Treat His Internet Addiction

Internet addiction is a modern phenomenon and, according to one study, it’s huge. As many as 6% of the world’s population has an internet addiction. That’s about 468 million people. That’s more than the population of South America. 

One teen in China took his internet addiction problem to extremes by trying to solve it in the worst way. He cut his own hand off.

Reports say the 19-year-old chose to do it right out of the blue after leaving a note for his mom that he’d be back soon. He lopped the appendage off, called a cab, and went to the hospital. Surgeons were actually able to reattach it but weren’t convinced he’d have full use of it again. 

3. A Woman Tried to Treat Her Athlete’s Foot with Garlic

If you Google home or herbal remedies for any number of conditions, you’ll find garlic pop up frequently. It’s allegedly good for blood pressure, has antiseptic or antibiotic properties, and a lot more. But that doesn’t mean you can use it for anything, especially without insight into how or why it’s supposed to work. One thing you never want to try is to treat athlete’s foot with garlic. 

A woman in England had been applying raw garlic slices to her infected toe for four weeks. Instead of killing the fungal infection, the raw garlic managed to burn the flesh across her toe in a way that’s absolutely terrifying if you see the photos. 

Garlic contains diallyl disulfide. The compound caused the severe chemical burn, leading to red, blistered, and peeling skin across her entire toe. It can even happen to cooks who handle too much garlic at work. 

2. A Man Tried to Cure His Back Pain with Semen Injections

There is a belief among a small number of people that our own bodies somehow produce medicine. Urine therapy has been practiced in many cultures for centuries but it’s also based on nothing scientific and has not been shown to have beneficial effects. In fact, quite the opposite, it can be dangerous. But if that’s a belief people hold, maybe it’s no surprise that there are some who might seek the benefits of other fluids.

In 2019, a man in Ireland ended up in the hospital after trying to cure his back pain with injections of his own semen. He’d been giving injections in his arm and developed cellulitis as a result. During their research, doctors determined the man apparently came up with the cure all on his own as there was no evidence of anyone else having tried it online.

1. People Consumed Their Own Relatives to Fight Tuberculosis

You’ll be hard pressed to find a more medically questionable story than this one from the last two centuries or so. This is how tuberculosis was dealt with in New England, at least for a short time, in the late 1800s. It involved vampires.

So TB is spreading in a small town at a time when people didn’t understand how diseases spread. If multiple members of a family fell ill, others suspected something else was linking them. In this case, a fully undead ghoul. In one case, a mother and eldest daughter fell ill and died. Then the next daughter passed. And then the son got sick. That’s four in one house, and that raised suspicions.

Believing the family cursed, the father agreed to let people exhume the corpses of his wife and daughters. The eldest daughter and wife had decayed as expected, but the other daughter had barely decomposed and still had blood in her heart. This was likely due to the fact it was winter when she died as the ground was too cold to bury her, so she was preserved. The town disagreed. 

The girl was labeled a vampire. Her head was removed and her internal organs were burned. The ashes were fed to the son, believing it would lift the curse and fix the illness. So he consumed the burned remains of his own sister. He also died a short time later.

Celebrities like to project a sanitized image and so we often don’t realize that they suffer from problems that many of us common folk face. And, although they have the money and connections to get the best medical treatment possible, they still sometimes struggle to get a proper diagnosis or treatment. The reason for this is that there are some problems that, for whatever reason, doctors just struggle to diagnose properly even with modern medical science on their side.

 10. Nick Cannon

The affliction: Pulmonary Embolism.

Last year Nick Cannon, husband of pop star Mariah Carey, had to step down from his radio show and head to the hospital due to complications involving a blood clot. It turns out that he had something many doctors fail to notice, and that many haven’t heard of called a pulmonary embolism. This condition is a blood clot in the lungs and can be extremely deadly, and doctors are often negligent in finding it. Luckily for Nick, the doctor found the problem quickly and prescribed bed rest as part of a regiment to help him recover.

9. Rick Perry

The affliction: Sleep Apnea.

Rick Perry became well known nationwide last year due to running for president and coming across as a total goofball and a complete bigot. He couldn’t remember what government programs he wanted to cut, and some speculated that he was actually drunk. After trying desperately to figure out what was wrong with their candidate, his campaign staff realized he was hardly sleeping, and had the doctors look at him. They found that Rick Perry was suffering from sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a sleeping disorder that causes abnormal breathing during sleep, which is extremely disruptive to the sleep cycle. Most people have no idea they even have a problem, they just end up fatigued during the day, and doctors rarely find it unless looking for it specifically.

8. John Ritter.

The affliction: Aortic Dissection.

John Ritter is well known for being one of the greatest comedians ever, the star of Three’s Company, and an actor who was taken from us way too early. He died in his fifties while working due to an aortic dissection, which the doctors sadly misdiagnosed as a heart attack. An aortic dissection is caused by a tear in the inner wall of the aorta, allowing blood to flow between the layers, which forces the walls apart and is a very serious medical emergency. Unfortunately, doctors simply miss this one a lot, and think that it is a stroke instead.

