Many of us are so used to how we perceive things that we barely think about how things could be different, on a sensory level. But here’s the rub: the way we see, hear, and interact with the world in our day-to-day lives can be very different from how others experience it. Sometimes, it takes a doctor’s appointment, a random test, or an objective outsider’s comment to make us realize that something’s very different about our bodies.
Some of the braver members of the AskReddit community opened up about their personal biological quirks that they were stunned to learn about, from suddenly realizing that they’re color-blind to having rare allergies and more. Keep scrolling for their stories.
#1
I was 22 when I found out I barely had a sense of smell. Random allergy test for something else flagged up some weird lactose intolerance thing that knocks the smelling device in my headholes on its a**e when I eat dairy. Gave up dairy for a few weeks. Turns out the world f*****g stinks, and life without cheese or milky delicious cereal isn't worth living. No regrets.
[eats large piece of cheese].
Image credits: Crow_eggs
#2
I didn't know until I was in my twenties that people had different faces, unless there was something usual like a really big nose or a scar. Turns out I have me some face blindness. When I was working in a grocery store around 2000, I saw this woman walk in. I thought she was really cute, so I watched her as she shopped in the produce section. It wasn't until she came up to me a greeted me that I realized she was my then live-in girlfriend. Once I learned there was something called face blindness, it kind of changed my life.
Image credits: utnapishtim
#3
I thought music has colours for everyone until I realised no one understands what i'm talking about. 10 years later I discovered there's actually a name for it - synaesthesia. Thanks, criminal minds :)
Image credits: anon
Everybody has their biological and behavioral quirks; there’s no way around it. But they can be a real nuisance. Someone might feel self-conscious that their ears are a certain shape or that they constantly sneeze whenever they get near cute and cuddly animals. Someone else might find it exhausting that they can’t dine out with their friends as often as they’d like due to their numerous food allergies. Or someone’s still shocked that they’re actually color-blind and literally see their environment differently from most other people.
It can be emotionally taxing dealing with all of this. And nobody’s dismissing the impact of these biological quirks. However, reframing how you view them can reduce some of that anxiety you feel. For instance, instead of seeing your color blindness as a ‘burden,’ you could try to see it as something of a superpower or cool mutation.
On the other hand, instead of focusing on your uniqueness, you could go the other way and look for commonality. There are likely millions of other people around the globe with similar genetic mutations as you. There’s strength in finding a community that can support you.
#4
Period pains that no otc d***s would touch and that kept me home from school several days every month.
I was just told it was the curse of being a woman and that periods are supposed to hurt.
Turns out I have endometriosis and the pain was caused by internal bleeding every period.
Thanks mom.
Image credits: luckyjayjay
#5
My science teacher held up a color blind test, the one with all the colored dots, and everyone in class is yelling out the answers and I'm looking at them like the guy at the beginning of Ghostbusters getting shocked and wondering how the girl is getting them right. This cleared up a lot of confusion with my crayons.
Image credits: anon
#6
Being able to dislocate one of my shoulders at will.
An orthopaedic consultant then told me that I shouldn't do it even if the Queen asked me to. Fortunately that situation has never actually arisen.
Image credits: FuckCazadors
According to Enchroma, there are a whopping 350 million people who are color-blind on our planet. Though this is far from the majority, it’s such a large minority that you never have to feel alone with your condition if you get diagnosed with it. Literally a third of a billion other human beings know what you’re going through and can potentially guide and support you. That being said, it’s still not an easy life.
Color blindness affects around 1 in 12 men, as well as 1 in 200 women. 90% of color-blind people admitted that it does affect them at work, while 75% said that they need their colleagues’ help to verify certain colors.
Around half of students with this condition are less interested in drawing, painting, and art galleries. And more than half of color-blind women revealed that they left out of activities like shopping, makeup, and fashion, where color plays a key role. Furthermore, nearly half of all color-blind people didn’t find out about their condition until the 7th grade.
