The gradual process of decline that brought the Roman Empire to an end is one of the all-time favorite history topics. That a nation so powerful could fall has always acted as a warning to any subsequent state that rose to a privileged geopolitical position. The ascension of Commodus in AD 180 is considered by many as the beginning of the end. But in reality, the exhaustion of Rome had started long before.

10 Unclear Succession System

Augustus, the first Roman emperor, could never establish a clear imperial succession system. The result: When the time came to replace an emperor, there were numerous rivals for the throne competing with one another.

Sometimes, the potential emperors had an incentive to end the service of the ruling emperor prematurely so that they could take the throne for themselves. This is part of the reason behind the long record of imperial assassination plots.

The imperial succession was a fragile, unstable system. Within the first 200 years of imperial tradition, Titus (r. AD 79–81) was the only emperor who succeeded his own father, Vespasian, and Commodus in AD 161 was the first emperor to be born to a ruling emperor, Marcus Aurelius (r. AD 161–180).

9 Currency Debasement

When Emperor Nero faced serious economic issues, he decided to debase the currency. Nero reduced the purity of Roman coins by decreasing the amount of precious metal in them. He did this gradually, expecting that the coins would still be accepted for their nominal value. But the reduction in purity became noted, followed by inflation.

The coin debasement became a tendency followed by subsequent emperors. The denarius, the most common Roman coin in circulation, had an average silver content of 91.8 percent during the time of Nero (r. AD 54–68), 76.2 percent during the time of Marcus Aurelius (r. AD 161–180), and 58.3 percent by the time of Emperor Septimius Severus (r. AD 193–211).

8 Inflation

Debasement of Roman coins triggered a severe inflation problem. By AD 301, Emperor Diocletian was forced to issue an Imperial Edict on Prices to control inflation. During the 150 years prior to Diocletian’s edict, the value of silver had increased 86 times and gold, 45. The edict did little to solve the inflation problem.

A measure of wheat in Roman Egypt that sold for six drachmas in the first century AD increased to 200 drachmas by AD 276. Egyptian wheat sold for 78,000 drachmas in AD 324 and over 2 million drachmas by AD 334. The price of 0.5 kilograms (1 lb) of pork was fixed at 12 denarii by the edict but cost 90 denarii by AD 412.

Another side effect of inflation was the hoarding of coins. Unlike the debased coins, the “good coins” were kept as long as possible. Archaeologists have found many coin hoards from the late Roman Empire, a sign of economic uncertainty.

7 The Year Of The Four Emperors

The AD 68–69 period is known in Roman history as “The Year of the Four Emperors,” which may be considered a premonition of the countless episodes of imperial instability and double-crossing that would later affect the Roman emperors.

After the death of Nero in June 68, the three emperors that followed only reigned for a short time: Galba for seven months (assassinated), Otho for three months (committed suicide), and Vitellius for eight months (also assassinated). In AD 69, Vespasian became the next emperor until his death in AD 79.

The political turmoil of this period is reflected in the writings of Tacitus. His introduction to this period of Roman history (Histories 1.2) reads: “The history on which I am entering is that of a period rich in disasters, terrible with battles, torn by civil struggles, horrible even in peace and four emperors killed by the sword.”

6 Army’s Diminishing Returns

During the times of the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire, the Roman army was supported with the booty of conquest. Each new region that was conquered by the Romans brought new land, new slaves to be sold, new taxpayers, and other forms of wealth.

When the Roman Empire reached its maximum size, the army activity became largely defensive. There was no booty conquest to support the soldiers, and the army had to be supported by taxes.

Once the guarantor of Roman growth and prosperity, the army gradually and ironically became a necessary evil that drained the wealth of the Roman people. The increasing tax pressure required to run the army forced many members of the Roman middle class into poverty (Matyszak 2008: 227).

5 Barbarian Pressure

Previously, one traditional explanation for the fall of Rome was that barbarian invasions led to its disintegration. Although the barbarian pressure played a role, this was not the only reason for the fall of Rome.

Many waves of barbarian armies weakened both the northern and eastern borders of Rome, gradually shrinking the size of the empire. Rome lost Britain in AD 406 when the Roman legions stationed there were summoned to continental Rome due to the threat of the Huns. Rome was sacked in AD 410 by the Visigoths under the leadership of Alaric.

By AD 455, Spain and North Africa were lost to the Vandals, who also sacked Rome the same year. Barbarian pressure was not a new thing in Rome. What was different this time was the almost complete incompetence of the Roman army to successfully repulse the invaders as they had many times in the past.

4 Praetorian Guard Corruption

The members of the Praetorian Guard, a special branch of the Roman army, were household troops for the emperor and his personal bodyguards. As the power of the army increased, the Praetorian Guard occasionally got involved in the process of appointing new emperors, usually favoring those who favored them.

Their involvement grew larger until they were able to literally make and unmake Roman emperors. In many cases, the Praetorian Guard simply murdered these emperors. By the third century AD, no Roman emperor could rule without the support of the military in general and the Praetorian Guard in particular.

Perhaps one of the most astonishing signs of the Praetorian Guard corruption was a practice called the “donative.” This was an economic incentive paid to the Praetorian Guard.

