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The human body is an incredible machine. But it's far from perfect. For all our evolutionary brilliance, we're still stuck with joints that wear out, dandruff, and sinuses that seem designed for misery. And that's just the beginning!
In various places on the internet, people have been sharing the body's most frustrating design flaws, so we decided to compile their "reviews" of the not-so-user-friendly features. And who knows—if we're lucky, maybe we'll receive a patch upgrade. Something bionic would be nice.
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#1
Ectopic Pregnancy
Ovaries are ovulatin and doing their things. Eggs and what not. An egg decides enough is enough, and with the help of a hormone surge, wants out of that s**t. Bigger and better things.
So the egg literally punches out, and is supposed to go straight into the Fallopian tubes, get fertilized while inside the tubes, and then plant in the uterus.
You would THINK that the entrance of the Fallopian tubes would connect right to the ovary?
Nah
The opening of the Fallopian tube has these little hairs (fimbriae) that are like wacky inflatable tube men in front of sketchy used car lots, and kind of guide the egg into the Fallopian tube. Sometimes, the eggs don’t feel like it going, and they venture off. And if fertilized, it’s considered an ectopic pregnancy. It can plant anywhere in the abdominal cavity at that point. Most of the time, it will die because it has to plant in a well vascularized region to be viable. Sometimes, it finds a good, bloody spot, and starts growing there. At that point it’s essentially a tumor, and of it can eat enough into a blood vessel, in can rupture and bleed like s**t.
You would think that millions of years of evolution would create a Fallopian tube that opens up right to the ovary, but that’s not the case.
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#2
Physician here.
1) testes only work when they are located outside the body at the junction of two limbs that converge, funneling many stray objects towards them.
2) the low back. OMG. Don’t get me started.
3) clotting is so complex it’s no wonder it messes up so often.
4) Sinuses. Like...why? And why do the holes leading into them need to be so small?
5) The immune system is really bad at stopping things it needs to stop and it’s really good at damaging the body.
6) we evolved on this planet, so why is the light of the sun too bright for us to tolerate?
7) Our bodies like to store fat...in our arteries?
8) Sometimes, the baby’s head wont fit through the pelvis.
8a) even by mammal standards, our newborns are remarkably ill-equipped. A newborn dog can crawl. A newborn horse can walk. We take a year to walk and almost two decades until we can fend for ourselves.
I’ll think of more.
#3
Pretty much any autoimmune disease. The body can literally k**l itself trying to protect itself.
#5
The pain and complications associated with giving birth. Giraffes can birth a whole tiny giraffe hooves and all and go about their day, yet women are still enduring massive amounts of pain (and/or death) during childbirth. It seems evolutionarily unproductive.
#6
Allergies, or said another way, your immune system flipping the f**k out because you bumped into a peanut, dust mite, shrimp, cat, etc...
#7
The absolute randomness in its strengths vs vulnerabilities.
A person can jump from a plane, have their parachute not open & survive the impact.
Or you can slip in the shower, break your f*****g neck, and die on the spot.
#8
Teeth cannot repair themselves (I think?). If a bone can heal back together why the hell can't a tooth fill in a micro hole.
In a natural state, teeth are pretty dam important.
#9
That we can bite the insides of our own cheeks. I'm sure plently of you know the pain of accidentally biting down on your cheek.
#10
Periods. Most other animals who have a menstruation cycle, or something like it, reabsorb the uterine lining rather than shedding it out and causing woman to suffer from painful bleeding out of their vaginas for 5-6 days once a month.
Edit: I think that if we have to shed it, it should be a voluntary sphincter (like controlling when you pee). So woman don’t have to spend so much money on pads & tampons, don’t have to worry about bleeding through, can stress free wear a bikini, etc.
#11
Cancer. Routine processes meant to repair the body create mistakes that in turn create tumors.
#12
There are many. But, notably to me is how easily damaged the Knee joints and the Spine are. They next to impossible completely repair. Once damage they are never really right again.
#13
If I wipe the wrong direction I could get an infection that could spread to my kidneys and k**l me.
#14
That thing our brains do where we walk into a room only to instantly forget why we went in there in the first place.
#16
You can kinda just die at any moment from a brain aneurysm, even if you're perfectly healthy.
#17
Unable to regenerate body parts. You lose an arm or a leg, you can't grow a new one. We can grow hair and nails forever, but not body parts.
#18
We've evolved for millions of years with the sun always being there. Yet we get burnt and skin cancer from too much exposure. Dark skinned people are slightly better designed than the fair skinned ones.