#7
Being born with only one ear and a few other issues with my face. Potential diagnosis of mild Goldenhar's. I thought it was the best thing ever and totally normal until I got to school and tried to make friends. Nobody likes the ugly freak. Had a new ear created in 2001/2002 by the wonderfully renowned Dr. David Matthews of NC. It failed and had to be removed. They never learned why. I've since accepted it and no longer give a f**k what others think about it.
#8
My internal monologue is entirely in song. My mind is a musical and I didn't know that was odd till I was talking to my GF when I was like 25...
Image credits: anon
#9
I genuinely believed that everyone's hands and feet turned blue in the winter, and hurt all the time during the summer, or in high temperatures.
Turns out I just have Reynaud's Phenomenon.
Image credits: Danger_Possum
What are some of your biological quirks that you were shocked to learn about, dear Pandas? How did you realize that your life experience is different from that of the folks around you?
How do your biological differences affect your life, whether for better or for worse? What advice would you give anyone who’s shocked to learn that their body works rather unusually? Let us know in the comments!
#10
My best friend got glasses when she was 10. Until that point she had no idea that trees had individual leaves on them, she thought they were just green blobs on brown trunks like you draw when you are a kid.
Edit: To clarify, of course she knew they had leaves, but she just thought they fell from the big fluffy tree blobs. Not sure about if she had climbed a tree, maybe she was just too busy playing to make the connection.
Image credits: psprouse
#11
I didn't realize people breathed through their noses till I was 18. I thought they were just there for occasionally smelling things. Turns out I had a severely deviated septum.
Image credits: 2194779109
#12
Hypermobility - apparently it freaks people out if you stand with your knees bending the wrong way.
Image credits: _Hopped_
#13
The two little toes next to my big toe are connected part way up. My mums are the same. Didn't know it was weird until i bought toe socks when i was about 10 and they really hurt my toes so i told my dad and he was just like yeah you and your mum are actual freaks.
Image credits: TheDanaA
#14
The constant ringing in my ears. Took me years to realise that not everyone experienced it and it was actually tinnitus.
Image credits: surpluslime
#15
My friend has a 3-inch tail, he didn't seem to think that was abnormal until I told him no one else has tails.
Image credits: H20fearsme
#16
I never thought much about the weird yellowish lumps I'd sometimes find in my mouth until I realised they were tonsil stones and not everyone gets them.
Image credits: kellswastaken
#17
For decades I just sort of assumed everyone's head would fill up with these terrifying, violent scenarios that would make you feel like a terrible person. It was either that or I was a psychopath. I figured everyone felt the need to do stupid little things like me, but it turns out saying a made-up prayer in your head every time you have a violent intrusive thought to keep yourself from going to hell is abnormal.
I found out much later that OCD wasn't always just counting steps while wanting everything neat and tidy.
(edit): To anyone reading or commenting here, now thinking they have OCD or any other related illness - trust not what you read on the internet to give you a diagnosis. Take what you've read and written here and think long and hard; if you still feel that my experience fits your symptoms, talk to your doctor, male an appointment with a therapist or psychiatrist and be open and honest about what you experience. Leave it to experts who are sitting in front of you to diagnose what you're experiencing.
#18
I thought everyone had tiny red bumps on their shoulders and arms. Turns out I have keratosis pilaris.
Image credits: Emilina_
#19
Food would routinely be very hard to swallow.
Often would get stuck and involve either throwing it up or forcing it down with other food or water.
Lived like this until 21.
Turns out I had eosinophilic esophagitis. It's basically a constriction of the esophagus due to allergic reactions that are more or less permanent without treatment.
I sought after medical help, upon my first endoscopy the scope found my throat to be 7mm in diameter.
A normal one is 20mm for comparison. I've since had upwards of 10 dilatations to achieve a normal status of 15mm.
All is well now.