The reasons for this incentive varied. But one type of donative contributed to the political instability of Rome: A pretender to the throne would promise to pay a substantial reward if he became emperor. The sooner the acting emperor “finished” his government, the better for the Praetorian Guard’s pockets.

Emperor succession became truly messy during the late history of the Western Roman Empire. Many emperors died by the sword of their own bodyguards, who were anxious to receive their donative.

3 Concentration Of Wealth

Although Rome is often depicted as a glorious and advanced nation in the imagination of the general public, social inequality was deeply rooted in Roman society. The backbone of the Roman economy was agriculture. It has been estimated that more than 90 percent of the late empire’s population were rural poor and endured a precarious existence.

This also implied an imbalance between the rural and the urban. Cities were sometimes seen as “predators” on the labor of peasants leading to the exhaustion of the land. Based on osteological studies of Roman skeletons from all periods and all parts of the empire, health issues linked to malnutrition were a common occurrence (Tainter 1990: 133; McKeown 2010: 58).

2 Size Of The Empire

The size of the Roman Empire caused a number of issues. Distances were so long that travel across the empire took weeks. Its borders were so big that they required a considerable army presence to keep them safe. But above all, it was no longer possible to control this vast realm from the city of Rome.

These challenges forced Emperor Diocletian to split the empire in two. The Western Roman Empire was centered around Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire had the city of Byzantium as its capital.

The size of the Roman Empire is central to the study of its fall. It has stimulated many academic discussions about the limits of territorial expansion affecting all political units of a considerable size. Even today, historians and sociologists keep exploring this intriguing topic.

1 Romulus Augustulus Deposition

On September 4, AD 476, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain. Odoacer had served in the Roman army for years and had attained the rank of general.

A Roman emperor being deposed by a military leader was nothing new in Rome. The novelty was that nobody else was named emperor after Romulus Augustulus’s deposition and that Odoacer was crowned as king of Italy.

At this point, the Roman Empire was a shadow of its former self. Even the capital of the Western Empire had been moved from Rome to Ravenna. The Roman West was no longer an empire. It had dissolved into several smaller political units (kingdoms and city-states). The imperial traditions remained alive in the Eastern Roman Empire until its fall in 1453.

The human body is truly marvelous. It can cope with ridiculous demands, heal itself, feed itself, and most importantly, protect itself from harm. However, our understanding of the true mysteries of human anatomy and how the body works is far from perfect. Many times, we’ve been confronted with new diseases that we simply didn’t even know existed. Some of these ailments may have been the basis of folklore and cultural beliefs. Others are, well, just plain weird for those not initiated in the ways of medicine. Here are 10 truly weird symptoms that may signal an underlying deadly disease.

10 Forgetting To Breathe

Yes, you read that right. People sometimes forget to breathe. When pressure begins to build on the brain for whatever reason—be it due to a large bloody stroke, an expanding tumor, or the accumulation of water within the brain matter (hydrocephalus)—the brain is eventually pressed against the skull. This often affects the breathing centers, located in the brain stem.

So yes, the age-old (and morbid) joke of someone forgetting to breathe actually comes true. It’s far from being a laughing matter in real life, however, as it often signifies a buildup of intracranial pressure that may eventually end in death.

9 ‘Dancing’

You know that feeling when you can’t sit still and the beat of the music just takes over your body? We’re not talking about that. In the medical field, music and dance inclinations aside, there exist several severely degenerative diseases that result in the patient having uncontrolled, jerky movements, otherwise noted by nonmedical individuals as a form of dancing.

Such movement are referred to as hemiballismus and result from certain portions of the brain losing their inhibitory control of movement. Though quite interesting at first glance, the symptom is quite debilitating and oftentimes requires an intensive amount of medications to keep the patient from moving or exhibiting jerking movements.

8 Hypersexuality

It’s joked that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but it turns out that the human sex drive is written into deeper parts of the human brain. Hypersexuality and inappropriate sexual behavior (as well as desires to put things in one’s mouth and the loss of normal fear responses) are all part of a group of symptoms that describe Kluver-Bucy syndrome, a rare disease often seen in people who have sustained large amounts of damage to the portions of their brain responsible for keeping these emotions in check.

Unfortunately, no amount of psychotherapy or medication can truly correct this disease. Often, patients are left highly highly irritable and, well, aroused by pretty much anyone . . . and anything.

7 Complete Paralysis While Completely Awake

The thought of being completely paralyzed while totally aware is often the stuff of nightmares and cheesy indie movie plotlines. But however strange and horrifying as it may be, this can sometimes become a frightening reality for some patients, an affliction known as locked-in syndrome (LIS). Many patients who’ve sustained massive (just short of fatal) brain damage go into a state where they’re unable to move, communicate, or feel—but are often conscious and aware of all that is happening around them.

Chances of recovery are often slim, with most patients remaining in this state until they die. Several famous cases of LIS include Stephen Hawking, who is afflicted with ALS, Rom Houben, a highly publicized car crash survivor who was trapped in the state for over 23 years, and Jean Dominique Bauby, a French Philanthropist who later founded an organization dedicated to helping those with LIS.