7. Jimmy Kimmel.

The affliction: Narcolepsy.

Jimmy Kimmel is famous for being a TV comedian that no one finds particularly funny, though we do respect him for trying. Kimmel states that he used to try to self medicate his problems by drinking a ridiculous amount of iced tea, but when his doctor found out, he was alarmed at the amount of caffeine Kimmel was guzzling and prescribed pills. Narcolepsy is a neurological sleep disorder, and many people are not lucky enough like Kimmel to get a proper diagnosis. Often doctors diagnose it as insomnia, depression, schizophrenia or even a thyroid disorder.

6. Sinead O’Connor.

The affliction: Fibromyalgia.

Sinead O’Connor is a talented Irish singer-songwriter, also known for being fairly controversial. Among the controversy is the fact that as a woman she has been ordained a priest, which is considered completely invalid by the Roman Catholic Church. She had admitted to having fibromyalgia, a condition that affects around five million adults, mostly women. Fibromyalgia is often characterized by having a foggy memory, all sorts of tender areas on the body and lots of chronic pain. Unfortunately this condition has many other symptoms that can appear to be  other problems, and so it often goes undiagnosed, or misdiagnosed. Sometimes with early diagnosis and treatment people can live fairly normal lives, however, in Sinead’s case, it led to a temporary retirement.

5. Jennifer Esposito.

The affliction: Celiac Disease.

Jennifer Esposito is known for being in movies such as Crash and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, as well as TV shows like Spin City and Blue Bloods. Recently, she discovered that she had Celiac Disease and has become an advocate for it. To say that Celiac Disease is often misdiagnosed is an understatement. According to Esposito, the average diagnosis takes about eight years and for her it took twenty. Nearly one in one hundred and fifty American people have Celiac Disease, and it is difficult to diagnose because many of the symptoms can also be caused by other diseases. Those who are afflicted are generally fine if they don’t eat gluten, but they often deal with the symptoms for years before realizing they need to cut gluten from their diet.

4. Alec Baldwin.

The affliction: Lyme Disease.

Alec Baldwin, the aging star of 30 Rock who sometimes throws fits on airplanes because he’s told to stop playing Words with Friends, apparently is a chronic sufferer of lyme disease. He doesn’t talk much about the ailment, but did star in a movie called Lymelife, possibly to raise awareness about the disease. Lyme Disease is caused by bites from certain ticks, and is a fairly common problem, with over one hundred and fifty thousand cases since 1982. If the disease isn’t caught quickly enough it can often lead to chronic suffering, but unfortunately doctors are notoriously bad at finding the disease early, and much more research needs to be done in regard to early detection.

3. Oprah Winfrey.

The affliction: Hypothyroidism.

Oprah Winfrey doesn’t really need an introduction. When she isn’t giving everyone a car, she is busy being richer than God and more influential than just about anyone in entertainment, at least when it comes to bored housewives. On her show, she admitted that she had gone to the doctor after feeling tired and looking ill and had discovered that she had serious thyroid problems. This could also be the cause of her sometimes yo-yoing weight, as thyroid issues make it very difficult for people to maintain a stable weight. While hypothyroidism is incredibly common, it is believed that nearly half of the people who are afflicted with this don’t get a proper diagnosis. Part of the reason for lack of a proper diagnosis is that the symptoms often appear over a very long period of time, making early, or any detection difficult.

2. Justin Timberlake.

The affliction: ADD

When Justin Timberlake isn’t busy bringing sexy back, he is actually struggling to deal with ADD and OCD at the same time, and has been fairly angsty when talking about his disorder. While many people, just like Timberlake, can survive with ADD and perform quite well, it is an often misdiagnosed problem, and is easily one of the most over-diagnosed issues that exist. In fact some experts believe that incorrect diagnosis of ADD and the ensuing medication can lead to problem behaviors in youths, meaning that the common misdiagnosis of ADD can actually be quite harmful. It is likely that Timberlake really does have ADD, but unfortunately many kids diagnosed with it actually don’t have the disorder at all.

1. Stephen Fry.

The affliction: Depression.

Stephen Fry is one of the funniest men in comedy, delighting us over the years with his performances and generally being an amazing actor with excellent wit and charm. However, he has also long been a sufferer of depression and has admitted to being close to attempting suicide before. Unfortunately, going without proper treatment or diagnosis for depression, sometimes until it has reached such a dangerous point is fairly common. Worse, however, is that depression has become an alarmingly common diagnosis for all kinds of other problems and is often being prescribed to people who do not actually have a chemical imbalance in their brain, but are simply unhappy with their lives. Perhaps with better knowledge of this disorder, we can treat people properly and avoid misdiagnosis.