#20
Getting an itchy mouth after eating chinese. I figured it was part of the whole "hungry one hour later" thing. Turns out I'm allergic to soy.
Image credits: teriyakiburns
#21
Turns out its not normal to have constant feeling of fight or flight due to anxiety.
#22
Even though I have a year long tan thanks to genetics, you could still see all my veins across my whole body. I looked like a human road map. I also shook a lot.
It wasn't until someone mentioned how weird it was that I went to the doctor about it.
Turns out I had been severely deficient in many nutrients for years.
Image credits: anon
#23
Grew up with PCOS. I thought everyone had periods once every 2 or 3 months which would completely flatten them. I'm talking 10-12 days of pain so bad you can't get out of bed.
Image credits: mydearestangelica
#24
I have anosmia (can't smell). When I was younger, I just thought that I was being stupid when people said "ohh, can you smell that?" and I couldn't. However, now I'm older, whenever someone asks if I can smell something I just can't. It became pretty obvious when a manure truck drove past me and a friend one day and I had no reaction.
Image credits: Alfetta
#25
That only using the phone on one side was completely normal, and everyone picked a side.
Turns out I'm just deaf in the other ear. Explains why headphones never worked properly for me.
Image credits: lacedragon
#26
I thought everybody got itchy and bumpy in the cold. Then a friend told me my face was terribly swollen. I was diagnosed with "Cold Urticaria". I am literally allergic to the cold. And I live in Michigan.
#27
Getting blisters under your tongue.
It suddenly started when I was 21 - I'd get little blisters that would burst and give me a really horrid taste in my mouth for a couple of seconds. Then it would be fine, and a day or so later a new blister would pop up. It was irritating, but I thought it was like mouth ulcers, nothing serious. I went to the chemist after a couple of weeks and asked if mouth ulcer stuff would work on the blisters - she told me what I was experiencing wasn't at all normal and to go to my dentist.
Turned out, I had the teeniest tumour you've ever seen in your life growing under my tongue. Its location had interfered with a mucus gland and that was causing a build up of mucus to form little blisters and then burst, hence the rancid taste.
It was caught obscenely early because of the mucus build up. If it had went undetected for a longer time, I could have needed more extensive treatment. If it had went on long enough, the cancer could have even spread to other parts of my body and put me in real danger. As it was, once they removed the tumour, that was me cancer-free. It was no more traumatic for me than a trip to the dentist. I'm pretty lucky.
So, feel pretty lucky to have had my little mucus blisters giving me a heads up.
**EDIT:** So, I've apparently sent a lot of people into a bit of a panic by making them think getting oral blisters means they've got cancer. Sorry about that, folks. No panic was intended in the making of this post.
I got blisters because the tumour grew in a way that interfered with a mucus gland. Blisters aren't actually a common symptom of cancer, so if you're getting oral blisters, please don't panic. My case was unusual, and you're probably fine.
I am not a medical professional however, so if you're concerned I encourage you to get checked out by your dentist. Even though you're probably fine, better safe than sorry, right? And getting checked out will help put your mind at ease.
For anyone concerned about mouth cancer, here's a list of the most common symptoms to look out for.
Image credits: PantoHorse
#28
My friend has no mind's eye. He can't picture things in his head.
He didn't know this was unusual until he saw a documentary on it on the BBC earlier this year. He never understood why books had so much descriptive stuff in them and thought 'picture this' was just a phrase.
Image credits: reverendmalerik
#29
I am 32 and thought that everyone has a torus palatinus. I recently asked my sister (who is a doctor) to look at the roof of my mouth as there was a sharp bony part on the lump in the roof of my mouth. I was astounded to find out that not only was the sharp bony part abnormal, but that the whole lump on the roof of my mouth is only shared by a small minority!
Image credits: Redditor1512
#30
I have visual snow, which is sort of TV-like static that overlays your vision. AFAIK, I've had it since birth, or if not I developed it at such a young age that I don't remember a time when I didn't have it. I thought that everyone's vision was the same as mine until I was in my mid-teens.
