100+ weird body phenomena you have experienced

gross is good

100) when you take a sip of water and it hurts really really bad for no apparent reason, and you have to drink more water right away

99) if you're really tired and you get, like, a funny time dilation thing where you think to yourself ... how long have i been standing at the front door? is it minutes? is it hours? oh, i guess i just got here.

98) when you cough up a hard little white ball. these are apparently called tonsil stones, and they are made of trapped food and/or white blood cells and smell of death

97) http://sparkasynapse.blogspot.com/2007/11/weird-sensory-phenomenon.html

good thread idea! i need time to think of ones that aren't drug related or rooted in severe ADD though

97a) actually, sometimes when i'm falling asleep i get this weird... err... repetitive thought thing, where i'll keep visualizing something like mickey mouse's bowtie getting bigger and smaller, bigger and smaller, bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and, oh god, how can they be so big? and then i sort of come to my senses, realize this is a dumb thought and move on. p.s. i was not molested by mickey mouse.

96) wld not recommend: serotonin syndrome

97a is a nightly occurrence when i go to sleep. i usually have two of these going simultaneously, one visual, one a completely inane avenue of free associative thought.

95) first sip of water (or OJ, or coffee) in the morning causes a crazy synaptic overload in your entire mouth, then business as usual.

94) Sneezing and (I assume because the sneezing was in some way traumatic to my olfactory nerves?) smelling a vague whiff of shit for a while thereafter. This has happened to me several times.

93) for a good period of my 20s i used to wake up time to time from intense nightmares (or highly emotionally charged dreams) to mild hallucinations. usually when i've been pretty consistently deprived of sleep. they only ever lasted 10 or 15 seconds or so and stopped being scary after the first time or three and started to become fun in a way. laundry on the floor would appear to be moving. an old wizard sitting on my records. little people hanging from a plant. all sorts of things. these days they've thinned out almost completely and have become increasingly more mild. i think it's been about two years since i've experienced it.

92) i burped a demon

91) when liquid gets caught somewhere in one of the tubes in your neck, and for 15 minutes you can't speak without coughing

What I get more often is almost choking on liquid but managing to just avoid doing so, followed by temporary near-laryngitis. Like I can't speak in more than a whispery croak. Is that weird?

90) Sneezing when light gets up your nose

89) a sudden, overwhelming, urge to vomit is assuaged by a sneeze. i actually thought the urge to throw up was an integral part of sneezing until i mentioned it to someone about ten years ago. now i know it's a rare-ish condition called pre-sneeze nausea.

I keep thinking of 93 as related to me by a sentient Arby's, and even though it is an abomination, a nightmare, I can only be sympathetic.

88) flossing will sometimes make my nose itch

87) when your eyelid twitches non-stop for like three days but nobody can see it

86) I had a bad lung infection a couple of years back. I would often end up having these nasty coughing fits where I would often double over because of the intensity of the coughs. As soon as I would cough in this position I would literally see stars - like thousands of glittering, popping little flashbulbs - and my ears would roar with this intense vibration like I had become some giant tuning fork. Then the coughing would stop. Really freaky.

85) I once forgot what a comb was. Like, someone was showing me a comb they had just bought and I could not interpret what the object was, what it would possibly be for, had no memory of the word. Took about a half-hour to "remember."

I don't know if this counts but the other day the word "and" looked made-up and wrong and stupid. Same thing happened with the word "house" about three years ago.

84) I had a sinus infection once for ages and blew my nose extra hard one day and a polyp/cyst the size of a chickpea came out, from somewhere wayyy up inside my sinus cavity. And I could breathe for the first time in MONTHS. No idea what the gross little hard thing was :(

85) i have an involuntary 'squawk'

think i have mentioned it on ilx before but it started probably 7 or 8 yrs ago and i have no idea what causes it. it's not a burp and it's not passing gas and it's not a hiccup or a sneeze. it's just a weird squawk. sometimes it's quiet, and sometimes it's so fucking loud it makes my husband jump. and sometimes it really hurts my throat, like a hard lump is being pressed upwards.

84) Since an operation I had 10 years ago to remove great chunks of my nasal cavity, something inside my nose/throat makes a weird clicking noise 3-4 times a week. It's loud and it sounds gross but it isn't, and I can't work out how to stop it happening.

83) My sinuses are pretty huge, possibly due to a number of sinus infections and I get fairly prominent toothaches when I have sinus pressure.

I'm pretty sure there are a couple teeth that getting a root canal done on would be a huge deal because they have a couple roots actually in my sinuses

I have a concave chest and sometimes experience weird muscle discomfort, like knuckles cracking. Really unpleasant. I've had a few bad dreams in which my chest REALLY hard and my body like turns inside out.

Sorry, 82

81) sometimes I'll get a very specific rhythm stuck in my head & I'll be left with a feeling of heaviness, as if my head is made of concrete, and a sense of time slowing down. I can get a hint of that feeling when I call the rhythm to my mind now, but to get the full unpleasant effect, it has to get stuck in my head unbidden, and that might only happen once every few months and only last for a couple minutes at a time. I've experienced this since I was a kid, and as far as I can tell the rhythm has always been the same:

THUMP-----THUMP-----THUMP--------THUMP

the dashes very roughly mark the interval between beats, with spaces of slightly more than half a second between beats 1 and 2 and 2 and 3 and a space of slightly more than a second between beats 3 and 4. it seems really precise (even moreso than I can notate) and consistent, but maybe that's not the case. I wonder if it's a premonition, like I will be crushed to death under a train that's chugging along at that exact rhythm. hopefully not.

80) farting

most of the posts itt could be the very first thing a person says upon meeting a doctor at a dinner party

this is a wonderful thread idea, ty

ok it's a little spooky that the way I typed out that rhythm (w/ 5 dashes for the first two intervals and 8 for the third) the ratio of long beat:short beat is very close to the golden mean (5/8 = 1.6; the golden mean is about 1.62). if the golden mean is somehow toxic to me, then I must have a very diseased, unnatural, satanic psyche.

cool.

79) my left abs seem to be tighter/more contracted than my right abs. I deal with this by ignoring it, but when I become aware of the problem (usually while I'm sitting), I flex my right abs to compensate, but that usually leaves me feeling sore after a while, so maybe I should just accept the fact that I am Asymmetrical.

5/8 = 1.6

I mean "8/5 = 1.6". fuck.

90) Sneezing when light gets up your nose

Is this the same thing as sneezing in really bright sunlight? Sometimes when I get really squinty due to sunlight it makes me sneeze, as though my body is confused about why I'm squinting.

sneezing in bright sunlight is really common and has to do with the optic nerve acting upon...whatever nerve is responsible for sneezing. but sneezing merely because someone shines a flashlight up your nostrils is a rare and miraculous phenomenon, imho.

come to think of it:

78) seeing a red glow when I close my eyes, and stick a flashlight in my mouth w/ the light aimed at my soft palate. this is probably just in my imagination though.

77) that gorgeous kaleidoscope pattern you see when you squint really hard for a few seconds

76) sleep paralysis ;_;

come to think of it:

78) seeing a red glow when I close my eyes, and stick a flashlight in my mouth w/ the light aimed at my soft palate. this is probably just in my imagination though.

not your imagination!

76) the Cronenbergian incident

75) ^

74) the pitch drop when you yawn

73) When one eye won't open for 10 minutes after you wake up.

I have a benign fatty tumor in my upper back, right by my shoulder blade. It keeps getting bigger. I may have to have it removed.

I don't know if that counts for this thread.

74) the pitch drop when you yawn

think about this harder

72) the way all sounds drop by a semitone if you yawn hard enough

eardrum stretch?

71) "shower amnesia" - i shampoo my hair and then five minutes later can't remember whether or not i just shampooed my hair

re: 85 - justine i think a friend of mine has that same thing! it's kind of intense

eardrum stretch?

― “this dog won’t hunt” doesn’t appear in the Book of Proverbs (Trayce), Thursday, 16 June 2011 15:44 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Does this means all humans have different-length eardrums and therefore hear everything differently? Because I just had an enormous O_____O moment

no p much yr eardrums are the same size

but yawning might create negative pressure and elongate the canal which will drop the pitch (cf a tuba v. a trumpet)

sorry, I meant does one human have eardrums that are a different length from the next human

76) sleep paralysis ;_;

yes, goddddd

the weirdest thing is when you have a nightmare about sleep paralysis and when you wake up having a hard time sorting out whether you experienced the phenomenon in real life or just within the context of a dream. there have been nights when I've had a bout of actual sleep paralysis, fallen back asleep, and been awakened later that night by nightmares inspired by the same.

75) partial blockage of the male pee exit area, leading to pee exiting at a surprising angle

the weirdest thing is when you have a nightmare about sleep paralysis and when you wake you have a hard time sorting out whether you experienced the phenomenon in real life or just within the context of a dream. there have been nights when I've had a bout of actual sleep paralysis, fallen back asleep, and been awakened later that night by nightmares inspired by the same.

*fix'd*

"partial blockage" = foreskin?

Yes Ive had a few "was that paralysis or just a fuq'ed up dream?" episodes too. And hypnogogia (hallucinations on waking, as someone mentioned upthread). My modem turned into a cat once. A full on cat.

"partial blockage" = foreskin?

nah, i'm clean. seems to be the residue of certain activities.

74) talkative borbyrygmi

every time i've had sleep paralysis, i've become convinced that someone is breaking into the house or coming to get me or watching me or whatever. it is the worst experience. i don't trust no god who would allow this misery on earth.

68) (I think) - standing up too quickly and getting silvery squiggles in one's peripheral vision for a few seconds.

67) sporadic instances of very high-pitched noise in yr head, a bit like the sound a flashgun makes when recharging. Accompanied by sudden acute clarity in hearing, as if ears have been rebooted.

66) a sudden violent twitch/spasm while in a half-sleep state. this happened to me once on the BART train - i was nodding off and then suddenly flung the paper bag in my right hand down to the ground really violently, and then woke up. the guy next to me asked if i was ok!

xpost

I get the opposite! I get that whine too, but it temporarily deafens me!

But, as stated elsewhere I have shocking tinnitus.

67) sporadic instances of very high-pitched noise in yr head, a bit like the sound a flashgun makes when recharging. Accompanied by sudden acute clarity in hearing, as if ears have been rebooted.

like trayce, i get this, but it seems tinnitus-related and doesn't accompany any new clarity in my hearing. instead, one ear will suddenly go almost entirely deaf, most of the sound replaced by a loud, high pitched, ringing tone. the ringing fades within 10-20 seconds, and as it does, my hearing returns to normal.

there's a weird, quasi physical sensation that accompanies this: as the hearing in one ear shuts off, i feel as if something or even my "self" is moving through my head to the other ear, sort of like a piece of string being drawn in the bad ear and out the good. kicks off a mild sort of vertigo.

68) (I think) - standing up too quickly and getting silvery squiggles in one's peripheral vision for a few seconds.

actually blacked out and collapsed from this once. i stood up quickly after crouching to look at the lowermost shelf in a bookstore and then just *pop* went down.

Despite the abuse over the years I don't think I've any tinnitus "proper", except for very occasional and quiet whooshing in head if I'm super-tired and the environment if extra quiet (ie. v. occasionally when lying in bed). Am with you on the odd quasi physical nature of the ear-popping thing, it feels like I'm moving too. Very peculiar.