6 Testicles Larger Than Your Body

Imagine having large testicles. Now imagine that they’re larger than your torso. Now imagine being unable to move due to the sheer bulk and size of your enlarged testicles. Such a condition called elephantiasis, which can also refer to enlargement of the feet or legs in addition to the genitals.

It’s usually the result of parasitic infection, particularly by filarial worms, which are small roundworms often found in the soil in African countries. These worms burrow into people’s legs and block off the conduits draining them, thus leading to an accumulation of water under the skin . . . including the scrotum.

Other times, testicular swelling may be due to other conditions that may cause pooling of fluid near the testicles, a symptom otherwise known as hydrocoele (or hematocoele if that fluid is blood). Thankfully, most of the time, this condition is highly curable when caught early. So yes, it would be advisable to check yourselves, gentlemen—every single chance you get.

5 ‘Burning Up’

Have you ever been so mad that you felt like you could erupt into a fiery inferno of hatred and spite? Medically speaking, the closest you can possibly get is malignant hyperthermia. This is a rare condition that occurs after undergoing surgery, specifically after undergoing general anesthesia. Body temperatures can get close to 41 degrees Celsius (105 °F), causing tremendous damage to tissues not used to such an elevated ambient temperature.

Malignant hyperthermia is often caused by an inherited defect in an individual’s normal temperature response. Unfortunately, most people who suffer from this are often unaware that they have the mutation until they’re sent to intensive care after surgery, thus giving a new meaning to being “hot” in bed.

4 Being Hurt By Sunlight

No, we’re not talking about Twilight or Edward Cullen. Instead, we’re looking at the medical condition that spurred the whole legend of vampires and associated ways to dispose of them, namely light and garlic. This condition is called porphyria, a general term used to describe the buildup of porphyrins in the body due to an inability to produce heme from the porphyrins. Some types are more severe than others.

So how exactly do people with porphyria behave? First, they are deathly afraid of light, since light triggers a reaction in their skin that causes severe pain. Secondly, they exhibit a ghostly pale complexion, mostly due to their aversion to sunlight. They’re also afraid of garlic because the odor aggravates most of their symptoms. On top of this, their urine takes on a purplish hue, almost as if it was blood. Does that all sound familiar? Thankfully, porphyria is exceptionally rare these days. Those afflicted with it are often confined to the pages of adolescent female fantasy literature.

3 Fear Of Water

We’ve all seen cats and dogs exhibit aversions to water. But can it ever happen to humans? Apart from fear of drowning (or the neglect of personal hygiene), the fear of water, specifically of swallowing, has often been seen in cases of rabies.

Sufferers don’t truly fear water. The rabies virus triggers a severe muscle spasm around the throat. Those who’ve succumbed to the encephalitic stage of rabies display a severe aversion to and difficulty with swallowing, making it appear as though they have a fear of water. Rabies is highly fatal disease if untreated, so if you’ve sustained a bite from a suspected rabid animal, go to your local hospital immediately.

2 Completely Ignoring A Body Part

People can be forgetful; they forget their car keys, their wives, and their kids. But what happens when you feel that a certain body part, or an entire side of your body, doesn’t exist? Don’t say it can’t happen. People who’ve suffered strokes and were lucky enough to survive often display this symptom.

For some, it’s as minor as not utilizing the affected body part in reflex movements. In more extreme cases, it actually leads to all-out denial that a left or right side even exists. Studies have shown that the condition goes beyond the affected body part simply being weak but rather is rooted in a portion of the brain going haywire.

1 Self-Mutilation

A lot of times, we take the act of self-harm to be a symptom with psychological roots. The individual may be troubled or is coping with numerous problems. However, individuals may go as far as to mutilate their own lips, tongue, and fingers when afflicted with Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (LNS).

LNS is a genetic disorder that involves problems with the body’s ability to recycle uric acid, a byproduct of normal cell recycling. The uric acid pools in undesirable areas of the body, such as the brain. This then causes many of the seemingly psychological symptoms that we see—the most obvious of which is gross mutilation of the body.

Dr. Keith Andrew Chan is an internist, video game enthusiast, and writer of many, many weird things. He is often spotted at coffee houses, leeching off their free wifi, and spending time running away from wild bears and sea critters. He writes for cebumd.com and has appeared in several national health publications.

No one wants to get sick with anything whether it be the common cold or some rare genetic condition that most people have never even heard of before. Unfortunately, disease is a part of life that all of us have to deal with at some point in time. We can all hope that whatever we do come down with is gentle and we overcome it quickly. Sometimes, however, even the most well-known illness can throw you for a loop with an extremely weird symptom that you never knew was possible. 

10. People With Diabetes Insipidus Need to Drink Up to 20 Liters a Day

When your body cannot produce insulin, either at all or in the correct amounts, you become diabetic. There’s a lot more to it than that, but the gist of it is you have some kind of insulin deficiency. Fortunately, Frederick Banting invented a process for making insulin many years ago and now most diabetics can live long lives as a result, though there are still many complications. But that’s if you have diabetes mellitus. 

While a typical diabetic needs to worry about things like ketoacidosis and in some serious cases diabetic comas or peripheral neuropathy, one thing you rarely hear about is the need to drink 20 liters of water per day.

