A Brazilian doctor recently shocked millions on social media by posting an X-ray of a man suffering from cysticercosis whose body was riddled with calcified tapeworm eggs.

Last month, Doctor Vitor Borin de Souza, a resident at the Hospital das Clínicas in Botucatu, Sao Paulo, posted an X-ray of a patient on Twitter to show his followers how bad a tapeworm infection could get. The doctor explained that the white spots visible all through his midsection and his arms were calcified tapeworm eggs following infection with the common intestinal parasite. Luckily, the patient, who had come in for a checkup following a persistent cough, was in no danger from the eggs, as they were all calcified (unviable). Although the tapeworm eggs (cysticerci) posed no threat to the man’s health, they caused quite the stir on Brazilian social media.

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A Colombian woman has spent the last 4,000 days of her 39-year existence in excruciating pain because of a surgical needle forgotten in her belly after an operation.

María Aderlinda Forero’s decade-long nightmare began in 2012, soon after the birth of her fourth child. The housewife, who lives in the village of San Isidro, in the rural area of ​​El Retorno, decided to undergo tubal ligation surgery to close her fallopian tubes as a form of birth control. The operation was performed in the town of San Jose del Guaviare and seemingly went without a hitch. Maria left the hospital a few days later and return home to take care of her children. However, a few days later, she started experiencing severe pain in her abdomen, but every time she went to the doctor, they would just prescribe her paracetamol for the pain.

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A Spanish sewer worker developed a roundworm infection so bad that doctors could see the larvae crawling right under his skin.

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published the unusual case of a 64-year-old sewer treatment employee from Spain who realized that something was wrong with him after experiencing mild diarrhea and itching all over his body. He reported to the University Hospital in Madrid where doctors diagnosed him with a parasitic roundworm infection that had become unusually serious. Strongyloides stercoralis infection is usually asymptomatic, but in this particular case, it had become so serious that doctors could see the worms crawling under the man’s skin.

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A 60-year-old man who used to work out for 8 hours a day, walking, jogging, and doing hundreds of situps, developed severe degenerative arthritis and is barely able to move because of the pain.

They say too much of a good thing is usually bad for you, and apparently, exercise is no exception. Chinese newspaper Shanxy Daily recently featured the tragic story of a 60-year-old man from Henan who only discovered exercising in his early 40s, only to start overdoing it to such an extent that he pretty much ruined his joints. The Zhengzhou-based man reportedly exercised about two and a half hours every morning, walking, running, and doing pull-ups, then swam for about two hours and then did 800 sit-ups a day, plus hundreds of push-ups, and some badminton to top it all off. Unfortunately, his body eventually gave in and he started experiencing severe pain in his joints.

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A Florida University professor plans to spend 100 days 30 feet under the ocean’s surface, in an underwater lodge, as a scientific experiment to find out how the constant increased pressure affects his body and mind.

The current world record for time spent living underwater was set in 2014 by two Tennessee biologists who managed to live submerged for a total of 73 days, but if University of South Florida professor Joseph Dituri meets his set goal, he will beat that record by a whopping 27 days. At the beginning of this month, Dituri, who also goes by the nickname ‘Dr. Deepsea’, moved into Jules’ Undersea Lodge in Key Largo, an underwater hotel 30 feet under the surface, where he plans to remain until June 9th. During this time, he and a team of physicians and scientists plan to conduct a series of tests to see how living underwater for prolonged periods of time affects the human body and mind.

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Vibrant is a smart ingestible capsule that vibrates inside your intestines to mechanically stimulate the colon and increase the frequency of bowel movements without the use of drugs.

No one really likes talking about it, but chronic constipation is a serious health issue of our time. Either because of age-related issues, questionable lifestyle choices, diet, or just bad genes, constipation affects a large number of adults in the developed world. Things like exercise and fiber-rich foods can help, but for a significant number of people, they simply aren’t viable options. Chronic idiopathic constipation sufferers struggle to find relief even with strong laxative therapies and eventually have to undergo uncomfortable medical procedures to clear their colon. Luckily, they now have a drug-free alternative in the form of a vibrating capsule.

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A 45-year-old American tech-mogul claims that he spends around $2 million a year bio-hacking his body into regaining its youth.

First of all, if you’re younger than 35, you should know 45 isn’t that old, especially by modern standards, but Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur who once sold his payment processing company Braintree Payment Solutions to eBay for $800 million, claims that his age doesn’t really reflect his health and his look. Johnson says that he has the heart of a 37-year-old man, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lung capacity and fitness level of an 18-year-old, all thanks to a daily routine that he pays around $2 million a year to maintain and refine.

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A Missouri man can consider himself lucky to be alive after he ruptured a neck artery and suffered three strokes because of turning his head too quickly during a game of pickleball.