66) a sudden violent twitch/spasm while in a half-sleep state.

My wife makes regular enough complaints about me kicking her in bed etc for me to know that I get this too. Could also add, talking gibberish, leaping from the bed to confront perceived threts and occasionally wandering about the room. I guess this all comes under a blanket "night terrors" heading.

Cont: yes thats very accurately what its like! Its like one's head being de-gaussed. Its so weird.

65) random blisters just appear, anywhere on my body. once i had abot 5 in a small circular fomation on my upper arm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk

The thing when you're falling asleep is the hypnic jerk.

I've experienced having dreams where I couldn't move, and dreamt that I was awake and couldn't move, and had gone cross-eyed. And one where I was being held down. It was pretty scary, put it down to the hypnagogic state.

64) Blue field entoptic phenomenon...i get loads of flashes and squiggles and dots if I look at a bright surface or the sky, had it for years so it's not a detached retina.

68) (I think) - standing up too quickly and getting silvery squiggles in one's peripheral vision for a few seconds.

don't get the squiggles but do get very fuzzy and lightheaded and yeah i've blacked out and collapsed once too. now i make sure to surreptitiously hold onto something if i feel it starting.

huh. have only rarely seen anything like what wiki describes as "blue field entoptic phenomena", usually when winded or conked on the head. i think that's a different sort of thing, "seeing stars" like. still, quite similar in appearance: bright, wiggly spots moving quickly.

do have lots of floaters, though.

do get very fuzzy and lightheaded and yeah i've blacked out and collapsed once too

when this happened, i went to the doctor and was told that my resting heart rate was less than 50 bpm ― and that if it got much lower, i'd have to have a pacemaker installed! have no idea what caused this, but it's since returned to normal.

when i've got a bad sinus headache or have had a hard night out drinking, sometimes i wake in the morning and when i close my eyes and get that light imprint you have with closed eyes i see the imprint of wild intercrossing lines, they look like blood vessels. i have no idea why this is or if it's just psychological but i could draw a pic of the image i've seen it so many times.

67) once sort of lost consciousness, but didn't black out, due to a strobe light. i remember my vision kind of rolling like a badly adjusted tv set, then i 'came to' off the dance floor, apparently i'd grabbed the person in front of me and dragged myself away from it. idk maybe i have very low level photo-sensitive epilepsy? i've felt myself come close to losing it a couple of other times with strobes or light flickering through trees when travelling.

oh and the sneezing to lights is photic sneezing, some people have it, others don't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex

hypnic jerk is a plague on my existence

it's also kind of fun

but mostly a plague

you know, like ILX

oh and the sneezing to lights is photic sneezing, some people have it, others don't.

i don't really sneeze in response to lights, but if i feel i'm about to sneeze but can't quite get there, i can sometimes trigger it by staring at a light source. might be psychosomatic, cuz i never tried this until after i'd read about it, hard to say...

anyone ever deliberately induced fainting? that's a blast. going through the process(*) then thinking "huh that didn't work - wait a minute if that didn't work then why am i lying in the grass, when i was standing up before?"

(*) process not detailed due to danger of DEATH OR SEVERE BRAIN INJURY maybe.

hypnic jerk always makes me think of the song hi-lo jerk by six finger satellite - so every time it happens that's what I think of now.

xpost i do that too. a light in a room is okay but the sun is the ultimate sneeze prompt.

I've fainted or passed out lots but usually due to stoner-induced massively low blood pressure. Not fun! Whacked my head on a doorframe once by faceplanting it.

66) a sudden violent twitch/spasm while in a half-sleep state. this happened to me once on the BART train - i was nodding off and then suddenly flung the paper bag in my right hand down to the ground really violently, and then woke up. the guy next to me asked if i was ok!

what i get, and which i think are related to the hypnic jerk/myoclonic twitch, are brief tripping or falling dreams on the edge of sleep. without really being aware that i've lost consciousness, i'll imagine that i've stumbled somehow and will briefly thrash my legs/body and instantly awaken. it's hard after the fact to say whether the dream caused the spasm or vice-versa.

i do the whole "i can't breathe" and massive gasping inhale before nodding off to sleep, sometimes it wakes me up. think it's cos my sinuses are fucked and my nose is always blocked

I get bad sinuses, ever had a massive bang noise in your ear?

no actually...my ears tend to be okay, bit of ear popping occasionally.

65) Ophthalmic Migraines - trippy psychedelic hallucinations that can take over my entire field of vision and render me functionally blind due to blinking flashing paisley snakes, at any time! Completely without the aid of chemicals!

wikkid

97a) actually, sometimes when i'm falling asleep i get this weird... err... repetitive thought thing, where i'll keep visualizing something like mickey mouse's bowtie getting bigger and smaller, bigger and smaller, bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and, oh god, how can they be so big? and then i sort of come to my senses, realize this is a dumb thought and move on. p.s. i was not molested by mickey mouse.

― remy bean, Thursday, 16 June 2011 01:25 (8 hours ago)

For me it's trying to dribble a football but constantly running over it again and again and again. Had this since I was little, but never been a football player or fan.

98) when you cough up a hard little white ball. these are apparently called tonsil stones, and they are made of trapped food and/or white blood cells and smell of death

man, those things have a name, jesus

the weirdest thing is when you have a nightmare about sleep paralysis and when you wake up having a hard time sorting out whether you experienced the phenomenon in real life or just within the context of a dream. there have been nights when I've had a bout of actual sleep paralysis, fallen back asleep, and been awakened later that night by nightmares inspired by the same.

― gtforia estfufan (unregistered), Thursday, 16 June 2011 06:45 (3 hours ago) Bookmark

YES THIS IS THE WORST THING OF ALL THE THINGS

64 blisters, seriously, have you ever really thought about blisters

not that i really think about it as a "weird body phenomenon", but on the edge of sleep, especially when i'm both profoundly exhausted and stressed/wired, i'll sometimes (rarely) experience extremely vivid auditory and visual hallucinations. my eyes are always closed when this happens, so i'm not sure that "hallucinations" is the right word, but w/e.

they're brief and can be quite startling, but i'm always aware that they're not real. the sounds take the form of sudden sharp voices that rise out of my mind's background babble, usually a familiar-seeming voice speaking a single word, often my own name. the visual "sightings" usually occur as sequences of incredibly detailed and compelling images that flash by quickly, one after the other, like photographs. inevitably one of these images, typically a face of some sort, will be charged with a profound sort of terror, seeming in that instant like the worst thing in the world. this will snap me out of whatever trance i'm in and back to hallucination-free reality.

lately, when in this state, i try to trigger and maintain these waking dream-states, to manufacture my own hallucinations. sometimes i can do it, sometimes i can't. i find that when i'm in control of the process, the scary frames don't bother me so much and i can sometimes even ride them out without breaking the spell.

63) Niacin flush

Oh! At one point as a teenager, some of my fingers spontaneously sprouted WARTS. Heaps of the little fuckers, all over several fingertips. No idea why but it could not have been worse timing being a teen. I tried various treatments to no avail, and one day... they all just disappeared again, within a week... and I've never had one since. WTF.

tetsuo?

I get the dizziness from standing up too quickly as well. Only collapsed from it a few times, usually I manage to grab onto something in time.

I also, very often, get the shower amnesia described above!

62) sleep apnoea

xxpost Trayce I get that sometimes but I don't think they are warts, it's some kind of eczema IMO (well I say that because I get other kinds of eczema sometimes) although with me it usually goes away in 1 or 2 days

contenderizer i also get edge of sleep imagery, but not as sinister as yours. i think of them as visualisations rather than hallucations, i'm not really seeing things but my brain is taking over and generating its own imagery: strange landscapes and buildings usually. when i find this happening i realise i'm on the edge of sleep and it makes me happy! except the other night i started to visualise these horrible creatures, all bone and sinewy and cartilaginous limbs crawling over and through each other. or sometimes the images take on a more surreal and repetitive tone like remy's 97a).

oh god warts are so gross

Odd blisters person: this is probs eczema.

Nah these were def warts, they hung around for a long time, they were annoying and I picked at them. I hated meeting people cos I didn't want to shake hands with anyone. Wow I'd forgotten all about this!

65) random blisters just appear, anywhere on my body. once i had abot 5 in a small circular fomation on my upper arm.

Yeah agree this is v likely eczema, it could also be some kind of allergic reaction.

contenderizer i also get edge of sleep imagery, but not as sinister as yours.

cool! haven't ever talked to anyone else w the same deal, but then i don't talk about it much. mine aren't that sinister, really, it's just that these bursts of inexplicable (and very brief) shock-terror seem to accompany the odd image, never due to anything intrinsically scary in the image itself. to tell you the truth, i wonder whether i bring on the fear by anticipating it. it's sort of like a jack-in-the-box or a horror movie, where the anticipation of something fearful is half the fun.

61) really like the taste of chocolate

The two times I was pregnant/had baby - could list 100+ things from that alone.

Chocolate: it makes me sneeze. But only if it's GOOD chocolate.

66. Every thought or piece of dialogue running through your head sounds kind of sarcastic for some reason. Again, used to happen more when I was younger. Very strange phenomenon that I can't quite describe.

^^^This is possibly just proof of sentience in the late capitalist era.

for the sleep-related weirdnesses file, maybe related to #93 or maybe like some kind of sleep paralysis except without the paralysis:

59(?). sometimes I am lying in bed trying to sleep, except I guess I have already drifted off to sleep and am dreaming that I'm lying in bed, when suddenly ~weird shit~ happens e.g. giant insects rush over my bed / the room starts to collapse / the ceiling is leaking and the drips turn into tiny frogs when they hit the floor, and I fling myself out of bed (sometimes I make it as far as opening the bedroom door, or shout in panic) only to realise, uh, that wasn't reality

often the insects etc are really bright neon colours, which would be a good hint that I am not actually seeing them, what with night vision being mostly b+w, but this doesn't generally occur to me until I've leapt out of bed

"sarcastic" is the only word I can think of to describe it. because it's not happening right now I can't think of a better way. I think I used to tell my Dad "It feels like people are shouting at me", but that's not quite right either. Maybe it was a kind of silent singer type thing - would often be accompanied by a tinnitus pitch.

sleep-related file entry 2, subcategory: hypnagogia - drifting off to sleep is sometimes accompanied by auditory hallucinations, sorta, of a gentle murmur like people (often my parents) talking in the next room or a radio on really low volume, talking about something mundane like a weather report, but if I try to concentrate enough to make out the words it stops

except it's not really an auditory hallucination because it doesn't really sound like it's outside my head, and instead of being creepy it's kind of soothing really

(it's quite rare now but in my late teens I got it nearly every night)

for a while, shortly after I gave up SSRIs, this was replaced by a succession of visual images, often of faces contorted into exaggerated aggressive/agonised expressions, which WAS creepy. but again, not a hallucination that appears to be actually there in the world, just a screensaver running inside my head

I get the murmery radio thing, but again I blame my tinnitus, my brain's started to translate it into vague, distant radio/music which is getting a tad disconcerting.

once i leaned over and a huge load of liquid spilled out of my nose. i hadn't been snorting coke or anything either prior to this. was v weird.

more recently this happens often cos i irrigate my sinuses. sort of enjoy the private lol of being in a shop and water pouring out of one nostril while a fellow customer is like "wtf??"

you can sort of empty most of it after an irrigation but sometimes you don't get it all.