Someone born with diabetes insipidus has to drink constantly. This condition is actually very different from “normal” diabetes. You produce insulin just fine but your kidneys are not able to concentrate urine properly. As a result, those afflicted may produce as much as 20 liters of urine every day. A typical person makes one to three. You can understand why those with it need to drink so much as a result. If they didn’t, the victim could foreseeably suffer deadly dehydration. 

9. Extreme Cases of Anorexia May Result in a Layer of Fine Body Hair

While anorexia nervosa is classified as a mental health condition, it’s also the deadliest mental health condition and has serious effects on your physical body. Even in cases when the disease is not deadly, it still can wreak havoc with how your body works. One of the most unusual side effects of anorexia is a condition called lanugo.

Lanugo, which can also affect newborn babies, is characterized by a soft, downy coating of white fuzz all over the body. It’s believed that this layer of hair helps protect the baby in the womb and insulate them. Usually it disappears while they’re still in the womb, or shortly after birth.

For those with eating disorders, it’s believed that the severe malnutrition causes the body to start shutting down. The lanugo hair grows again for much the same reason as it does on the unborn baby. It is there to insulate and protect because the body realizes it’s in great jeopardy. 

8. Too Much Vitamin A Can Cause Your Skin to Come Off

If you have ever been looking for a reason to avoid eating the liver of a polar bear, this is it. Hypervitaminosis A can be triggered by the extreme amounts of vitamin A found in polar bear liver, but also any extremely high source of vitamin A can cause it as well. 

Side effects of taking too much vitamin A can include things you might expect like headache and vomiting, as well as blurred vision and liver issues. But it gets so much worse. One of the most unusual symptoms is that your skin will start peeling off. Not just a single layer, either, but multiple layers leaving you red and raw. 

One Arctic explorer who had been consuming too much vitamin A felt like his feet were sore and took his socks off, peeling the soles of his feet right off with them. His ears, penis and more suffered the same fate, shedding like the skin of a snake. A single ounce of polar bear liver can do it. But other arctic animals like walrus, seal, reindeer and arctic fox all have high concentrations, too.

About 250,000 to 300,000 IU of vitamin A is toxic. Polar bear liver has 9 million. 

7. Severe Hypothermia Can Cause You to Strip Naked and Hide

Even if you don’t know all the symptoms for hypothermia, you can probably guess a number of them if you’re even remotely familiar with the condition. Exposure to extreme cold can lead to a dangerous drop in body temperature, shivering, confusion and death. 

In rare cases, in the final and most dangerous stages of hypothermia, some victims will display a symptom called “terminal burrowing.” Like an animal going into hibernation by digging a hole, the victim will literally try to hide or bury themselves as a form of protection. Typically, this still happens indoors, and the person has hidden under a bed or behind a dresser as though the confined space will protect them . 

Along with terminal burrowing there is paradoxical undressing, believed to be related to peripheral vasodilation. In this case, people suffering severe hypothermia will actually strip off all of their clothes. Obviously this makes little sense from the outside, but the idea here is that the body had constricted all the blood vessels in the extremities in an effort to keep the vital organs warm. Over time, all of those muscles become exhausted and then relax again. This causes all the warm blood that was kept in the vital areas to rush back to the extremities. 

Essentially you’re the victim of one final hot flash which makes you feel super warm and, since many victims are suffering mental confusion at the same time, they take their clothes off because they feel too warm. 

6. A Sense of Impending Doom is a Side Effect of Wrong Blood Type Transfusions

ABO incompatibility is the name for what happens if you get a blood transfusion of the wrong blood type. You either have type A blood, type B blood, type AB blood or type O blood. You want to mix the same blood types whenever possible. Type AB is the universal recipient and can get a transfusion of any type in a pinch. Type O is the universal donor and anyone can take O. But you never want to mix any of the others. O can’t take AB, A can’t take B and so on.

If you do mix types, rare though it may be in the modern world, ABO incompatibility causes a range of unpleasant symptoms from fever to back pain to blood in the urine. But the most unusual is a sense of impending doom.

A sense of impending doom is also an occasional side effect of some medications, and even jellyfish stings. It doesn’t manifest as anything physical, but a general sense that something terrible is going to happen to you. So just imagine this feeling of fear that the world is ending or you’re going to die and there’s no specific reason for it. You can’t explain it and there’s no specific thing that you can blame it on. You don’t think someone is after you or that you have a disease. You just think you’re going to die or something terrible is going to happen to you. That’s the sense of impending doom. 

5. Nicotine Withdrawal Can Cause a Sense of Time Dilation

Have you ever tried to overcome an addiction, especially cold turkey? It’s not the easiest thing in the world by any means and nicotine is one of the hardest addictions to get past. Part of the reason for this is that cigarette withdrawals affect the way you perceive time.

Beyond irritability and anxiety, nicotine withdrawal can alter your perception of time by as much as 50%. That means every minute you don’t have a cigarette seems 50% longer to you than it does to someone who doesn’t smoke. This altered time perception feeds into those other symptoms like irritability making it all even worse. 

