Doctors reveal the weirdest medical myths that their patients believed to be true
From a couple who believed they could conceive by lying in bed to a patient who didn't believe his coffee habit could be to blame for his insomnia – some of the replies are pretty astonishing
DOCTORS have taken to Reddit to share some of the weird and wonderful medical myths they’ve been forced to debunk for their patients.
Hundreds of docs posted their responses after one user asked medics: “Doctors of reddit, what is your most surprising ‘I can't believe I need to have this conversation with an adult,’ story?”.
From a couple who believed they could conceive simply by lying in bed next to each other to a patient who didn't believe his coffee habit could be to blame for his insomnia – some of the replies are pretty astonishing.
Dr_J_ND said he had to tell a patient: “That the 30+ cups of coffee he was drinking every day could possibly be the cause of his chief complaints of anxiety and insomnia. He said he was not willing to give this up or try decaf.”
: “My friend is a student doctor and is on placement at a small town doctor's office.
While one unfortunate doc had to tell a bamboozled husband the facts about tampons.
He wrote: “I had to explain to a grown man I still work with that tampons don't break down in a woman's urine after they were finished using them.
“He's been married 12 years. It was not his best day.”
“She had a 70-ish year old woman come in with complaints of a small but painless growth that was visible at the back of her throat. Turns out it took her 70 years to notice her uvula.”
“Got placed doing a rotation in the orthopaedic floor of a big hospital in a rural area of Southern California.
“I was doing my rounds and saw a patient out of bed and walking around the floor following a knee replacement.
“She had a cane in her hand that she was carrying like as a solider would carry a rifle. I asked what she was doing and what she thought the cane was for.
“She replied she thought the cane was for pushing people out of her way since she's now "handicapped" and it wasn't to help her walk on her post op knee”, another wrote.
Other specialists used the thread to share the most unbelievable things they had witnessed in a hospital – including one woman who turned up in hospital to get her false nails taken off.
While some of the most extraordinary posts came from doctors dealing with myths surrounding pregnancy.
“A 20+ year old woman that couldn't grasp the idea that sex leads to pregnancy”, one doctor said.
“She thought that in order for a man and a woman to have children, they needed to be married first and then have a baby. That sex was just an act unrelated to it.”
Another user shared that her 21-year-old sister believed women get pregnant via oral sex.
While a similar belief was also held by one Redditor's college roommate who “was sure that the semen could enter the bloodstream from the stomach and get a person pregnant.”
One commenter even went on to say that her mum thought she could get pregnant from sitting on the bus.
They added: "My mum, until she was in her 20s believed that if you sat on a seat still warm on the bus that a guy sat in before you, you can get pregnant. If you kissed a guy, you could get pregnant."
Even the most basic facts seem to have stumped many baffled patients.
One doctor even described how he had to tell a man he couldn't be experiencing the menopause, while another added that his doctor dad: “Had to tell a patient that they were not pregnant. The patient was male.”
And this isn't the first time medical matters have caused a stir on Reddit.
Back in October, we reported how one Redditor tried to force her boyfriend to get circumcised and at the end of 2016 another thread did the rounds revealing the weird things doctors and nurses have been told when they ask about a patient's sexual history.