Considered noting various bowel curiosities, declined. But it is interesting to see how quickly (or not) the guts respond to changes in diet.

co-sign

Sometimes I'll go get a chili dog and onion rings at Sonic to really blow out the pipes, y'know?

68) (I think) - standing up too quickly and getting silvery squiggles in one's peripheral vision for a few seconds.

actually blacked out and collapsed from this once. i stood up quickly after crouching to look at the lowermost shelf in a bookstore and then just *pop* went down.

― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Thursday, June 16, 2011 3:18 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

Isn't this something realted to low blood pressure? I get that all the time.

Justine - could your sqwaking be a Tourette's-like tic?

I sneeze when I pluck my eyebrows.

75) partial blockage of the male pee exit area, leading to pee exiting at a surprising angle

split-stream pissing is a sign of prostate problems; you should probably talk to a doctor about this if you haven't already

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/50495_120117258018538_9165_n.jpg

Oh a sleep one -

when I was a kid I had night terrors and would sleepwalk every single night for about two years. One day I just stopped and neither every happened again.

I don't know what number we're on but:

* A++ vasovagal response to the sight of my own blood (though I'm just fine at the sight of yours) or any traumatic injury, however minor, such that if I barely nick my finger chopping vegetables or, most recently, whack my hand on the underside of a cabinet (I'm a flail-cook I suppose), I get weak in the knees/nauseated and have to go lie down immediately. (This has led to some sitcom level misunderstandings with my husband who is ready to call 911 thinking I have amputated my finger, only to pull the towel away and find I'm barely bleeding.)

* If I'm in bed, I can make myself dizzy to the point of feeling like I'm hanging upside down or on a carnival ride just by thinking about it.

* I have another but I am hoping it is so common that somebody else posts it first bc I'm afraid ppl will be all "omg you are dying go to the doctor!"

* A++ vasovagal response to the sight of my own blood (though I'm just fine at the sight of yours) or any traumatic injury, however minor, such that if I barely nick my finger chopping vegetables or, most recently, whack my hand on the underside of a cabinet (I'm a flail-cook I suppose), I get weak in the knees/nauseated and have to go lie down immediately. (This has led to some sitcom level misunderstandings with my husband who is ready to call 911 thinking I have amputated my finger, only to pull the towel away and find I'm barely bleeding.

A chef who worked for my Dad had this which isn't a very good thing to have in a profession where you cut yourself pretty often. His was so bad that he'd just pass out and hit the floor at the sight of his own blood.

I think the fact that it's just your own blood that does that to you is fascinating. Um wait - what about period blood or does that not count because it's not the result of an injury?

60 - a tingle in the back of my neck after the first sip of the first beer of the night

oh and if I may! - 59 - sneezing when plucking eyebrows. I usually sneeze 5-6 times when I begin plucking, then settle down. Something to do with the sinuses?

I think the fact that it's just your own blood that does that to you is fascinating. Um wait - what about period blood or does that not count because it's not the result of an injury?

No problems w/ menstrual blood but I vasovagal as a result of routine pap smears and when I got an IUD, I seriously thought they were going to have to admit me.

I basically look at is as any kind of "perimeter breach" does me in. But then, I'm fine with needles (though I will pass out if I watch someone draw my blood - no probs if I look away).

Interesting!

I saw a bunch of women have vasovagal responses during IUD insertion when I was working at a FP clinic. It was pretty intense to witness never mind experience.

oh and if I may! - 59 - sneezing when plucking eyebrows. I usually sneeze 5-6 times when I begin plucking, then settle down. Something to do with the sinuses?

― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Thursday, June 16, 2011 12:16 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah, exactly - me too! Must be a nerve thing or something.

Damnit ENBB! Seems I missed your post about your eyebrow tweezin-sneezing. *high five*

I misread that as "vasovaginal" and thought that story was going somewhere really terrifying

All of the weird things that happen to my body have already been taken aside from when I was a runner in high school, my knees would regularly fall out of joint if I spent too much time on my side with my legs bent; I would have to roll over onto my other side in order to straighten them without excruciating pain.

Oh another one and I really hope somebody knows wtf this is:

58. I sometimes but not always get a sharp pain in my jaw when I drink wine or very hoppy beers. I can avoid the worst of it by swallowing without letting the liquid fall into the sides of my mouth, but when I starts, I pretty much have to stop drinking.

I get the eyebrow plucking sneezing, photic sneezing, hypnagogic jerk, and pre-sleep stream of consciousness screen saver repetitive visuals, too. We are not alone!

i have a knuckle that i had broke when i was boxing years ago. it pops in and out all the time and it moves from its regular spot to halfway down my hand. its cool.

Red marks like little slashes suddenly appear in a circumference around the hip area but nowhere else. Possibly linked to heavy drinking or food poisoning. In a few days everything back to normal.

58. I sometimes but not always get a sharp pain in my jaw when I drink wine or very hoppy beers. I can avoid the worst of it by swallowing without letting the liquid fall into the sides of my mouth, but when I starts, I pretty much have to stop drinking.

yes!

i get a variation of this, after a beer, usually if i've eaten a meal out or something the type of beer doesn't matter really for me.

but my jaw and cheeks tingle. you know if as a kid you puff out your cheeks making a face or whatever, and they briefly get sore and bloated? (please someone know this) i get this but prompted by a beer...i'm guessing could be some kind of reflux thing as i've had probs with that.

Yeah, that sounds familiar, but I don't know what it is

ENBB - re dizziness standing up, I was told I had low blood pressure as a teen when it was really bad, but I still get it occasionally now and my blood pressure is normal now.

gas maybe?

thinking of classic simpsons "gassy? it's gas isn't it marge.."

thats just your taste buds saying " i love beer"

ENBB - re dizziness standing up, I was told I had low blood pressure as a teen when it was really bad, but I still get it occasionally now and my blood pressure is normal now.

― a fucking stove just fell on my foot. (Colonel Poo), Thursday, June 16, 2011 12:31 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Huh - idk - where's the resident almost Dr. GBX when you need him? I do have low blood pressure now so I've always thought that's what it was for me.

Local Garda!!!! Yes!!! It is just like that! I have reflux pretty bad but am well medicated so don't get a lot of symptoms. I never thought to connect the two but it makes sense.

omg so many xposts

59. some kinda cronenbergian tumor on my elbow that could not be destroyed, then finally turned black, started oozing, and fell off. but this entire process took more than week.

58. Does double jointedness count? Is that even a real thing? If it is than I am double jointed and my can do a weird twisty thing with my elbows but it's hard to explain. Basically I can make the back of my elbows face forward.

my bullshit made-up theory is that it's cos I am tall and the blood has to travel further xxxpost

Oh no these numbers are confusing.

x-post to jenny, i guess it must be gas. the time i always associate it with is if i eat a meal out with my parents when i'm back in dublin, i'll often have wine with them when we eat, but at the end of the meal if we're somewhere they go to regularly they might offer us a free drink, and if i'm heading out with friends after i'll move to beer. a beer just after a meal frequently gives me this. it doesn't last long for me tho, goes away after a little bit...

when I was a younger, fitter man I had incredibly low blood pressure and would get the fainting thing all the time

MS is a neverending odyssey of weird body issues. Gradual loss of my sense of taste is the latest thing. Also intense and totally impossible to relieve itching in my forearms that strikes from nowhere.

Jenny, Garda - yes! That's what I was referring to as well. I get this tingly, almost painful vein at the back of my neck whenever I first drink a beer. :P

why does hair on moles grow longer than regular hair? and darker?

sounds like a question for yahoo answers!

skin tags...i have loads of them. so does my father. i've got one on my balls that looks like a rice crispy...i always threaten to pull it off and put it in my wifes cereal if she doesn't behave.

o_O

come for the anarcho-misogynists, stay for the skin tags

<3.

Another sleep one: dreaming that you are waking up, except you aren't. While on Zoloft I would spend what felt like hours in a loop of dreaming I was waking up but couldn't get out of the covers (maybe this is sleep paralysis? I wasn't fully frozen, could flail limply but that's it), and then when I finally made it out, bam, I'd "wake up" - except I still wasn't awake, and it would happen again

a non-sleep one: when a random spot of (skin? muscle?) makes little vibratey buzzes for a split-second intermittently for a day or two and then stops, like there is a mobile phone on vibrate stuck under your skin. usually in my upper legs but I've had it elsewhere too. anyone else? it doesn't hurt or anything but it can get really annoying.

have any of you ever had weird hallucinations/dreams where you look at your phone or a clock and get the time utterly wrong. i've thought it was 10am before then got up and as i make a cup of tea check again and it's 6am

i woke up today with the exact opposite problem

i.e., thought it was like 7 am and it was 10 am.

haha that happens too...every other day.

I went into a room once, glanced at the clock, was sure it said 7:40, looked again a while later and it said 7:20. I thought I'd just not read it carefully but it happened again (with different times and a different clock) a couple of days later and I worried that I was having some kind of psychotic breakdown. A really fucking dull psychotic breakdown.

It hasn't happened since.

I might have gone into a room more than once, but none of the rooms contained the book of how to formulate sentences so as not to sound like a moron. Maybe I should try some more rooms.

yeah that's exactly what happened me, like i had a vivid memory of seeing a red lit digital alarm clock saying one time, then it was earlier when i actually got up.

Oh shit I can't believe I forgot this one.

When I was 21 I started lactating. I wasn't producing tons of milk and I hadn't even noticed tbh but it was enough that a gyno noticed during my annual and I had to have a series of tests including an MRI on my brain to make sure I didn't have a prolactinoma which is a tumor on your pituitary that results in increased production of prolactin the hormone that stimulates milk production. In the end it turned out that I didn't and that i just have slightly increased levels of prolactin for no apparent reason. That whole thing was pretty freaky tbh.

66. Every thought or piece of dialogue running through your head sounds kind of sarcastic for some reason. Again, used to happen more when I was younger. Very strange phenomenon that I can't quite describe.

Yes! This used to happen to me but i also didn't know quite how to describe it. Had it loads when i was younger but it's only happened rarely over the past few years.

Also had Bell's Palsy once. That was pretty weird

54. sometimes as i'm going to sleep i hear voices. not in a "mentally troubled" way. never sure what they are, really, because i can barely make them out and never remember them the next day. they might be snatches of half-remembered film dialogue, old conversations bubbling up from the subconscious, or okay yeah just transmissions from the toaster telling me to Kill Them All. but definitely NOT a dream, definitely little bits of dialogue or one-liners in voices that are not my own, that seem "overheard," an auditory phenomenon, not in the brain-voice or whatever.

this is something that ONLY happens when i'm half-asleep/drifting-off-to-sleep.

I've got another one: whenever I am in a room, I mentally 'step' my way out of it, but the catch is that the insides of my feet need to meet the bumps of the room like a jigsaw puzzle? Like um.. think of a table, picture it from above, and the side of it that you would walk around would have two table legs - so in my brain I would be like "left foot [jigsaws into table leg], right foot [in my brain, this foot would land in middle of table and thus jigsaw against edge], left foot [table leg again]." So essentially I am a crazy person trying to make everything in the world into some sort of rectangle. Can't explain this weirdness. It's fading out as I grow older but I used to sit in a room, be thinking baout thangs, and in the back of my head mentally walking all over the room/house/street.