In experiments, people forced to abstain from smoking were simply asked to estimate how long a 45 second interval was. The test was done with smokers, non-smokers and then smokers who were in withdrawal. The average guesses were off by 50% for those in withdrawal which is how the time warp effect was determined. The non-smokers and the same people who guessed wrong but were then allowed to smoke were fairly accurate. 

4. Covid-19 is Proving To Have Several Odd Symptoms

The world is still learning about all the side effects and symptoms of covid-19. Because there are so many variants, and so many ways people react to it, there’s a lot we still don’t know. But what we have learned is, in some circumstances, pretty weird.

One symptom that has been reported is face blindness. This means that you cannot recognize faces anymore, even those of close friends and relatives. You can still recognize a person’s voice and know who they are, but your brain lacks the ability to discern their face as one you recognize. 

In other cases, this time with children who have contracted covid-19, pink eye is presenting as a symptom. Most commonly associated with bacterial infections.

3. Parkinson’s Can Cause Tiny Handwriting

Parkinson’s Disease is a condition that affects the brain. This degenerative condition is mostly associated with symptoms like shaking limbs and head, imbalance and poor coordination and slow movement. There are a host of lesser known and less obvious symptoms as well.

One of the strangest symptoms, and also one that can help in early diagnosis, relates to handwriting. Those who suffer from Parkinson’s often have tiny handwriting. Also called micrographia, the longer a person writes, the more cramped and small the letters tend to get. 

Your ability to write is controlled by the same parts of the brain that are affected in all of those other ways by Parkinson’s, so while tremors become a visible symptom later on, this small writing can be an early warning of what’s to come. As many as half of patients with Parkinson’s also demonstrate micrographia in their handwriting.

2. Pregnancy Can Cause Pitting Edema

Swelling is one of the more common side effects of pregnancy. However, there are degrees of swelling that a woman can endure when this happens. In some rare cases the edema and fluid buildup can get so bad you can actually poke your finger into the flesh and leave noticeable dents or pits.

Pitting edema has also been linked to depression-related weight gain which is even more unusual.

1. An American Cancer Patient Developed an Irish Accent

Foreign accent syndrome is something that’s usually related to brain damage. A section of the brain is injured, and the victim ends up speaking with an unusual accent afterwards. It’s rare but not unheard of. But that’s when it’s related to a traumatic injury or stroke.

There is at least one case of someone getting cancer and, as a result, they developed an Irish accent. The patient, a man from North Carolina, had developed prostate cancer. Nearly two years after his diagnosis, the Irish accent crept into his speech and he could not stop it. Doctors had stated that he had never spoken with an Irish accent before, had never been to Ireland, and had no history of psychiatric conditions that might explain it. 

Instead, it was blamed on a paraneoplastic neurological disorder which can occur when your body’s own cancer-fighting cells attack the spinal cord and parts of the brain by mistake.

No one likes to be sick, and in the age of Covid this hits home more than ever. The moment you get a cough or fever, you have to wonder if it’s just a cold or something worse. And even if it’s not a devastating and lethal illness, if you’re sick with anything, you’re going to be dealing with symptoms that make your life miserable, even if only for a few days. So when that happens, try to take some comfort in knowing that, as awful as you feel, each one of those symptoms is doing a job and trying to help you in some way.

10. Vomiting

Emetophobia is the technical term for a fear of vomiting and a surprising number of people suffer from it. Though, in a severe form, it’s rare. In general, as much as 8.8% of the population has at least a mild fear of throwing up. It’s not hard to understand, either, since vomiting is not all that enjoyable. So why does it have to happen at all?

Well, from a very basic standpoint, it seems clear that you vomit because your insides want something outside and they can’t wait. And that’s exactly what’s happening. Something has triggered your digestive system to suggest you ingested something bad. A toxin, a poison, something that is a severe irritant and your body no longer wants it around.

There are mechanical reasons for vomiting as well, such as conditions that affect the nerves and muscles in your stomach, or even stress, but that’s a different issue. As a symptom of an underlying virus or infection, vomiting is your body’s way of trying to speed your recovery by forcing the thing making you sick right back out.

9. Shivering

With many illnesses, you’ll find yourself running between temperature extremes. One minute you’re cold and the next hot. And while a fever has its own purpose, which we’ll mention shortly, what’s the point of feeling cold and shivering? 

Shivering when you’re sick and feeling cold is essentially stage one of a two stage process. The second part often leads to a fever, but they need to go hand in hand. Your body wants to heat up to fight off infection, but it can’t do that out of nowhere. You need to make the heat somehow and that’s what shivering is for.

Your muscles begin contracting and relaxing rapidly. That physical process creates heat. Once your body has reached a high enough temperature, the shivering stops and then a fever sets in. 

8. Fever

The process by which a fever works in your body is not something most people consider. You get sick, sometimes you get a fever. On a deeper level, many of us understand that this increase in temperature is your body’s way of trying to fight off an illness. But how?

Fevers can be triggered by a number of illnesses, be they infections or viruses, and more. Your body is reacting to something it understands as undesirable by producing white blood cells in a greater abundance. These white blood cells stimulate your hypothalamus, which is what generally keeps your body in balance. One of the things it maintains is temperature. In simple terms, it turns up your internal thermostat so you get hotter than normal. 