#19
The amount of time it takes for us to grow and mature to a level where we are able to contribute and not be 100% dependent on our parents/family unit.
Or the fact we have a useless organ that randomly ruptures and will k**l you if you don't seek treatment for it.
#20
Getting tired and needing to sleep. I could have done so much s**t if I hadn't had to sleep.
Though really, I probably would have just still not done anything.
#21
You can control your bladder and sphincter. Why of why isn't there a mechanism to hold in your period?
#24
Over-storing fat.
I mean, I get hanging onto 20 pounds of the stuff just in case you need to tap into that energy - but at 50, 100, 300 pounds our bodies are still like “well better still stock up, you never know if we’ll find any food this upcoming year”.
#25
I like the example of the recurrent laryngeal nerve.
It runs from the brain to the larynx. However, to get there it goes from the brain, down the neck, into the chest, around the aorta and then back up the chest, up the neck and then connects to the larynx. That's a massive detour. It also means a blow to the chest can damage your ability to talk.
#26
That something as important as the brain can stop functioning properly because of chemical imbalances.
#27
The brain should be better secured in the head. Rattling the brain inside the skull can mess a person up, so if it was more secure it would be safer.
#29
The fact that there’s so many things you can do to the human body without k**ling it
But _oh f**k slept wrong and pinched a nerve now I’m f*****g paralyzed_
(Didn’t happen to me, but happened to a semi distant family member a year ago)
Edit: holy f**k this comment took off
Edit 2: To everybody getting paranoid in my replies, don’t worry:
He was sleeping in a crowded camper on a small couch
in a very, very awkward position
This isn’t a very common thing, but it does happen to people. So long as you sleep relatively well you shouldn’t have a problem.
Edit 3: apparently Reddit’s full of health experts who kNoW fOr a fAcT that you can’t do this. He pinched and severed something in his spinal cord from what I remember, I’m not 100% sure if it was a nerve but idk what else it would be tbh.
_Either way the point I was trying to convey was this man went from sleeping to paralyzed, so..._.
#31
A stroke. My aunt had one when she was 31 and the healthiest person in the world. Ran an aerobics class at the Y, just perfect perfect health. Went to Pizza Hut with her the night before, next day, massive stroke, almost died, critical surgery, twenty years later she still has trouble speaking. It sucks. There is no reason that should’ve happened. Perfectly healthy person damaged for the rest of her life. She’s still amazing and lovely and my favorite person but d**n is that annoying.
#32
Jugular veins.
Yeah, pop those basically on the outside in the area predators attack, that will ensure and slight mishap will result in death in about 8 seconds.
Thanks evolution.
#34
The fact the brain can not regenerate more cells, but practically everything else can. Even though the brain is the most important.
#35
Tumors.
Organ ruptures caused by typical functions going wrong.
Many things about pregnancy.
Periods and ovarian cysts.
Also, for women, that the urethra is so short and so close to the v****a and a**s.
#38
We're physiologically built to have s*x with as many people as possible as soon as we hit puberty, but practically, socially, and psychologically, that's a *really* bad idea.
#41
Wisdom teeth. They were useful when we used to have bigger jaws, but now they often cause pain and infection.
#43
Our lumbar and a*s aren't really that great at holding us up and this is why everyone has back problems regardless of whether they spend their lives working out, sitting in a chair, or in between. Evolutionarily, we should have spent more time in trees waiting for our muscles and such to develop more to support the greater half of our bodies being held upright without destroying the system that's meant to do exactly that.
#44
Digestive system, regenerative system, immune system. isn't it funny how human body can be fully created in 9 month but a broken ankle will take several years and never fully recover?
#45
Whatever design flaw has made me addicted to oxytocin (the neurotransmitter not a misspelling of the opiate).
#47
The brain hardware has some compatibility issues with the software. I.e. patch random b****s, agression instinct, need for attention, staring at b***s and affection for shiny stuff then we can talk.
What do you think ?
The Darkest Timeline 9 months ago
All of this is to say that, if we’re “designed” by a being(s), they sure as shït are not intelligent. Because no truly intelligent being would come up with a design such as ours; if we can see all the flaws, surely a being more intelligent than us could have done a better job. It is clear that what evolution gave us is “good enough” to have survived this long, full stop.
The Darkest Timeline 9 months ago
All of this is to say that, if we’re “designed” by a being(s), they sure as shït are not intelligent. Because no truly intelligent being would come up with a design such as ours; if we can see all the flaws, surely a being more intelligent than us could have done a better job. It is clear that what evolution gave us is “good enough” to have survived this long, full stop.
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