:S

My wife hears that stuff too -- calls it 'ghost radio' xpost

53. Sometimes when I am imagining a very heated conversation, I will accidentally speak a crucial bit of it them loud. Once I was doing a dialogue rewrite on a movie in which two very difficult characters faced off, and I couldn't get the scene to turn the way I wanted. I imagined the exchange over and over, trying different iterations, and as I passed through one heated version I yelled at top volume (and mind you, the character was an old southern lady, so I unintentionally approximated Southern Grand Dame voice) "I'm a certified Georgia fucking bitch" as I walked through a very nice shopping mall. Made every head within 300 feet turn and stare.

Remy you are a treat.

52. does uncontrollable air drumming as you walk down the street count?

think about this harder

um, why? you don't think it's weird, or you don't think it's a real phenomenon?

most of these are not actually weird body phenomena

feeling pretty exposed for having shared my lactation tales

step it up people

touching my frenulum

I wish I had an intimate breast related tale to share

erica i posted about an oozing wart (or whatever) that looked like the baby from eraserhead ffs.

LOL

I don't actually feel bad I just want juicer stories. OK Jess, that was pretty good. And weird. WTF? Did you ever figure out what it was?

a friend of mine once texted me that he pooed in electric green, without having eaten anything green or green-inducing. i doubted it, and two minutes later – pow – incontrovertible photographic evidence found its way to my cell phone. sometimes,i kinda hate my friends

it's not something i'd pull out on a first date. unless i was going out on a first date with william s. burroughs or something.

it remains a mystery. during this bleak time i had nightmares that i would wake up one day covered in them and be sold to the mutter museum.

after eating fruity pebbles you poop the color of...you guessed it Fruity Pebbles.

I had an abscess that didn't heal right that I had to have (really minor) surgery on so that it wouldn't be a permanent fistula. It was tiny, but I really didn't want it to develop because I didn't want to have two assholes.

(there, that's worse than lactation, E)

since burroughs was invoked: ideally if you had two assholes, you'd teach the second to talk

OK that's a pretty good one even though I don't really like things dealing with that sort of stuff. So you have chron's? Those sort of fistulas's are p common in people with Chron's from what I understand.

my father has crohns, never has had a fistula...but he does have very little intestine left.

No, I thankfully do not. That's not even the worst thing about Crohn's!

yeah, that would be the actual worst part of crohns

this is getting into tmi realms but i once took a dump some night after doing loads of drugs and it had sort of black bubbles of shit in it...sort of like fungus but more chemical looking.

those were actually drugs produced by your body and you just flushed them away

OMG JUICY DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN SCATOLOGICAL

I hate all of you. Just so you know.

i know, maintaining the body's natural bodega is v important xpost

it's ok, the gross out thing is stopping me from getting preoccupied by your story

this grossness, it's for your protection

one time i ate a whole bunch of corn

that's it, really

lol

thou shalt not speak of what hath left the colon - in such a case we utter nonce

this is prob par for the course too but i had a septoplasty a few years back and your nose is padded up to fuck and healing for weeks on end. about a week after the padding was removed i sneezed and blew my nose a bit, and a gigantic snot about the size of a goldfish emerged into the world.

sadly it died after 3/4 days. i have tried to have kids since but i keep thinking of its lifeless little body in my hands, like it'd be a...betrayal??

i'll always love you nigel

Oh, when I was young and still growing, I'd occasionally have a pain and it felt like my tailbone was kind of out of alignment? It'd feel weird while walking/sitting and would seem to correct after a few days

r.i.p. nigel!

x-post

i frequently can't breathe when i lie down to go to sleep at night...fairly sure it's my chest/sinuses, fucking HATE it tho.

ronan you are a fucking mess. hahah.

there is some kind of condition where you coccyc gets out of allignment and the doctor actually has to stock his fingers up your hole to snap it back into place - awkward moment

i've got sacoriliac joint dysfunction, talk about good times. there are days when i am completely cripple.

kind of convenient there's a maintenance hatch in the area, I guess

ronan you are a fucking mess. hahah.

yeah dude...i've had totally fucked health since 2005...it prob sounds weird and hypochondriacy and on a thread like this is easy to drone on but just body doesn't work very well. learned to deal with this a while back!

Sometimes I go to pull my phone out of my pocket after feeling it vibrate and ITS NOT THERE.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-06-12-cellphones_N.htm

GHOST PHONE )_ TURN OFF THE DRAK

i do not know if this is juicy but anyway i was born with a small hole in the tip of my nose which i ignored for 25 years until it turned out to be connected to a cyst which had formed behind the bones of my nose and the top of my nose swelled up until i could see it all the time

so i had my nose sliced open down the middle, and the bones pulled apart, and it was taken out, and when i came out of hospital i had a bright purple inch-deep swelling in a band all round my face at eye level (also, two black eyes)

i looked like some weird cartoon of a space pixie. but in a way i actually looked better than i usually do, because i have a big square face with no cheekbone definition, and it was like having fake cheekbones

uh this is not looking very juicy in text, but trust me, i looked pretty fucking weird. anyway it hurt quite a bit (coming round from the op was the worst as my throat was totally caked with dried blood) but it was awesome to be sent home with a big bag of codeine and lie in bed for a week listening to music

you had me at "small hole in the tip of my nose which i ignored for 25 years"!

"sarcastic" is the only word I can think of to describe it. because it's not happening right now I can't think of a better way. I think I used to tell my Dad "It feels like people are shouting at me", but that's not quite right either. Maybe it was a kind of silent singer type thing - would often be accompanied by a tinnitus pitch.

― the Sandalled Vandal (dog latin), Thursday, June 16, 2011 5:03 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

whoah, this is VERY like something that used to happen to me, almost always when i was sick/feverish. all sounds and sensations would become charged and angry, so that it felt like the entire world and even (especially) the thoughts passing through my head were yelling at me. usually happened in the middle of the night, i.e., i'd wake and find myself alone in this messed-up mental state. found it extremely disturbing, but it never lasted long and i eventually learned that i could dispel it by talking to someone or watching TV. tapered off in my teen years, and hasn't happened since the late 80s. i occasionally do get weird flashbacks or deja-vu moments that for a split second remind me of what it felt like.

i get this but not with sarcasm. in a conversation i just think of utterly horrible offensive character attacks which i don't even believe, they appear in my mind like a reflex. sometimes for 10-15 minutes it just keeps happening...

"75) partial blockage of the male pee exit area, leading to pee exiting at a surprising angle"

split-stream pissing is a sign of prostate problems; you should probably talk to a doctor about this if you haven't already

― backlash stan straw man fan (m coleman), Thursday, June 16, 2011 8:55 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

was trying to be delicate, but the condition i was talking abt results from dried cum on the head of your dick. so unless i've been having dried-cum-related prostate problems since i was 12, i'm not too worried. do need a checkup tho...

Sometimes I go to pull my phone out of my pocket after feeling it vibrate and ITS NOT THERE.

I used to grab my phone from my pocket BEFORE it rang. I shared this with a friend and he told me that your balls pick up the signal before the phone does. I don't know if I believe him or not. I want to.

Great thread idea.

I've had that "sarcastic monologue" for years, but only with fever. Never gave it a second thought until now.

I'm a neurologist, I see people with sleep paralysis and hallucinations and vocal squawks and auditory thumps and visual migraines and tingling etc etc. It's endlessly interesting listening to their stories. Thankfully few of the stories deal with bodily fluids or emissions (neurology is usually very clean).

I keep planning to start a blog or something to write about this in more depth. I think the weird and/or wonderful things (some of them deeply unpleasant, unfortunately) that an otherwise normal nervous system can get up to are the single most interesting thing about neurology.

A lot of the patients I see with unusual subjective experiences (time dilation, auditory or other sensory phenomena, paresthesiae) have migraines or other chronic sensory disorders. Do you people with weird experiences (thinking especially of the THUMP) get migraines?

Other thoughts: the vocal squawk could be a tic, if you feel the need to do it, feel that need is relieved by squawking, and can delay the squawk at the expense of squawking more later on. Hallucinating while falling asleep or waking up (hypnagogic or hypnapompic hallucinations) are sometimes a sign of dysregulation of the sleep/wake cycle, as can happen in narcolepsy (the hallucinations are dreams appearing inappropriately while the person is still awake). Sleep paralysis is similar: REM atonia persisting while awake.

You can ask me questions, this is more or less what I do for a living.

xp
well, speakers click sometimes just before a text or call comes in.. so there's something there..

can you play any music through your balls?

Plasmon: does my post upthread about continually mentally walking through rooms make any sense/am I crazy?

of course

I've heard of vocal squawks being related to acid reflux problems combined with vocal muscle tightness

"(the hallucinations are dreams appearing inappropriately while the person is still awake)."

this is fascinating to me. plz tell us more.

i have never had a migraine, although i have been told by a number of GI docs that I might have abdominal migraines (which may be cyclical vomiting syndrome), but i DO have weird time dilation, usually when i'm very hungry or tired.

it was weird the first time I came

why does using drugs cause sleep paralysis plasmon? i've never got it (and despite my comments here do drugs about once a year these days) but lots of friends who get sp say it always comes on after a few hard nights out...

Hey, Plasmon, Do a lot of MS sufferers complain about losing their sense of taste?

@strongo: typically excellent wikipedia article on hypnagogia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

spares me typing when I'm supposed to be dictating :)

haha it's amazing to me that while i've been obsessed with this kind of stuff since i was a kid, i've never done any real research into it. thanks!

Never lactated, but had slight boob growth when puberty started. Went to the doctor, he said "no biggie, happens a lot, this'll reverse itself as his hormones level out." Left the doctor's office, got in the car, and my mom accidentally slammed the door on my hand. PS, boobs shrank back to normal size in a couple of months.

she knew you were in there talking about your boobs

@trip maker: perceived loss of taste usually = loss of smell, which is not a common thing in MS, as far as I know. Anosmia sometimes develops from medication use, also local (sinus/nose) disease.

Ageusia in MS would have to be due to lesions in the brainstem (nucleus tractus solitarius or its connections), not the cranial nerves (b/c MS is a disease of the brain and spine, not the nerves). That's possible, but the area involved is tiny and high traffic, so I'd expect a lot of accompanying brainstem problems. The NTS also serves as the relay point for baroreceptors (monitoring blood pressure in real time) -- damage there might cause fainting spells, etc.

You can get your sense of smell tested. I do that in the office with cards from a $40 scratch and sniff booklet:

http://www.sensonics.com/shop/pc/catalog/qsit_283_general.jpg

yeah I think she'd read about some adrenaline cure for hormone imbalance
xp

i tend to sleep walk alot, and somehow i always wake up nude afterwards.

That is interesting, Plasmon. Thanks! My case isn't that extreme, from what I can tell, and I don't have any lesions on my brain stem that I know of, anyway.
Shit, could just be allergies. See, that's what's really annoying about MS; I second guess my senses constantly.

I think we all second guess our senses at least occasionally; with MS you have a good reason to worry there might some damage causing your symptoms, which raises the stakes.