As blood vessels contract, your blood goes away from the outside of your body to the inside. You shiver, producing more heat, and your body warms up. 

Most viruses and bacteria function in a host body at a stable temperature. They can only handle so much variation. Your immune system forces your temperature to rise in an effort to kill off as much of the invading pathogen as possible and return you to good health. The problem, of course, is that a fever that goes too high can be a danger all on its own. 

7. Runny Nose

When you’re sick, everything in your body seeks to get the cause of the sickness out and, more often than not, it can only do that in a gross way. In the case of a runny nose, your body needs to amp up mucus production in the hope that whatever infectious thing is inside of you gets stuck and oozes out. 

With something like a cold, the pathogen making you sick managed to get past the mucus lining in your body, which is a natural filter. Your body responds by making something called cytokines, which are proteins that can move between cells and send signals throughout your body. In this case, they signal your immune system to increase mucus production. 

Excess mucus is used to clean the mucus lining and flush out any contaminants or pathogens that may have infected it. It’s like your body trying to powerwash itself from the inside, basically. Without this excess mucus production, you would be more inclined to either stay sick or get sicker.

6. Coughing and Sneezing

The dreaded cough is one of the first and most notable signs of a myriad of conditions that plague us, especially during the winter. Cold and flu season are the cough’s natural habitat. Like vomiting, coughing is a reflex action your body takes when it senses something that it doesn’t want inside of it. Unlike vomiting, it’s a little less picky about how it operates.

Basically, anything that irritates your breathing is going to cause coughing. That’s why a cold makes you cough, but so does smoking or getting a nose full of pepper by accident. Your body has sensed something that doesn’t belong in it and is trying to force it out with a blast of air that can actually propel things outwards at up to 50 miles per hour.  Sneezing performs essentially the same function.

As we just saw, mucus production is a by-product of many illnesses, so, in those cases, coughing is a complementary action that helps clear your airways to ensure you can keep breathing. On the other hand, various proteins in our immune response can cause inflammation in our throats and airways as a method of combating infection or viruses. A by-product of this is also a cough, since your airway is inflamed. The cough itself may not be eliminating anything in those cases. In general, however, both a cough and sneeze are working to remove pathogens from your airways.

5. Sore Throat

So what tends to come along with a cough, a fever, and excess mucus? A sore throat. Something like a chronic cough can exacerbate a sore throat and make it feel worse, but it’s not typically the root cause of a sore throat. That’s actually something we just mentioned when dealing with coughs – inflammation. 

You can think of inflammation as similar to a localized fever. The places in your body that become inflamed when you’re sick get red, they swell, and they warm up. Your body is trying to fight off something in that specific location where inflammation has occurred. Many of us think inflammation is caused by what’s wrong with us, but technically, is your body trying to fix what’s wrong with you. 

The inflammation triggers the production of white blood cells that go to the inflammation site to combat whatever infection is plaguing you. When the white blood cells and antibodies reach the site of the swelling, they put pressure on nerve endings. These two things together create the feeling of your throat being thick and swollen, as well as in pain. Uncomfortable though it may be, it’s a sign your body is working as it should to fight off the illness. 

4. Loss of Appetite

Getting sick often means losing your desire to do almost anything. And while you may not be in the mood to physically run around and do things, even necessary biological imperatives like eating can take a back seat. Loss of appetite is a very common symptom of many conditions. 

Blame the cytokines again for this one, as the suppression of appetite is a method your body uses to focus on healing. Digesting food can take up as much as 15% of the energy your body expends in a day. When you don’t eat, that energy can be used instead to help fight off the illness that you’re battling. 

The other potential reason is that, if you’re vomiting because you’re sick with an infection that’s giving you stomach issues, it’s pretty clear you don’t want or need to be putting more food inside of yourself at that moment. So your body is holding off on the desire to eat until you’re physically able to do so. 

3. Pus

Pus is probably one of the most unpleasant substances made in the human body. It’s thick and can sometimes smell just awful. It’s also a prime indicator of a seriously bad infection. But it’s not the infection itself, it’s your body’s response to an infection. As off putting as it may be, if you didn’t have the ability to produce pus then you’d probably be in a pretty bad way.

When you have an infection, pus builds up around it. It’s just white blood cells looking to eliminate that infection. Problems arise when the infection is worse than your immune system can handle. For instance, a foreign body can’t really be destroyed by white blood cells, so an infection will grow. Likewise, an abscess may only get larger as tissue dies and the infection grows bigger than your immune system can manage. 

Consider, however, that if you couldn’t produce pus, then your first line of defense against infection wouldn’t exist and even a small skin infection could potentially become deadly.

2. Drowsiness

For many of us, getting sick means spending the day in bed. Even when you go to the hospital, they put you in a bed. It’s probably the most prescribed treatment in the world for nearly every conceivable condition. So the fact that getting sick often makes you drowsy makes a lot of sense. 

Sleep is necessary for life, even if we don’t fully understand the mechanisms of everything that happens when you’re out for the night. But we do know it allows your body to take the time to repair itself from damage. When sick, sleeping is especially beneficial since you’re not wasting time on waking endeavors. Everything from digesting to thinking to moving takes energy your body could be using to heal when you’re awake. You’re just more efficient at healing when you’re asleep. 