Image credits: anon
#31
Looking at the sun makes me sneeze. I know it happens to a lot of people, but I thought it happened to everyone.
#32
I have a bifid uvula. Kind of looks like a ballsack. I thought for the longest time that's what everyone's looked like because, well, how often do you look at other people's uvulas? I can remember as a kid watching the intro to Rugrats where it zooms out from Tommy Pickles crying and you see his and thinking it was weird that they drew it like that, but then I figured some cartoon characters also have 4 fingers so that must just be how they are drawn. I found out my uvula is weird when I was in high school.
Image credits: erinarian
#33
I get panic attacks and twitch uncontrollably if someone goes too close to my right ear, or if there is a particularly loud sound or even a high or low frequency noise on my right side. Turns out I have Hyperacusis, and many people I know still think I'm making up and just being a wimp.
#34
Occasional crippling headaches where any light or sound would destroy you and sometimes you throw up but to feel better you take a 4 hour nap in the middle of the day. Legit thought all that was normal. In other news, migraine specific prescription pills are a godsend.
#35
I'm double jointed and I thought everyone had the same rage of motion. I hurt my friends hand in elementary school because she said she couldn't get her thumb to touch her wrists, and I was convinced she just didn't try hard enough.
Image credits: anon
#36
I have scoliosis - not bad enough to be immediately noticeable, but because I'm so aware of it I know that one half of my ribcage sticks out more than the other and one of my shoulders slopes while the other is at an almost 90 degree angle.
I didn't realise there was anything wrong until I was in Year 9 at school and one of the girls in the changing room called me hunchback of Notre Dame.
Image credits: anon
#37
I occasionally have vivid hallucinations; normally they're benign, but every so often I see thousands of ostriches around me. I never realized it was abnormal, until I climbed into the ostrich cage in a zoo because I thought they were all just hallucinations. After I hit one of the ostriches to try and prove it was a hallucination they told me I'm no longer allowed to return to that zoo.
Image credits: MattSimmons93
#38
This is being buried because I'm late to the thread but, I was born 2 and a half months early and because of this I formed a hole in the abdomen wall that separates my ball sack and my stomach. Well a small pocked of fluid had formed in the hole not letting it close.
I grew up with this and didn't think anything of it. It would only hurt it I would sneeze, and I didn't do that, that often so I didn't worry.
Well fast forward to when I was 18. I was getting my before college physicals and the doctor saw it and said, "Well that shouldn't be there" and we scheduled the surgery to fix.
3 Days after I had my HS graduation I was getting ready for the surgery. It was suppose to only take 45ish minutes, but it ended up taking 2 and a half hours because of how bad it was.
Apparently the pocked that formed was fused with everything and was a b***h to separate. On top of that my small intestine had started to fall into the pocket. I was told by the doctor that if we had let it go another year I would be dead because my small intestine would have kinked and burst.
tl;dr: Born with a hernia never got it fixed. 18 years later got it fixed. Almost died from waiting that long.
#39
I can not for the life of me feel low/high temperatures as long as it is not pain.
i can put my hand on an (apparently) really hot radiator and don't feel anything, as long as i am not burning myself.
I realized i wasn't normal when I went to a mountain lake with some friends, and jumped in the "ice cold" water, and telling them it was fine.
#40
When I would sing, hum or even talk loud my eyes would vibrate and turn 45 degrees. I had superior canal dehiscence. Also was able to hear my eyes moving in my sockets as well as the blood whooshing through my arteries/veins in my neck.
#41
I didn't know it wasn't normal to start daydreaming during a test or have periods of time when you got hyper-focused to the point of shutting the world around you out.
Until I started studying to become a special education teacher. Then it was like, "Huh... imagine what my life would have been like if someone had actually diagnosed my ADHD while I was still in school...".
#42
I can move the toe next to my big toe on it's own. It just looks like a little worm head-banging.