A lot of the patients I see with unusual subjective experiences (time dilation, auditory or other sensory phenomena, paresthesiae) have migraines or other chronic sensory disorders. Do you people with weird experiences (thinking especially of the THUMP) get migraines?

I dunno if I count but I get definite migraines with aura very occasionally, maybe once every year or two, and as of ~3 years ago I get frequent mild but persistent aura-less one-sided nausea-headaches. I'm not quite sure whether these are migraines or not. The "bad" ones (actually not that bad by migraine standards, judging by other sufferers' descriptions) are mostly over within 2-3 hours, though may make me feel a bit weird for the rest of the day. The less bad ones can drag on for days.

Migraine side-effects I have had: once the left side of my face from my eyebrow down went numb for two hours during one, and once I accidentally looked into a reflective surface but the aura obscured where my reflection should have been and I kinda freaked myself out.

Most of the sleep-related weird things I've posted about happened at a time when I was having real problems sleeping when I should've and not sleeping the rest of the time (maybe as a symptom of depression but this was the first symptom I noticed so cause/effect could go either way, or a different way altogether), so sleep/wake dysregulation makes sense.

Neurology is p. fascinating to this outsider, wd love to read your blog if you start one.

There is a scratch & sniff anosmia booklet? Do the different scratchy smells represent the comprehensive range of the human sniffing system?

I went to see a doctor at 14 or so because I was never born with a sense of smell. They had me do an MRI and they "didn't see anything wrong" but I'm not sure they even knew the right stuff to look for because they had never heard of the condition before. (srsly!!) Is the Q-SIT™ usually a first step before ordering a whole MRI?

best thing about this thread is finding out that there is an actual medical 'smell test' that one can pass

Plasmon you are a neurologist? That is AWESOME. Oliver Sacks is one of my heroes.

Mine too. Thus the career choice. Sadly for me, neurologists as a tribe are not all that Sacksian.

The anosmia test is 3 multiple choice questions for scratch and sniff done with eyes closed: is it bananas, smoke, chocolate, or lemon? You're supposed to get all 3 right first guess I think.

I don't use it much, pretty much only when anosmia or olfactory hallucinations are the presenting complaint.

@Finefinemusic: sounds vaguely OCD-ish. If you're used to it and it doesn't bother you, don't worry. Are you really good at spatial reasoning (maps, puzzles, etc)?

way back up at #58), I get that. That pain in the side of the neck is your probably your clogged saliva glands reacting to the beer hops or spices in the meal. Mine swelled up one time, and I didn't have mumps, just needed lemon drops to clear that old thick saliva out of there.

also had the pain from blowing up the cheeks too big as a child. Ear sounding like old tv turning off - check. Pee sideways - check.

51) look at chain link fence and all perception and distance changes like a view-master slide.

the vocal squawk could be a tic, if you feel the need to do it, feel that need is relieved by squawking, and can delay the squawk at the expense of squawking more later on.

see, this is what confuses me: it usually happens so quickly that i don't have a second to even try and suppress it. BUT i have sometimes noticed that it seems to occur more frequently in stressful situations.

plasmon, is it something i need to worry about? or just a 'thing'?

50) If I stare at a TV or a computer monitor for long enough in a darkened room, I lose my sense of the space around me. Even when I'm in a completely familiar environment (which I usually am when this happens). It's like I get some altered sense of the room and the objects around me, and then I'm shocked when I look away from the focus of my attention and see that everything is, y'know, exactly where it's supposed to be.

This may be some psychological disorder, though. Who can say?

49) [related to 50] if i close my eyes and concentrate, i can flip my sense of my body in space, so that whatever environment i'm in, i "feel" as though i've been spun 180 degrees from my actual orientation. once i've done this, i can sustain it indefinitely, so long as i don't open my eyes and break the spell. it's fun!

That reminds me of a patient I saw as a resident, who said he had episodes where everything seemed reversed, as a mirror image. He would exit a room in his house and feel that everything should be in the opposite direction than it was. He didn't turn the wrong direction or anything, he just felt, while turning left to go down the hall to the bathroom (for instance), that the bathroom "should" be to the right. It was a purely subjective experience, in the sense that he never got lost and family didn't notice him having any trouble.

Scans and other tests were all normal IIRC. There was no evidence of neglect or right-left confusion otherwise.

@ just1n3: if it happens so quick that you have no build up / warning, it's not a tic. It sounds un- or semi-conscious, like a habit. The "squawk" might not be a habit itself, but a spinoff of some unconscious tendency you have, e.g. to tighten your throat/larynx. Does it usually show up just as you're about to start speaking?

It doesn't sound dangerous. either way.

That reminds me of a patient I saw as a resident, who said he had episodes where everything seemed reversed, as a mirror image.

I got this when I was in Sydney - I knew I was on the west coast but kept on picturing where I was as being on the east coast. Then I figured out it was because the sun was in the wrong half of the sky.

er, flip around east + west in that.

whoah, this is VERY like something that used to happen to me, almost always when i was sick/feverish. all sounds and sensations would become charged and angry, so that it felt like the entire world and even (especially) the thoughts passing through my head were yelling at me. usually happened in the middle of the night, i.e., i'd wake and find myself alone in this messed-up mental state. found it extremely disturbing, but it never lasted long and i eventually learned that i could dispel it by talking to someone or watching TV. tapered off in my teen years, and hasn't happened since the late 80s. i occasionally do get weird flashbacks or deja-vu moments that for a split second remind me of what it felt like.

― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Thursday, 16 June 2011 19:49 (Yesterday)

Yes, exactly this. It's not a "I can hear voices" or "my head is filled with noise" thing, just that my inner monologue would take on this strange chastising tone, like when someone decides to annoy you by repeating everything you say back at you in a silly voice.

What causes the "shiver" spasm that people say "someone walked over your grave"? Because I believe I'll be buried on a public thoroughfare how often it happens.

Ugh I get that quite a bit.

Also, deja vu! Whats that all about?

I swear I had a dream you ask about that, Trayce!

I had a dream about just1n3's squawk!

I used to get the sarcastic/loud thoughts thing a lot. Not as much now that I'm older, but still get the odd moment of it. Weirdest thing right now is a terrible thumb pain that grips me whenever I'm sad/on the edge of tears. And all my life I've gotten frequent moments of derealization where everything around me is drained of familiarity. Like I see my friends/family's faces as a stranger would see them, or I see a house the way an alien would see it. It's not a delusion because I know that it's happening and that it will end in 30 seconds or so, but it's rather horrific.

Oh, and exploding head syndrome. That's fun.

Like I see my friends/family's faces as a stranger would see them

aha, the unfamiliar cousin of deja-vu, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamais_vu

see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presque_vu - hmm that's more mundane than the presque vu i was thinking of, where you feel you're just about to glimpse a world-changing revelation into the nature of the universe... but it slips away.

Plasmon: yes I am and yes I do have very particular orders for things so slight OCD would not surprise me at all. Just one of those things I have done for years and years and always wondered if anyone else saw the world as the same... RPG? haha

48) Phantosmia - otherwise known as olfactory hallucinations.

Last year, I could smell cigarette smoke in our apartment (we don't smoke), then realised I could smell cigarette smoke EVERYWHERE.

For the first couple of days it was quite funny, but after a week it got really annoying...

Finding out that phantosmia suffers can smell everything from smoke, to shit and rotting food (its usually bad smells), i realised i was quite lucky.

After about 10 days it disappeared and never came back..

Very strange..

47) Didn't even think of posting this to the thread until recently, but I realized it's actually a little debilitating. I HATE the sound of my own voice. My "voice" – the one that runs in my head, the one that I hear coming out of my mouth when I'm not paying much attention, is a little gravelly and not highly inflected. But if I turn my attention to listening to myself, I sound all uppy-downy, melodic, high-pitched and kind of stereotypically homosexual, I have made allowances to avoid hearing my voice: I don't have a voice-mail message, I avoid getting video-recorded, I will sometimes lapse into bouts of silence when I become conscious of the timbre and quality of my voice. I don't really understand why I have two very very distinct voices that are not at all aligned, or even if this is a 'weird body phenomenon' or a neurotic fixation, but it drives me nuts.

I had a dream about just1n3's squawk!

seriously?!?

even after 4 years my husband still thinks my squawk is hilarious. one reason why i think maybe it's more psychosomatic is that it v v rarely occurs when i'm around ppl i don't know, and if it does it's much quieter. i also have a history of physical side effects of stress:
- as a kid, i occasionally broke out in really bizarre-looking rashes. the first time, it appeared as a red band around my waist, with small red patches over my upper body, and enormous raised welts on my thighs. it was insanely itchy but completely disappeared within 24 hours. i woke up the morning after, and i when i stepped out of bed it felt like i was walking on marbles.
- my parents made me switch schools when i was 16, from a small co-ed school where i had a v close group of friends to a large girls' school when i didn't really know anyone. within the first week there i got hiccups that lasted several days, a sty in my eye, and dozens of tiny warts appeared around my finger nails.

I did! You, ENBB, and your SOs and some non-ILX friends of yours were sitting at a table in a pub. I was walking by with a friend of mine and you squawked. My friend was like, "What the hell was that?" and I said, "Oh, that's Justine. She does that sometimes. It's no big deal." Then my friend and I went upstairs to the record store so I could buy a copy of the heavy metal song I wrote.

that's a quality dream. I love those kinds. I don't dream about ENBB or Justine enough :(

Perhaps if I dreamed of ENBB more I would call her by her name more frequently!

--paresthesia in both hands, and legs
--occasionally hand spasms where instead of opening and closing, muscles in my hand seize up temporarily.

The former is all anxiety related. Latter might be but I suspect physical injury more as the last time it happened was after improperly lifting a couch

Remy, re voice: This is common in almost everyone. Your ears are positioned in a particular way so that your own voice is muted (hence why you don't deafen yourself if you shout at the top of your lungs). This makes your real voice quite different to the one you perceive. Having done a lot of phone-based work, I know one of my biggest fears is having to listen back to a recording of my own voice. I sound so lispy and breathey and almost foreign and I tend to guffaw more than is normal. But I bet to other people, that's just normal - a bit like when you see a photo of yourself from an unusual angle and you're like "I don't look like that, WTF?" but most people will tell you, that's just how you look, deal with it.

sleep-related file entry 2, subcategory: hypnagogia - drifting off to sleep is sometimes accompanied by auditory hallucinations, sorta, of a gentle murmur like people (often my parents) talking in the next room or a radio on really low volume, talking about something mundane like a weather report, but if I try to concentrate enough to make out the words it stops

I get this too, except mine is always these snatches of really great pop music that don't exist - and I always fall asleep right after I realise this and can never recall them.