Research has shown that in worms, certain nerve cells release neuropeptides when they’re ill. These neuropeptides stamp down the nervous system and make the worms fall asleep so they can heal. It’s been speculated a similar process is occurring in humans as well. 

1. Sickness Behavior

Sickness behavior may sound like a vague term, but it kind of has to be. It’s a blanket term for that hard to describe feeling when you know you’re sick. It’s everything we already described, and then how you deal with it when you experience it. You feel slow and gross and tired and weary. It doesn’t matter which sickness you have, sickness behavior is how you personally deal with it.

Cytokines and other proteins are at the root of your sickness behavior, the suite of awful symptoms you feel when you’re ill. And while some of the individual things have functions, which we’ve covered, the overall feeling of awfulness seems to exist as a measure of preservation and isolation. You feel awful to keep yourself from getting up and doing anything else. A sort of self-quarantine, really. Stop the spread of illness to others, stop the strain on yourself, and just focus on recovery.

Usually when you hear about a genetic condition in the media, it’s presented as rare. You may be surprised to learn that around 60% of people will endure some kind of health problems related to a genetic condition. The symptoms can range from extremely mild to absolutely devastating. Many of the more common or severe conditions get a lot of media coverage, but there are numerous others which bring a host of unusual symptoms along with them that are lesser known. 

10. Angelman Syndrome

Angelman Syndrome affects about 1 in 12,000 to 20,000 people. Its cause is related to a problem with a gene on chromosome 15. Either the maternal copy of the gene is damaged in some way, or there are two paternal copies present.

Those with Angelman may have developmental delays and issues with balance and speech. However, there are some other characteristics of the condition which make it very unique. One of them is how it affects the disposition of children who are born with it. Though they may experience intellectual disabilities, children with Angelman’s are frequently noted to have remarkably happy and excited dispositions. Smiling and laughter are hallmarks of the syndrome. 

People with Angelman typically have a lifespan as long as those who don’t have the condition, although they may require lifelong assistance. Another unique aspect of the condition is that many of those diagnosed with it have a fascination with water. 

9. Snatiation

Snatiation may be a fun word to say, but it’s an odd condition to have. The name is a portmanteau combining “sneezing” with “satiation” and gives insight to what exactly happens when you suffer from the condition. Those who have it sneeze after they feel full from eating. 

First identified in 1989, the condition has been studied little because, let’s be honest, it’s not a pressing concern for most people. Basically, what happens is that, after eating a meal that fills you up, you’ll sneeze a handful of times. The case was first reported in a man who sneezed about four times after every meal, and most of his family did the same. So clearly it was genetic in nature. One person recorded 22 sneezes as a personal record. Annoying, to be sure, but not dangerous. 

The type of food has no effect on the condition, and the sneezing isn’t a continual, painful, or even disruptive thing, but it may happen for someone’s entire life. 

8. Favism

Favism sounds similar enough to favoritism that you may not even realize it’s related to a genetic condition at first. That said, it is a condition that affects people who are deficient in an enzyme called glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase. This enzyme is important to maintaining red blood cells. Now, even if you have the condition, you’ll likely be fine in general. The problem arises when a person who has it consumes certain compounds that can be found in medication or specific foods. When those are ingested, red blood cells can burst inside the body and lead to severe anemia.

So far it sounds like a curious condition, but not all that weird. That part comes in when you look at what triggers this anemia reaction. It’s fava beans, hence the name favism. You can also suffer the same fate by eating broad beans which are in the same family as fava beans and contain the same glucoside compounds.

The symptoms will manifest within six to 24 hours. Victims will become jaundiced and may have dark urine. The condition can potentially be life threatening. 

7. Klippel–Trénaunay Syndrome

Klippel–Trénaunay Syndrome can express itself in many ways. The congenital vascular disorder is very often denoted by dark-colored birthmarks as well as overactive bone or soft tissue growth.  For many people, it can be debilitating. Since it often presents in a single limb, it can lead to things like fingers or toes fusing. But for Matthias Schlitte, the German Hellboy, it turned out to be an odd blessing. 

Schlitte has confirmed he was born with the condition despite online rumors that he did this to himself. And in this case, the “this” we’re referring to is that arm. Schlitte is a professional arm wrestler because his Klippel–Trénaunay Syndrome caused his arm to grow unusually muscular. Though he looks like he spent his whole life only lifting weights with one arm, the condition is mostly responsible for what has happened 

He discovered when he was still a little boy that one arm was just much stronger than the other. Encouraged by his mother, he took up arm wrestling and has exploited it to his advantage. His arm grew to 46 centimeters, or about 18 inches in diameter, while the average bicep is under 14 inches. 

6. Adermatoglyphia 

By the numbers, the odds of a stranger somewhere in the world having the exact same fingerprints as you are one in 64 billion. As far as we know, it has never happened. But there is a much greater chance that someone in the world has no fingerprints at all, thanks to a condition called adermatoglyphia. 