#43
I didn't know what circumcision was or that I was circumcised till I was 18 when I came and used public showers in the UK.
#44
I have a thing called dermotographia where basically my skin swells whenever you scratch it. I used to think this was normal and just draw things on my thighs and they would swell into pictures. It wasn't until I was like 11 that i realized that other peoples' skin didn't swell up like that when they got scratches. Still pretty cool though cuz its like a non-permaneant notepad on my body since the swelling goes away after about 15 minutes.
#45
My facial tics.
Ever since I was a little nipper I've always scrunched my nose and flared my nostrils. My parents just said it was a habit.
It wasnt until I was just browsing wikipedia that I discovered I have torettes.
#46
I can make both my calves painfully cramp just by flexing my foot a certain way. Works every time. Like a Charley Horse on command. And if I hold it long enough (20-30 seconds) the pain will start to kind of ease, at which point I can briefly make it cramp by pointing my foot instead.
Apparently this is not normal.
#47
I thought it was normal to sneeze after drinking beer. Turns out I have an allergy. I do not drink any less after figuring that out.
#48
Not me but a cousin of me asked me if it was weird his third nipple was turning red.
#49
Oh finally a question I can relate to! So when I was young (like 4 or 5) I always had trouble walking and running because of some serious pain in my right foot. Turns out a bone was missing. But it grew a couple years later and I went on to win some sprinting competitions.
#50
When I lived at my parent's house, I noticed the toilet in my bathroom (private) would always get moldy as f**k within a week's time. It would be like every 3 days it would be getting moldy. We figured something was f****d with the water line or something, we couldn't figure it out.
Turns out I have diabetes.
#51
I got stung by fire coral for the first time. Same type of sting as a jellyfish. Well, it was just three little bumps that pussed a little, and was itchy. Took a few months to heal. I thought it was a completely normal reaction.
Fast forward 6 months, a dive buddy gets stung, and i was like oh dont worry, it'll just be annoying and pussy for a little bit. No worries. But for her, it was nothing worse than an ant bite.
Fast forward another 3 monts, i get stung again, this time a larger surface area. Turns into an oozy mess over the weekend.....turns out, im super allergic to Cnidarian stings.
#52
My toes are abnormally long. I kind of had an inkling but it was confirmed when my auntie recently saw me with no socks on, pointed at my feet and broke down into hysterics about my "weird feet".
Welp. That's me never wearing peep toe shoes or sandals again.
#53
I get heartburn from everything I eat.
#54
Can dislocate every joint in my body. Some hurt more than others. Didn't learn That's what was happening until I dislocated both hips in HS football.
#55
My wife has no proprioception. Like, she can't do that thing where you close your eyes and touch the third toe on your left foot without having to think about where it is.
The afternoon she figured out that I could do this was really fun with me closing my eyes and her being amazed that I could just TOUCH MY NOSE without having to grope around for it.
#56
When I was born, I had a testicle strangulate during descention. I distinctly remember in preschool arguing with the other boys about how many are there, of course with all of us sticking our hands down our own pants while arguing.
#57
My knees don't touch and never have, so while my ankles will touch, I have to do some angling to get my knees and thighs to touch. There was a point in PE class when I was younger where the teacher told us to put our knees together, and while everyone else could, there was me twisting and turning my legs (like a person about to pee themselves) to try and get them to touch.
I only recently learned that I was probably a bit bow-legged.
#58
My tan takes years to fade away. My tan lines from going on holiday a year ago barely looks any lighter than the day i got it.
#59
I have a butt dimple! It's.. Like a tiny mini butt crack above the regular one. I never thought about it at all until one night at the dinner table my dad said out of the blue, "which of the kids has a butt dimple again? I can't remember.."
Endless questions from the siblings and embarrassment ensued. And that's when I realized I had a butt dimple.
#60
I was a little surprised at how injury prone I seemed to become in my early 30s. I figured I had just underestimated the speed I would age at. Also was getting wrinkles.