Put a tape recorder by your bedside, you might wake up with "scrambled eggs", like McCartney,

Paresthesiae seem to be worse with anxiety (you can induce them by hyperventilating), but I've seen them persisting for months and years in people who don't seem particularly anxious. Most of them have migraines, but not all of them. As long as there is no true loss of sensation (temperatures and textures are felt normally) and motor function / dexterity is unimpaired (and as long as the rest of the neuro exam is normal), they rarely predict any significant structural disease of the brain, spinal cord or nerves. I think of paresthesiae as static on an intact signally system, like the ambient whisper of an open mic just before someone starts talking into it. I think they're largely a normal phenomenon of a healthy nervous system, but that some people are more aware/sensitive to them than others. Migraine is in a sense a hypersensitivity disorder (the light above your desk is no brighter today than usual, but if you have a migraine it *seems* excruciatingly bright), and I think paresthesiae are part of that spectrum.

signalling system, i mean

Ya I got an MRI and all and all they found was chronic sinusitis

75) partial blockage of the male pee exit area, leading to pee exiting at a surprising angle

― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Thursday, June 16, 2011 1:46 AM (Yesterday)

Ugh, I have this too. I'm constantly having to wipe up the floor next to the toilet with toilet paper.

You cannot pee at my house again unless you sign an agreement stating you will pee sitting down.

I have some kind of extremely minor incontinence. I've never checked it out because it's more just a minor annoyance, and I've had it since 16...there's often a little extra 'residual' after I'm done so I hafta spend extra time at the urinal to prevent dripping in trou. it kinda sucks but whatev

^^ i know someone with that problem, but it was caused by once having a catheter up in his business.

lol jenny, awesome dream!!

my sister has that squawk too! to me it always sounded like a loud single hiccup, but when i asked her if it was hiccups she said "no, it's just something my throat does."

i occasionally have the "ghost radio" mentioned above (awesome name for it). i look forward to it happening! sometimes you get tired of having to consciously generate your own thoughts and you just wish someone else would do it for you.

also when i have to pee really badly one of the knuckles in my hand aches.

48: I've posted here about the massive 3-4 day periods I get, but I haven't talked about the goldfish-sized clots or the fact that I can sit on the toilet, contract a few abdominal muscles, and squeeze some menses out (and feel it flowing out of my body, which is the freaky part).

And we thank you for not.. oh, wait.

I get earwax blockages relatively frequently (about twice a year), and only in my left ear, for some reason. I use earplugs daily, so it's no surprise that it happens. The satisfaction I get from successfully removing a clod of wax (via ear drops/water syringe) is vastly disproportionate to what I've "accomplished."

I have impacted earwax in both ears--in fact, I currently have one ear that's completely blocked off, I'm told. I'm hoping to get on to my new county's We Care (health care for low-income people) soon so that I can get them cleared out.

48: I've posted here about the massive 3-4 day periods I get, but I haven't talked about the goldfish-sized clots or the fact that I can sit on the toilet, contract a few abdominal muscles, and squeeze some menses out (and feel it flowing out of my body, which is the freaky part).

― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Saturday, June 18, 2011 11:39 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this is the first thing I've read on ilx that has literally made me queasy, and that's saying something. so +1 2 u CGLDI

46) Think I posted this elsewhere: left arm hurts and feels like it's going to fall off if I drink hard cider. Also happened once with home-made fermented elderflower fizz.

45) Since puberty, small patches around edges of temples where hair doesn't grow longer than an inch or so.

Wi
/@/
Kwaiks

44) What I've taken to calling a 'funny turn', where I fall into a dwam, but it's a very physical dwam and everything seems a million miles away, especially my voice, like I'm lost inside myself.

It just happens when I'm out on the street and stuff.

dwam?

Sorry, my last post was generated by my IPod--the odd setup I've been using to recharge it at the wall (cigarette lighter charger plugged into an adapter) tends to do strange electrical things to the touchscreen. It's the greatest post I've never made.

Sorry, Trayce, was dealing with an all-too unmysterious hangover by making a very slow cup of tea. Dwam - Scots/poetic word. I tend to interpret it as a state of fey reverie. I'm trying to think where I came across the word most recently, but wherever it was referred to it as a state where the 'real' world had the strong flavour of being in a dream.

I like it! I wondered if it was something like a celt word- I googled it and didnt get what I expected. Like a hardcore daydream?

Wish I knew more Scots celtic, my ancestry fails me ;_; (F0rb3s clan here)

http://heritage.caledonianmercury.com/2010/04/11/useful-scots-word-dwam/00536

Hardcore daydream otm. A persistent state of unreality. But not in that general mundane sense I guess a lot of people have a lot of the time, more intense.

yeah and now i think on it, hangovers def do that to me. I feel *stoned*. like one step out of reality.

stoned without the good parts

I dunno, Ive had some lazy morns where I've been vaguely hung over and felt kind of... sleepily pleasant.

Yeah, if I am at the right place pain-wise, a hangover can be a nice buffer between my feelings area and reality. The trick is not wanting to die for some headache or nausea related reason.

43. I'd been cycling a lot. One night when I went to bed, and I was on the shoreline between waking and sleep, I suddenly had the extremely convincing sensation that my legs started pedalling round, in bed, and I couldn't stop them. I wasn't really able to open my eyes and to this day don't know whether they were actually going round or whether it was some sort of muscular hallucination.

42. last day of smart kid summer camp @ Duke, aged 16 or so — everyone of course stayed up until sunrise having low-intensity fun (i.e. throwing frisbees in the dormitory hallways and listening to Beck) — then retired to bed/airport/waiting for a ride from parents (depending on what time you had to get up and whether, like me, you lived nearby)

I woke up sometime around 10 AM, feeling as zombie-like as I ever have in my life, and badly needing to pee. I got out of bed and walked down the hall towards the bathroom; but every few steps, my legs would give way under me (I think they were both semi-asleep, the right moreso than the left) and send me crashing full force into the wall on my right. somehow, all of this was more amusing than painful, and after five minutes or so, I made it to the bathroom in one piece. I don't think anyone saw me, fortunately.

41. coital cephalgia - wikipedia that. first time i had it i thought i was having a stroke/aneurysm.

40. same summer program, a week or so earlier: my hall group has a night out, and plans to go to Ben & Jerry's. I starve myself all day so that I can help my friends eat a Vermonster (huge ridiculous thing with $30 worth of ice cream and toppings and shit). then we get there and they announce that 4 people finishing a Vermonster is lame, because other hall groups have already done that, and they want to try it with only 3, i.e. everyone but me. so I'm like "okay fuck that" and I promptly devise a plan to steal the limelight from them by eating an entire Vermonster by myself. I do not succeed, and am asked to leave the restaurant when I prove unable to control my vomiting. I walk home in shame. I lay down on my back, terrified that I will choke on my own vomit and die in my sleep; but I see no alternative, as putting any sort of pressure on my stomach is of course extremely uncomfortable.

eventually I fall asleep; and in the morning, I wake up with mind and body feeling more alert, more awake, more invigorated than on any morning before or since

also I have diabetes now

(no not really (I don't think?))

I know a guy who ate a Vermonster by himself on a dare. Worked out quite poorly for him.

I've not been sleeping properly for about 18 months and occasionally will go a whole night without sleep and then have to work next day

But very recently I sometimes get a hypnic jerk but while awake, assuming this us down to some form of exhaustion. Read about it but mine doesn't seem as pronounced as most, it's more the head movement you get when you drop off and then immediately awaken, except there is no dropping off

i have something v. similar to this but it feels like it originates in my chest, have put it down to bad sleep and micro panic attacks but god knows tbh

is that 39?

38. A few times in my life, my salivary glands have gone into overdrive, completely filling my mouth with a salty ocean of saliva that i can actually feel squirting out under my tongue. Usually this begins when I'm asleep, and upon waking is accompanied by dry belches (possibly from having swallowed a large volume of saliva while sleeping?).

37. A carbuncle in my nostril. It was quite gross, but it's gone now.

inspired by 38

36. sometimes when i yawn a jet of saliva sprays out of my mouth. i wish i could do it deliberately, i'd be a human squirtle.

ew, that happens to me occasionally. I once sprayed a few drops on a co-worker's financial report - really embarrassing, but she just laughed.

35. Nearly ALWAYS get hiccups when I eat falafel

weird! i get 87 - the eye twitch - alot.

34. when i first wake up it feels incredibly unpleasant to ball my hands up into fists

33. certain flashes of light cause an very physical "click" feeling in the back of my head toward the base of my skull, i can feel it inside my skull. its almost as palpable as cracking a very small knuckle, but with none of the satisfaction. things that trigger this: old TVs will sometimes produce a barely perceptible flash of light when you change the channel; or more reliably: there is a level in donkey kong country 2, for the SNES, where you are underwater and there is a little fish that follows you around with a light on his head, every time you switch directions his light would shine right out at you and light up the screen for a single frame, this would produce the click every single time.

34. when i first wake up it feels incredibly unpleasant to ball my hands up into fists

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Monday, July 9, 2012 3:32 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Holy crap did I misread this the first time.

you've never woken up fighting?!

32. While getting numbed up for dental work, I kept feeling like I had very cold liquid running down my neck and I kept wiping it. The dentist said nothing was actually there, it was just a nerve running down from my jaw area

31. crazy tingling, vibrating feeling all over my entire body after a mugger choked me out and dropped me (I guess it was all the blood rushing back)

30. I had an infected eyelash follicle that wouldn't drain for a year and itched and produced so much mucus at night that I would have to scrape it off in the morning in order to open my eye. I ate a glob of wasabi at a wedding reception and suddenly got a really sharp, not unpleasant pain in the area and when I ran to the bathroom I saw it was positively rupturing with green gunk. It was the best moment of my life.

Have lots of annoying dreams where I'm distressed because I feel like I'm not really there, and I wake up so relieved that I was just dreaming.

Also get really brief, extremely intense depersonalization "seizures." Similar to accounts of salvia trips, though thankfully very short. Had them since I was a kid, but lately seem to be provoked by excess alcohol consumption. PS. I don't do any psychedelic drugs.

29. Ooo Ooo! My wrists tingly when I hear accounts of bloody injuries.

wow @ wasabi

28. Got out of a really low car after a tough game of football a couple months back and a nerve twitched in my undercarriage and i had a dry orgasm.

real reason for sports cars?

never thought about it that way but otm

27. If I'm sleep-deprived and overcaffinated and underfed, I'll keep going for some time just fine, and then suddenly this moment hits and my body just figures out that it's totally screwed up, I begin to sweat out of every pore at once, and I go from nervous-on-edge-awake to about to fall asleep.

26. A while back was not sleeping enough (a pattern here?) and under a bunch of stress, and I developed a round bald patch in the back of my head. Just totally smooth. I got my shit together and in about three months, wisps of hair started to grow back. Eventually, the spot disappeared entirely like it was never there.

It was about the size of a quarter, or a silver dollar at most.

^alopecia areata...common side effect of stress

my sister has that, but it has yet to go away :s

25. this seems like the right place to share this, but it's hard to explain. every since i was about 11 or 12 i've sometimes (often then, very infrequently now) had an extra-sensory experience where i feel the thinness or thickness of an object as a sensation in my mouth - like in the folds of my tongue or the top part of my palette. it's not actually like the visualization of thinness but a kinda physical representation of how i imagine a string feels when you pull it taut from both sides. it happened a lot when playing those square plastic games where you manipulate the balls into the holes (i don't know what they're called). i can kinda evoke it a little by folding my tongue on itself. when it happened as a child i thought it was like the scene in The Giver where the protagonist saw flashes of red even tho he had no idea what color was - so he was unable to translate that into common sensory perception language. now i assume it's just a weird brain hookup, like some form of synesthesia.

i've told ppl about this experience in total twice. my mother when i was 11 and now u, ilx. do w/ this information what u will.

