20 Medical Myths That People (Including You, Maybe) Still Believe

The human body is weird and hard. That’s why doctors have to study it for eight years and even then get caught googling symptoms while you wait sitting on the long paper. There’s just so many different ways it can go wrong, and so many different ways “going wrong” can look like something else, not appear at all, or not actually be wrong. You’re basically a fleshy magic 8-ball.

It’s understandable, then, that the general public has some misconceptions about how it all works, even if some of those misconceptions are less understandable than others. Those folks who studied for most of a decade have heard them all, from perfectly reasonable misinterpretations of prognoses to honest-to-god conspiracy theories.

That’s why user Wise_Celery_355 asked r/AskReddit, “Doctors on Reddit, what medical myth do you still hear surprisingly often in the U.S.?”