One of the rarest conditions in the world and so far only linked to a few families, the only side effect seems to be entirely smooth finger pads. It first came to the attention of a dermatologist in 2007 when a patient came in with a problem. She couldn’t travel from Switzerland to the United States because she had no fingerprints, and no one had ever encountered that before. As it happened, many of her family members had the same problem.

A little digging turned up a mutation in a gene called SMARCAD1. How it caused them to not develop fingerprints is still unclear, and no other symptoms seem to come along with it. 

5. Short Sleep

The amount of sleep a person needs can vary based on several factors. The Mayo Clinic has a chart arranged by age with recommendations that range from seven hours for adults to as much as 16 hours for infants. But that seven plus hours is the absolute low end of the scale and doctors generally agree that lack of sleep can bring a host of serious health problems.

That said, there are some people in the world who are genetically short sleepers. A mutation of the DEC2 gene is the culprit. Those with the mutation can cut their sleep cycle much shorter, clocking a brisk four or five hours before waking up as refreshed as the rest of us who need a full seven or eight hours. 

In mice that had the same gene manipulated, the production of a hormone called orexin was altered. Orexin regulates wakefulness. Your body produces it when it’s time to wake up and a narcoleptic produces too little. But those with the altered gene make it earlier in a sleep cycle than the rest of us, to no ill effects. 

4. Total Color Blindness 

You can quickly find an online test for colorblindness and it’s likely to be a circle made of colored bubbles. There will be a number in the center formed of reddish bubbles surrounded by green bubbles. If you can’t read that number, you’re colorblind. But that’s just one kind of colorblindness, often called red-green colorblindness.

There are several ways a person can be colorblind, and red-green is the most common. Blue-yellow is another less common version and even more rare is monochromacy. This version affects one in 33,000 people and they see no color at all. The world is simply black and white. 

On the tiny island of Pingelap in the Pacific Oceans, monochromacy is very common. This is because, in 1780, a tsunami killed all but around 20 people on the island. The king, one of the survivors, had a genetic condition that caused monochromacy. He set about repopulating the island as best he could and his descendants carried the colorblindness gene,

Today, sufferers need to wear dark glasses during the day because the sun essentially blinds them. However, their night vision is remarkable. Around 10% of the island have the condition and, at night, they can work and function as well as most of the rest of us do in full daylight. 

3. Methemoglobinemia 

Skin tone can vary greatly from one person to another and for a variety of reasons. Typically, we’re all familiar with the common range of skin tones, however, and it’s rare that you would ever see a person whose skin tone could be described as surprising. This was not the case with the Fugate family, whose skin was blue. 

In the 1820s, in a place called Troublesome Creek, Kentucky, there was an entire family of blue-skinned humans. Martin Fugate, the patriarch, had skin described as being “indigo blue.” He married a woman named Elizabeth Smith, and four of their seven children also had blue skin. 

In the 1970s, a baby named Benjamin Stacy was born with skin the doctor described as “blue as Lake Louise.” He was the great grandson of Luna Fugate, herself the great granddaughter of Martin, and just as blue. 

Martin passed a condition called methemoglobinemia to his children and, as a result of inbreeding, the condition continued. The recessive gene remained in the family line and manifested again with Benjamin Stacy when he was born. Their hemoglobin can’t carry oxygen through the blood and many patients who have the condition, which can also be caused by medication, will die. But if enzyme levels are in the right balance, a person could live a full life as all of the Fugates did. They’ll just be bright blue. 

2. Honeymoon Rhinitis

Also called Honeymoon Nose, Honeymoon Rhinitis is a condition where sexual activity leads to nasal congestion and sneezing. The symptoms can manifest at any point during a sexual interaction but seem to occur most often right after. They are not caused by any direct stimulation of the nasal cavity or mucous membranes in the area. The cause is unknown.

It has been theorized that the condition may be caused by emotional stimulation and anxiety. It becomes a parasympathetic response as various hormones and emotions build during the activity and then, boom, your nose turns against you. Another theory has a psychiatric component, with sneezing being a physical manifestation of the emission of sexual tension. 

Both men and women can suffer from it, and it resolves itself once the situation is no longer present. That means when the sexy times are done, the symptoms leave in about five to 15 minutes.

One thing worth noting is that the condition isn’t necessarily predicated on actual sexual activity with a partner. It may even occur as a result of sexual thoughts, which could potentially be remarkably frustrating and embarrassing depending on circumstances. 

1. Fatal Familial Insomnia

If you’ve ever suffered insomnia or another sleep disorder, you know it can get bad fast. The feeling of exhaustion that refuses to go away and, in time, problems focusing and mood changes. Fatal familial insomnia is a genetic condition that takes this to terrifying new levels.

The condition is caused by a mutation in a gene that produces a cellular prion protein. It can manifest in a person’s 20s all the way to their 70s, though most victims are in their 40s when symptoms begin.Once they begin, a person may have between seven months and six years to live. It cannot be cured.

Symptoms start out as difficulty falling or staying asleep, what you’d consider typical of insomnia. As it progresses, there may be muscle spasms, stiffness, mental deterioration, rapid heart rate and finally death. 

Treatments involve measures to try to induce or maintain sleep, but they are only band aid solutions. Over time they fail to provide relief.