Yeah it does sound much like a synethestic response!

This thread has made me feel much better about violently sneezing at sunlight, except my mother has lupus and is literally allergic to UV radiation. Makes me mildly paranoid about having a 5 minute sneezing fit whenever I walk into bright sunshine.

i have 2, but i dont want to hog the floor so i will call them both 24 altho unrelated so

24a - I had a v v bad brain injury thx to a car accident a while ago and (this is not really uncommon i guess but weird but i will share it in case it is related in some way tht a smart doctor person might know) i initially had a huge disruption to my circadian rhythms which for those out of the know means that your sleep schedule is badly reset, so in my case no matter what i did i would fall asleep at 8 am, which is inconvenient. anyway, that eventually sorted itself out after 6 months or so (which was shitty), but years later i started to notice that without significant conscious mental exertion, i will always reverse the names for the colors green and orange. i dont see them in the reverse, but even if i am prepped for the experience (ie i just looked at a orange tax form on my desk and despite knowing what i was doing and what color it is, i still want to name it green, and have to do an internal correction every time i look at it. this does not happen with verbal cognates, like grass is always clearly green and oranges are always orange, but if i try to say what color a shirt that i have owned for years is, i have to do some sort of internal mental gymnastics.

24b when i was 25 or so, i suddenly noticed that i had a really nasty scar on the inside of my left thigh right up to the crotch/junction of balls. its about a 1/2 inch deep furrow and about a 1/2 inch wide, and looks like someone carved a 4 inch divot into my skin. i hadnt hurt myself recently, and i have zero memory of anything ever happening to explain it, i swear that i never saw it before that day (and uh i think i would have noticed, its pretty goddamn obvious) and its still there. produced a lot of paranoia abt lost memories at the time, but i was high a lot and paranoia was sorta par for the course. still creeps me the fuck out tho.

wtf, dude?! That's really really weird.

Ha I am assuming that's in response to 24b. Both are pretty weird tho.

Yeah, a is weird but there are a lot of similar types of things I've heard of. B is just.... Fucked up! Was it ever painful or itchy or anything?

No it was pretty much a clearly healed old looking scar.

hardly a strain/stretch mark

Sometimes when I'm sitting and really tired and I put my head down on my hands and close my eyes I have a sensation of the room turning slowly around me and I feel dizzy.

ya i have that, i feel the instant need to jolt myself back into a fully awake state.

When I was small my cousins and I used to beg my uncle (who is French) to give us some chewing gum and the answer would always be "no, children shouldn't chew gum because (you'll choke and die) / (it stays in your stomach for seven years) etc... So when I was allowed to have one eventually I freaked out after three chews and spat it out. I didn't want to risk death. Even today if I chew gum in the day, I will (without fail) wake up in the middle of the night and in my half-awake stupor imagine that the gum's still in my mouth and I'll be mortified of swallowing. If I accidentally swallow I panic even more and think I'm going to choke in my sleep.

About 10 years ago, I grew extra flesh ("quick") underneath both of my pinkie fingernails. I can trim back all of my other nails far enough so that if I hold my palm to my face, I can't see them. But with my pinkies, I still see a significant amount of nail, because there is a small amount of flesh on the underside of the nail that prevents me from clipping them any shorter. If I cut it too close, it gets very uncomfortable. If I want to use my pinkie finger (to play guitar, for example), I have to file it down around the fleshy area. I have no idea what this is called, or how it managed to affect both of my pinkies at the same time.

My knees buckle and I fall down and I half feel like I'm faking it. It happens less when I've been exercising. It's hilarious.

6. sometimes when i yawn a jet of saliva sprays out of my mouth. i wish i could do it deliberately, i'd be a human squirtle.

My dad can do this on purpose. Much to the annoyance of me and my brothers when we were kids :|

xp both of my pinkie nails have always been like that. no matter how close i trim them or file them, they always look like coke nails.

when i wear in-ear earphones my sinuses close to almost nothing

xp: except without the utility!

the side of my face just started twitching, just below the cheekbone. It's been happening for the last 10 minutes. I looked in the mirror, it's noticeable and weird. Never happened before.

Woah! I've had occasional random twitches before. Hope it goes away soon for you.

I've had an eye twitch for about 3 weeks and it's just killing me. I've got all the causes: excessive caffeine, booze, stress, and lack of sleep. Trying to wean myself off the caffeine. Hope I don't have to start going after the booze as well.

Im getting Hypnic Jerks all day long, my head just goes backwards, or my back sort of juts. Its fairly minor but im realizing its happening so much im kind of inured to it, but Ive no idea exactly how often its happening, id lose count

81) sometimes I'll get a very specific rhythm stuck in my head & I'll be left with a feeling of heaviness, as if my head is made of concrete, and a sense of time slowing down. I can get a hint of that feeling when I call the rhythm to my mind now, but to get the full unpleasant effect, it has to get stuck in my head unbidden, and that might only happen once every few months and only last for a couple minutes at a time. I've experienced this since I was a kid, and as far as I can tell the rhythm has always been the same:

THUMP-----THUMP-----THUMP--------THUMP

the dashes very roughly mark the interval between beats, with spaces of slightly more than half a second between beats 1 and 2 and 2 and 3 and a space of slightly more than a second between beats 3 and 4. it seems really precise (even moreso than I can notate) and consistent, but maybe that's not the case. I wonder if it's a premonition, like I will be crushed to death under a train that's chugging along at that exact rhythm. hopefully not.

― gtforia estfufan (unregistered), Thursday, June 16, 2011 12:11 AM (4 years ago)

this happened to me a few minutes ago! me irl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtojIDeXiVg

I don't experience the rhythm as a sound or vibration — it's more like a very mild version of asmr, or the recollection of asmr when you're not currently experiencing it (a sort of phantom tingling confined to the scalp). or maybe it's a mild, not-quite-tactile variant on the 'brain shivers' you get during ssri withdrawl. the actual phenomenon was very brief this time, but the rhythm is still stuck in my head like an earworm popsong.

maybe a Shining Time Station sound effect was encoded in *a weird part of my brain* when I was 7 years old? I don't know how else to account for it.

sometimes I'll be having a dream that involves a serious problem that needs to be solved with no clear solution, and I struggle to get to sleep because I'll wake up and still be convinced the problem needs solving and be attempting to solve it while half-awake, not realizing until I fully wake up that it was part of the dream and a bunch of rubbish.

I've no idea what the appropriate number for this would be, but I am able to induce a light dew of sweat on my scalp simply by thinking about hot spicy food.

xp this has been the last few days and nights for me.

34. when i first wake up it feels incredibly unpleasant to ball my hands up into fists

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Monday, July 9, 2012 7:32 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whoah!! This!! My hands feel like I have no grip strength when I wake up, I can make a fist if I concentrate and ignore what my body is telling me, but it's very hard.

I often wake up with weak/numb/pins-and-needlesy hands, which is a common symptom of carpal tunnel syndrome. maybe you guys are going through the same thing?

i sometimes wake up with weak, numb hands but it's usually after i've been sleeping awkwardly somehow, partially cutting off the circulation to one of my hands - could that be it for you guys?

once i woke up with my whole arm asleep & unable to move. i kept trying to get it to flex and when it finally did i ended up slapping myself in the face, hard.

lol crut

I don't think it's a circulation issue — it seems to happen to both of my hands even when I sleep on my side with my arms folded neatly in front of my torso

i often wake up like that - i tend to sleep with an arm underneath the pillow xpost

I used to experience what I've come to believe (based on what I've read about it) is some version of sleep paralysis, mostly when I was a teenager, and stopping, I couldn't help but notice, around the time I started sharing a bed. Last night I fell asleep not long after reading this thread and had a moment where I was trying to turn towards my husband and call out his name to wake myself up, but I felt physically frozen during my half-consciousness. It had been many years since anything like this happened, and it was freaky as hell.

Also maybe significant: I had smoked weed earlier that day (not something I do very often, plus it had been like 11 hours earlier, so I highly doubt it was a contributing factor) and I was dreaming about either that or some other experience about getting high when this happened. So...did a combo of the weed + reading about weird body phenomeon on ILX cause this? idk.

a few friends get sleep paralysis and i think they would say it's almost always in and around occasions when they've taken drugs

Mentioned several times in this thread but I get the extreme dizziness when standing up sometimes. It's often quite amazing, it's like I lose touch with reality for a good 5 to 10 seconds.

^ This is usually attributable to a quick drop in blood pressure.

When you stand up, suddenly your heart must work against gravity to move blood several feet up from your legs to your heart and also up to your head. If you're somewhat dehydrated and your blood volume is a bit low it definitely makes it worse. When this happens to me I go drink a large glass of water right away.

for the same reason, my vision occasionally goes black and cloudy (to the point of total blindness) when I stand up abruptly. it's cool.

34. when i first wake up it feels incredibly unpleasant to ball my hands up into fists

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Monday, July 9, 2012 7:32 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whoah!! This!! My hands feel like I have no grip strength when I wake up, I can make a fist if I concentrate and ignore what my body is telling me, but it's very hard.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Monday, September 7, 2015 6:29 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I often wake up with weak/numb/pins-and-needlesy hands, which is a common symptom of carpal tunnel syndrome. maybe you guys are going through the same thing?

― scarlett bohansson (unregistered), Monday, September 7, 2015 10:50 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i sometimes wake up with weak, numb hands but it's usually after i've been sleeping awkwardly somehow, partially cutting off the circulation to one of my hands - could that be it for you guys?

― bizarro gazzara, Monday, September 7, 2015 11:06 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have definitely slept on a limb awkwardly, to the point where it's kind of scary how totally dead it feels, but this grip strength thing isn't it. there's no pins-and-needles sensation or pain at all that would suggest anything odd until i actually try to ball up my fist, and then i don't know how to describe the feeling other than very unpleasant.

If I have a nightmare and wake up, I will return to the nightmare if I fall asleep with the same side of my head on the bed. If I change sides, I am out of the dream. Same with nice dreams: if I fall asleep on the same side, I can get back to the dream and continue making out with 1994 Winona Ryder.

i thought the weak-grip-upon-waking thing was pretty universal?

I don't have it and had never heard anyone mention it before reading this thread.

try making a fist right when you wake up tomorrow!

Deal!

I'm sure it's universal, when I was a kid I remember reading some kids' book from like the 50s and one of the 'science' questions was 'When I wake up, why can I not grip a bar tightly?' and I was happy to see I was normal in not being able to do this.
I can't remember what the answer was though, something something science

two of my toes kind of spasm and force themselves in different directions if i do a lot of lower leg stretching, like yoga or warm-ups or whatever. it's my big toe and the toe next to it on my right foot.

kinda lol, possibly early stages of thing my mom has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcot%E2%80%93Marie%E2%80%93Tooth_disease

'When I wake up, why can I not grip a bar tightly?'

A bar? Yeah, suuuuuure "a bar".

Tried it, grip was fine - maybe slightly wobblier than it will be when I'm fully awake, but no unpleasant feelings. Admittedly it was about 2 mins after waking, does that count?

