Oh good news! Not a serious heart problem!
This seems to be the one, right down to the bit about raising the elbow. That’s always my default relief motion, rotation of the left arm and raising my elbow up into various funky chicken positions.
Try this on for size: When I step on something with a hard edge falling horizontally across the sole of my foot, I can feel a poking sensation in my back near the kidney area, on the same side as the foot, as well as a grabbing sensation on the back of my head (as if a hand or claw or something is grabbing the back of my head). I’ve felt it ever since I was a little kid, and it’s one of the reasons why I never walk barefoot.
So you don’t walk barefoot now, but when you were a kid, when you first discovered this, I’m guessing you worked to recreate the phenomenon at least a few times. “Woah! That was harsh.”
Yeah. It made accidentally stepping on lego extra specially aversive. And then came the shoes.
I’ve got a couple, and they’re not even gross!
Every now and then, maybe once every couple months, when lying down my leg will suddenly vibrate really, really fast, a little like a dog shaking its leg when its belly is rubbed. It doesn’t move very far, not really a kick, but a true vibration, and much, much faster than I could move it voluntarily. More often but still uncommon, when relaxing or trying to go to sleep, my leg will involuntarily twitch just once, really roughly, which does result in a small kick. I never feel these coming on, they just happen with no warning, and only when I’m lying down.
Second, if I have to be up and active without having had much sleep (5 hours or less), I sneeze a lot and get a drippy nose, as though my body is allergic to being tired.
Absent surgical/cybernetic intervention, it’s a safe bet that whatever “weird” thing your body does involuntarily is shared by plenty of the other seven billion people on the planet, you snowflakes.
(My eye used to hurt every time I drank chocolate milk… until the doctors advised me to take the spoon out of the glass beforehand.)
When I have to work with stupid people, I get dull throbbing pain, often located around my temples.
I thought this thread would be hell on my hypochondria, but it’s actually kind of comforting. Bodies just do weird stuff sometimes, and it’s not always a symptom of some fatal disease.
Yeah. Human bodies have a weird mix of very large tolerances for normal, and very narrow ones. Like, you can get 2/3rds of your liver cut out, and the sucker will just grow back. Albeit, in a weird lumpy shape, but perfectly functional. On the other hand swallowing a shotglass of methanol can make you permanently blind (depending on body mass and treatment.)
Sometimes when I yawn my mouth sprays saliva. It comes from underneath my tongue where I understand the saliva glands are located. It’ll often leave a scattered wet patch on books that I’m reading (it seems to especially happen while studying, but I’d guess that’s just because I yawn more when doing so).
It’s called gleeking, and I knew a few kids who could spray saliva all over the place voluntarily. It was disgusting. One of the guys I knew had a phase where he decided to be a gleek marksman, and managed to catch me in the eye on more than one occasion.
I can make my ears rumble voluntarily - unsurprisingly, it sounds like a distant drum roll on tympami.
In the late 60s, I was a ten year old experiencing tonsil and adenoid problems fairly frequently. I had both removed, but for some reason the EMT talked my mom into allowing him to try an experimental treatment for further shrinking the tissue. It entailed three fifteen minute or so sessions where I laid in a dental type chair partially inverted, with long metal skewers tipped in radium coated cotton swabs that were shoved up my nose to the back of my throat. I remember minor movements of my head being rather unpleasant during treatment.
As a adult, I learned that this technique was developed for Russian submarine crews to ensure that their ears cleared easily from depth changes. It worked for me. Boy did it work. As a teenager later I discovered that I was the SCUBA class’ star pupil when it came to eustachian tube clearing. Since my radiation treatments, all I have to do when diving, flying in a plane or driving in the mountains is think about clearing my ears. For me, it’s as much of a controlled body function as blinking my eyes.
Of course, the other thing that I learned as an adult about my treatment is that it resulted in a high incidence of brain tumors. A pesky little side effect that I’m sure didn’t trouble the Russian navy too terribly much. I must say that although I can’t recommend the Marie Curie style of medicine, so far brain tumors haven’t been much of a problem for me. YMMV
OMG this is the best thread ever!
Wow. I can check three of these!
- Arm sometimes aches after sneezing - check!
- Yawning sometimes causes involuntary stream of saliva - check!
- I can force a rumbling sound in my ears - check!
I’m a walking collection of plausibly but not reliably singular attributes!
I do that too. A lot.
What is that force rumble exactly? I can do it too. It feels like I am flexing some part of my ear canal.
You know how someone’s leg will fall asleep after sitting cross-legged for a long time? Well, my leg wakes up when I am sleeping! Is that normal?