Joel Hentrich, a 35-year-old “super-fit” man from Festus, Missouri suffered the freak accident in November of last year. He and some friends were playing a game of pickleball, a racket sport similar to tennis, when he quickly turned his head to one side to track a ball. He felt and heard a strong pop in the back of his head, and immediately started experiencing symptoms that he had never felt before. Little did he know that that quick neck turn had set in motion a series of injuries that would leave him fighting for his life.

Moments after that violent neck pop, Joel experienced the worst vertigo in his life, and a couple of minutes later, he was being helped to the bench by his friends, because he couldn’t walk on his own.

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Imagine scrolling through your inbox a couple of days before Christmas, casually reading heartwarming Holiday wishes, and then seeing a message from your medical center notifying you that you have “aggressive” cancer.

Forget totally ruining someone’s Holidays, this is the kind of message that could cause someone a heart attack, or at least a panic attack. Sending one person such a message by mistake would be considered a serious error, but sending that message to thousands of patients is nothing short of a catastrophe. The Askern Medical Practice in Doncaster, UK has around 8,000 patients and it is believed that, on December 23, it accidentally sent a cancer notification to most, if not all of them. The text informed recipients that they had “aggressive lung cancer with metastases” and advised them to fill out a special form for people with terminal diseases.

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A 26-year-old man wound up with facial paralysis after wasting several nights watching the World Cup football games for an entire week.

The World Cup is always an exciting time for football fans all over the world, but keeping up with the action is a huge challenge, especially during the group stages, and even more so when the host country is in a very different time zone. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t die-hard fans out there who will sacrifice sleep for nights in a row to make sure they don’t lose a single game. Unfortunately, that can take a terrible toll on one’s body, as a 26-year-old man in China recently learned at his own expense.

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A young Chinese woman recently ended up in the hospital with multiple broken ribs after a coughing fit caused by eating spicy food.

If you’ve ever eaten something spicy, you already know that it can cause a bit of coughing. What you probably didn’t know is that in extreme cases, spicy food-induced coughing can actually cause bone fractures. Case in point a Chinese woman from Shanghai, who, because of being too skinny and having poorly-developed musculature, broke no less than four ribs while coughing because of spicy food.

The woman, surnamed Huang, told doctors in her native city of Shanghai that she was eating spicy food which, at one point, caused her to start coughing. During a particularly strained cough, the young woman allegedly heard a sharp crack from her chest area, and immediately began to experience pain when breathing and trying to speak.

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A Chinese woman required emergency surgery to have half of her kidney removed after a rough weight loss massage session.

The 41-year-old woman referred to only as Ms. Miao (a pseudonym) reportedly wanted to lose some weight with help of massage, so she went to a salon in Hangzhou, China’s Zhejiang province for a session. Midway through the special weight loss massage, the woman could barely stand the pain in her abdomen, but when she told the masseuse about it, she said that it was just the fat leaving her body. That apparently reassured Ms. Miao and she gritted her teeth through the rest of the session, but the pain in her abdomen only got worse after she got home.

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An Indian woman who went into a private clinic to have her uterus surgically removed woke up from the procedure to find that both her kidneys had been stolen.

A couple of months ago, we featured the shocking story of an Indian woman who claimed that one of her kidneys had been stolen by her husband and sold for profit. As cynical as this may sound, she was lucky compared to another fellow Indian who had both her kidneys removed without her consent and now has to rely on daily dialysis to survive. Back in September, Sunita Devi, a woman from Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district went to a private clinic in Bariyarpur to have her uterus surgically removed. Only instead of her uterus, doctors there removed both her kidneys and then disappeared.

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A 95-year-old Chinese war veteran recently discovered he had been living for almost eight decades with a bullet lodged in his neck.

After suffering a fall from the balcony of his house in Shandong, China, Zhao He didn’t report any symptoms to his worried family. He didn’t feel any pain, but after a while, the World War 2 veteran did start to feel a slight discomfort in his neck, so his son decided to take him to the hospital for a checkup. After hearing about his fall, doctors recommended an X-ray, to ensure that he hadn’t suffered serious damage to his neck. Only instead of a fracture, the X-ray revealed a foreign object in the man’s neck, which would later be identified as an old bullet.

The 95-year-old man told doctors that he had joined the Chinese army as a teenager and fought through two wars – against the Japanese invaders during World War 2 (1931-1945) and on the side of North Korea during the Korean War (1950-1953). He suffered multiple injuries during his time in the army, but he did not remember anything about taking a bullet to the neck.

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Researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University claim to have identified a drug that replicates the benefits of exercise on muscles and bones.

Many of us may not want to admit it, but modern life in developed countries is easier and more comfortable than it’s ever been. Gone are the days when humans had to rely on heavy labor to sustain themselves and their families, but this particular part of our evolution has had some unwanted health-related consequences – the vast majority of people aren’t getting enough exercise and that is taking a toll on their bones, muscles and overall health. The problem is that many of us don’t want to put in the physical work to keep our bodies in good shape, even though we know we should, but the good news is that we may not have to…

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