Another pre-sleep one: objects I look at seem to be both growing truly gigantically massive in scale, but also simultaneously moving far away at speed, so that they objectively remain the same apparent size, and yet I am now surrounded by vast, titanic looming shapes. very odd and disconcerting.

probably a medical reason for it, but....in either scenarios of heavy anxiety or physical exertion, I get spasms in my hands (often my left, sometimes my right). which means when I go to grip something, the hand seizes up and closes and can't get a firm grip, and I have to flex it and then it's fine.

I had thought maybe it was due to dehydration and also due to being heavily out of shape, but after helping the parents with moving today my hand is still doing it off and on, 4 hours later.

Very similar to last post, my right hand has been killing me for days - had this on and off for a few years and pretty sure it’s just an rsi from work/iPhone, just treat it the same as my rotator cuff tendinitis in both shoulders viz chug ibuprofen and curse capitalism - but now I’m also getting spasms up my LEFT arm, along with (v slight) tingling/numbness, making holding my book difficult

So what’s this - incipient carpal tunnel? First signs of ms? Only one thing for it: ignore and maybe make a doctors appointment if it doesn’t go away in a month

make a doctors appt and you'll probably wait a month anyway so why not book it now!

the back of my hands tingle when i sneeze really hard

i had an eyelid twitch for maybe a month or two, which is annoying but not that abnormal i think, and it seems to have resolved itself, however, i'm afraid it migrated and now the bodily situation is indeed weird. now i have an inner ear twitch that creates a sound like when you intentionally "flex" your ears to relieve pressure as one does on a plane (some people can't do this apparently so they swallow to produce a similar effect,) except minus the crackly aspect of the sound, just the low end. it's very very annoying b/c it's obv involuntary and when it comes on it can happen like dozens of times in a row

i feel like this thread should be busier. idk why i'm the only one fascinated by my strange body lately

Similar to 35: Eating chili tends to give me hiccups, usually on first bite as if my body is surprised. I used to eat spicy food with no problem, then stopped for some years, the hiccup only appeared recently. It's super embarrassing.

23. A little after covid, I got two-three infections that seemed to come from my bellybutton area, where the skin would become red a little after the fever settling in. In the end I had it checked. The doctor and specialists said it could be either fat or a remnant of my umbilical cord being squeezed through my abs and out of reach of white cells or something. I refused the scanner / operation and it hasn't come back since, to the point where I am seriously wondering if it was not something else, and if me and my doctor didn't imagine the red patch. My friends thought of new nicknames when I told them.

22. Pleasant tingling sensation and goosebumps when I am given attention (hairdresser but not only) or when I observe someone receiving attention. I was amazed by this sensation as a child and sought it.

I get an UNpleasant tingling and goosebumps from the sound of anyone brushing their teeth. I can't STAND it, even on TV. Actually even imagining it is giving me the horrid tickling sensation. It's not too bad when I brush my own teeth.

the back of my hands tingle when i sneeze really hard

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Thursday, April 7, 2022 3:12 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Probably related: After a coughing fit, I will feel joint pain in my arms and torso. It dissipates, but takes longer to do so after more severe coughing.

20. I assume everyone here is familiar with strained/pulled muscles. But I somehow managed to strain a muscle in my back by sitting down in my car.

It's one of those things where, especially when you're a kid, you don't realize when your physical experience differs from the norm, but I just assumed when I was young that everyone developed welts on their face and had their hands swell up like inflated rubber gloves when they went out in cold weather, but nope. Didn't learn until many many years later that it's an actual condition (cold urticaria). And one that ceased for me in childhood, for some reason. Thankfully, as I don't need another reason to despise these frigid-ass midwestern winters.

Pleasant tingling sensation and goosebumps when I am given attention

YES! I think of incidents from childhood where a classmate who was not specifically a friend would do something nice to me. The one that sticks with me involved someone drawing on the back of my hand; I sometimes recreate the feeling by lightly running a finger around my other hand.

A couple of months ago I had a bad cold which gave me a sinus and ear infection. A small hole opened up in my nasal septum cartilage, which eventually grew to maybe a centimeter wide--I can fit the tip of my pinky in it.

It makes picking my nose really difficult--I just push the booger into the other nostril. I have to block the hole with a finger in one nostril and pick out of the other nostril. Or I grab the offending item with tweezers.

The one that sticks with me involved someone drawing on the back of my hand; I sometimes recreate the feeling by lightly running a finger around my other hand.

this is just so sweet and evocative i feel like it could be my own memory. i do sometimes get tingly chills from the kindness of strangers/mere acquaintances, or even tear up. and it's visceral, just an instinctual reaction. it's odd to walk out of a grocery store with watery eyes because of the way i was addressed at the deli counter

There is entire YouTube community devoted to making videos that trigger that sensation. Search “ASMR”.

19. A few months ago, I woke up feeling a little queasy, which escalated within about 5mins to feeling like my blood was boiling. My heart was racing, I felt really weak, and I truly thought I was dying. My whole body was on fire. Idk how long this lasted, maybe 10mins? until I suddenly expelled everything from my gut, and then it was suddenly over.

just assumed when I was young that everyone developed welts on their face and had their hands swell up like inflated rubber gloves when they went out in cold weather, but nope. Didn't learn until many many years later that it's an actual condition (cold urticaria).

Not nearly so extreme but I have or had dermatographic urticaria - if I scratched my skin lightly with my nail it would raise up, so that I could write on my skin, especially on the inside of my arm. In uni I used to write '4 REAL', for the lols. It was variable - maybe more pronounced in the summer when my hayfever also kicked in? I haven't tried or noticed it in a long time, it's definitely not happening right now.

lol thank you Justine. I was reading those posts thinking wait this is just ASMR?

Got a weird thing lately where when I wake up one or both of my eyes takes a few seconds to actually open. Just a few seconds so trying not to freak out about it like maybe it's a form of sleep paralysis unusually specific to the eyelids or something. Maybe better than the conjunctivitis I woke up with from severe allergy issues a few week back.

19. A few months ago, I woke up feeling a little queasy, which escalated within about 5mins to feeling like my blood was boiling. My heart was racing, I felt really weak, and I truly thought I was dying. My whole body was on fire. Idk how long this lasted, maybe 10mins? until I suddenly expelled everything from my gut, and then it was suddenly over.

― just1n3, Thursday, April 4, 2024 3:12 AM (three hours ago)

Not sure which direction you're talking about expelling things, but I've started having this experience occasionally, and it always ends in me defecating, typically starting solid and then progressing to diarrhea.

Anyway I've had plenty of weird body phenomena over the years. The older I get, the more weird stuff happens, so a lot of things don't seem really weird to me these days. Things other people have mentioned:

* Sleep paralysis. That sucked. Haven't had that in a while.
* I definitely get hypnic jerks, positional vertigo, etc.
* I used to have a lot of blepharospasm. I got plenty of nervous tics. I got a nervous disposition. Lately my left shoulder has started popping up when I walk, which it hadn't been doing since about 2000.

Haven't read the whole thread, so I don't know if this stuff has been mentioned. Kind of on the ILTMI tip, but since remy bean said "gross is good" I'm not gonna hold back.

* Sexual sneezing. Sometimes when I get first get sexually aroused I sneeze. It doesn't work the other way around - sneezing isn't sexually arousing or anything, and I sneeze for lots of reasons aside from being aroused. It's just a physiological response that happens sometimes. I'll start feeling a certain way and then I'll sneeze once. And it's not, like, I'm in throes of ecstacy or anything. It's when things are just kind of starting up. It's not a big deal at all but it is weird. It's also an actual thing. Like it's documented.

* Multiple orgasms. This isn't actually unusual for where I'm at now. Sexual response is linked to hormones more than anything else, from what I can tell. Julia Serano writes about it in _Whipping Girl_. I've heard a lot of trans women talk about having multiple orgasms. I don't have multiples in the sense that I hear other people talk about. In fact, I rarely orgasm at all. I was hoping GRS would change that, but it really hasn't changed anything, except that I no longer have genital dysphoria and orgasm doesn't feel awful and _wrong_ in some way I can't quite name. I mean it also feels good, but the _wrongness_ would override that feeling, so I kind of hated it.

Anyway, when I say that GRS didn't change anything, I mean that I experienced multiples long before transition. It's a documented side effect of an atypical antipsychotic called, I think... Abilify. I think that was the one. I can't remember for sure. I was on a lot of different atypical antipsychotics. None of them worked. The only thing with any proven efficacy, as far as treating gender dysphoria, is gender affirming treatment. But, you know, I tried damn near everything else, including a lot of different atypical antipsychotics.

When I hear people talk about multiple orgasms, they seem to be talking about serial orgasms. Like, they'll have one, and then they'll have another, and another after that, and it just, like, keeps building in intensity. Or something. Maybe I'm wrong. I've never had that. What I have are _parallel_ orgasms. Multiple orgasms at the same time. Like I'll be in the middle of one orgasm and all of a sudden another one will start up on top of that. Honestly I'm not a huge fan. Mostly it's awkward and gets in the way of me enjoying the orgasm I'm already having. It kind of reminds me of... I have had an experience once where I simultaneously orgasmed with my partner - this was PIV. And people talk about it like, they imagine it must be this great spiritual experience, but no, it was awkward. It was both of us spasming at the same time. I didn't feel like some intimate spiritual connection with my partner.

* While I'm full on in TMI, this is... I don't know if this phenomenon has a name, but I've heard other people talk about it. I rarely orgasm with partners, and when I do, it doesn't feel like a "real orgasm", it feels more like masturbating, just with a partner involved. A lot of dissociation. This was all pre-transition - I haven't orgasmed with a partner post-transition at all. What I find does happen sometimes, though, is I get into this state where everything becomes pure overwhelming sensation. All forms of sensation are intensely, uncontrollably euphoric. No matter what the intensity. Like, someone _breathing_ on me is pleasurable to the point where I can't control my body. This isn't sexual pleasure, it's something else. Honestly in a lot of ways it feels better than orgasm, although it doesn't provide the sense of _resolution_ that orgasm often does. A lot of times this is something that happens to me within the context of kink, but it's not exclusive to that. It is pretty much a bottoming thing, I think, because it involves me losing all control over my body and mind and, like. That doesn't go well with topping. Anyway it's nice. But it pretty much only happens with partners, and there has to be a certain sort of trust and intimacy in that relationship. It's something that I've only experienced post-transition. It's not really compatible with dissociation - it's just this experience of complete _embodiment_, kind of the opposite of dissociation.

I stretched weird recently and felt a pinch in what seemed like some central nerve running from head to toe, was very strange

I was reading those posts thinking wait this is just ASMR?

Not exactly, but certainly a similar result. It wasn't just a reaction to the physical or audible sensation; the intention and intimacy of the "giver" was a major part of the feeling.

Not exactly, but certainly a similar result. It wasn't just a reaction to the physical or audible sensation; the intention and intimacy of the "giver" was a major part of the feeling.

― Hideous Lump

so, like. head scritches?

During movie days or assemblies in elementary and middle school, my friends and I would sit behind one another in a line and draw on each others backs or braid our each others hair. Every few mins the girl at the front woukd go to the back so everyone had a turn. My mom would always have me braid and play with her hair when we watched TV at night. To me those things produced that feeling but it's all ASMR in my head. I'm finding it hard to think of an example where there isn't intention or intimacy. Like the whispering stuff - I think the intimacy there is implied because whispering is kind of an intimate act in and of itself? I have no idea what I'm talking about so feel free to ignore.