Turns out that like most people I didn't have enough collagen in my diet. Now my joints are strong and less prone to injury, any injuries I do get actually heal on a reasonable timeline. And lots of the wrinkles have gone away.
Eat collagen, people. If you're a vegetarian you can take lysine and proline which are the only two amino acids your body uses to build collagen.
#61
Visual auras that are often associated with optical migraines. Sometimes my head hurts, sometimes it doesn't, but it sort of looks like you are looking through a watery lens in that eye. My family has a history of strokes so I'm kind of terrified, but they're usually benign.
#62
Whenever I eat banana I get a brief stabbing pain in my chest. Just bananas, no other food. I thought this was just a side effect of bananas.
#63
My eye twitches when I eat, protrude my jaw, or rub my lips together.
I'm twenty three and never questioned it. Until this year when I got a new roommate and they asked about it.
Apparently I have Marcus Gunn Syndrome.
#64
I have one foot that's a full size smaller than the other. Never noticed because I usually sit with my feet crossed in front of me. Found out when I was being sized for ski boots.
#65
Squinting to look at everything. It took 17 years for someone to say "uhh hey have you checked if you need glasses?" And who knows how long it would've taken me to question it on my own. I've had several eye exams, but I had been marked at 20/20 my whole life... Apparently I barely pass for 20/20 with my squint vision.
I've since found out that my vision is very bad. Much worse than I wanted to admit, and my natural *night* vision is simply horrible, so I'm at least glad that I wasn't driving for very long before getting glasses.
#66
If I don't eat every few hours I feel lightheaded, have no energy, and feel at risk of passing out.
#67
How often I hiccup. I hiccup one to three times every hour or so. Not *the* hiccups, just a couple here and there.
I'm sure if I had thought about it I would have realized it's weird, but I just never did. It wasn't until my husband and I started dating that I really noticed it, because he started teasing me about it.
#68
We were doing self portraits in art when i was in year 9 at school (so about 14 years old), we had these little mirrors and were just drawing in pencil. i was struggling to draw my eyes (i was reasonably decent at drawing and art but was just really struggling to get them right).
The teacher came over and tried to help, and he said to me "a good rule of thumb is that people's eyebrows are about half an eye (size) above their eye", so i looked in the mirror, and then was just like "mine aren't, there isn't a gap at all", and he just moved round and looked at me straight and was like "oh yeah".
And since that day, i've been very aware that my eyebrows are very low down.
#69
I have Pectus excavatum, a condition where the ribs slope inward on the front side. I remember not questioning it until I was in 10th grade and someone thought I was injured because of the shape of my chest. Fortunately, I have a mild case, so corrective surgery hasn't become necessary.
#70
I can't bend my toes - my middle joint doesn't function as a joint, it wasn't until I saw more people's toes and they could bend theirs that I realised mine were weird.
(I can bend the joint between my foot and toes but they move straight up and down).
#71
If I open my mouth wide enough, my jaw cracks loudly. I used to call it my snake move. Freaked a few people out, haven't done it in public since.
#72
When I eat sugar I feel like dying. It's like a stomach ache that you feel in your whole body. When it happens I can't do anything but lay down. It happens sometimes just from a couple sips of soda. I think I may have diabetes. I'm 20 and I thought it was normal until I was talking to a friend about it.
Image credits: kevinhaze
#73
This will probably get buried but..
My boyfriend has a "weird" p*nis. The pee hole is in the wrong spot. I think it's called Hyopspadias.
First time I saw it I was like hmm.. that isn't normal. I eventually told him after a few other times of seeing it and he was totally shocked.
He thought it was normal to have a p*nis head with no hole.
#74
My husband's xiphoid process sticks out way farther than normal but thank goodness I showed up to tell him how abnormal it is. I had a constant fear when we were dating that I would somehow hit it too hard and accidentally kill him.
