The human body is a complex machine which we’re all still learning about as we go – and it turns out checking in with your pals about the abilities of your skin suit might lead to some interesting revelations.
Social media users have been left shocked after Dr Sermed Mezher stitched a TikTok video of a bloke who explained he thought ‘everyone’ could carry out a strange phenomenon with their eyes to let him in on a secret…that we can’t all do it.
The medic, better known online as @drsermedmezherexplains, often shares useful health advice to educate his followers, such as common signs of ADHD, why you can never feel a mosquito bite and why we should forget the ‘five second rule’.
And in one of his recent videos, he revealed that about half of the population have a secret ‘superpower’ – before adding that unfortunately, it’s ‘less useful than a bottle f
However, it’s still pretty cool and Dr Mezher reckons it is ‘neurological curiosity that showcases the variability in human motor control and sensory perception’.
So, what is this strange, but apparently useless, skill?
Dr Sermed Mezher revealed that not everyone has the ability to blur their eyes on command (TikTok/@drsermedmezher)
Blurring your vision on command or unfocusing your eyes at will, of course.
Dr Mezher explained this ‘rare and intriguing ability’ is a similar phenomenon to how some people can only raise one eyebrow, whereas others are only able to wiggle both at once.
He told baffled social media users: “This phenomenon involves consciously relaxing the eye muscles that control focus, allowing individuals to defocus their vision at will.
“The ability to blur vision is typically achieved by relaxing the ciliary muscles, which control the shape of the lens, and thus the focus of the eye. When these muscles relax, the lens becomes less curved, causing the image on the retina to blur.”
Who knew? I certainly didn’t, as I’m sadly not a member of the blurry eyed brigade.
The doctor said that people who possess the ability to unfocus their vision whenever they like often compare it to daydreaming, staring into space or zoning out.
He explained that artists often speak of benefiting from it, as they ‘use it to gain extra perspective on an image’.
The medic explained that there isn’t any real benefit to doing it (Getty Stock Photo)
“It’s a skill that can be learned and refined with practice, though it may come more naturally to some individuals than others,” Dr Mezher continued.
“This ability can be useful in certain situations, such as when trying to reduce visual strain during prolonged periods of close-up work or reading.
“However, the capacity to blur vision voluntarily doesn’t appear to be related to any specific visual or health advantages.
“The ability to defocus your eyes on command is a natural one, but not everyone can do it.”
But the social media medic reckons that those who can’t do this instinctively can ‘achieve a similar effect’ by changing their focus from an object nearby to a distant one, or crossing their eyes.
Dr Mezher’s followers were left stunned by the revelation – although some were quick to brag that they could do it – and flooded the comment section with their thoughts.
One said: “I thought everybody could do this?!”
Another added: “It’s like moving your ears. Some people just can’t find the muscle to move it.”
A third chimed in: “I can’t do it!”
While a fourth joked: “I can immediately blur my vision by taking off my glasses.
People are shocked after finding out that others can’t perform a simple trick with their eyes.
NHS Surgeon Dr Karan Rajan (@drkaranraj) has taken to TikTok to run us through what people are calling a ‘superpower’ vision hack.
In a recent video, the Sunderland University lecturer commented on a clip of a man boasting about being able to defocus his eyes on command.
People were calling it a ‘superpower’ (TikTok/@drkaranraj)
“POV: you are one of those who know how to blur their eyes,” they wrote on the text underlay.
However, Dr Karan said: “Congratulations, you’ve unlocked the world’s most useless superpower.
“When you focus on an object, your ciliary muscles contract.
“This causes the lens in your eye to become fatter and rounder. It increases the refractive or light-bending powers of the lens, helping the light rays to be focused at the retina at the back of the eye so you see things more clearly.
“When you intentionally unfocus your eyes, you’re doing a manual system override.
“You are voluntarily relaxing the ciliary muscle. And just like biological play-doh, you turn that lens thinner and flatter.
Dr Karan called it ‘the world’s most useless superpower’ (TikTok/@drkaranraj)
“This reduces the refractive power of the lens, leading to a blurred image.
“This cheat code you’ve activated has a name, ‘negative accommodation’.
“Or ‘intentional divergent squint’, because your eyes slightly drift apart.”
Opening up on the possible dangers, Dr Karan added: “This is usually harmless, but since the eye’s natural resting state is at a point in the distance, excessive unfocusing can lead to visual strain and fatigue.
“Constantly shifting between focused and unfocused states might overstimulate the ciliary muscle and the eye’s focusing mechanism.
“And repeating this divergent squint too often could disrupt your normal binocular vision, coordination between the eyes, and eye alignment.”
If you want to carry on doing it, he advises: “Glitch out, but in moderation.”
Commenting on the clip, some viewers ‘thought everyone can’ do it, as one questioned: “Can’t everyone do it? I’m really surprised by it.”
A second also argued: “Most useless superpower? WRONG!! I was always the fastest kid to see all the Magic Eye illusion books in school.”
“I used to be able to do it and thought everyone can, but at 54 years old I wear glasses as everything permanently blurred without it, no longer can control it at will,” a third wrote.
While a fourth cautioned: “I can do this and shake my eyes lol but I defo don’t do it often as I have tripped over or walked into something doing it for fun lol.
Apple Watch owners can’t believe one of its new app’s functions, following the latest watchOS 11 update.
The Apple Watch has polarised opinions among the public ever since the release of series one back in 2015, and it has continued up to the tech firm’s latest model, the series 10, which came out just last month.
However, it looks like a new app, available on Apple Watch series eight and later, has caught the attention of social media users.
The new Apple Watches have a useful new feature (Peter Nicholls/Getty Images)
The Vitals app was added to the Apple Watch’s repertoire with the OS update earlier this month, but several people were unaware of what it really did.
A lot of users assumed it was like the heart rate app, cool for about five minutes before you got bored of looking at your BPM for a few minutes.
But Vitals not only shows your key health metrics, but it gives you a ‘deeper understanding of your daily health status’.
Some of the factors monitored are your ‘heart rate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen, wrist temperature, and sleep duration from the previous night’, according to the App Store.
That means that it keeps monitoring these figures if you keep it on in your sleep, leading to one Reddit user making a huge realisation.
You’ll be able to anticipate when your body is starting to feel worse for wear (Reddit)
It turns out that the app can tell you when you’re starting to get sick – something that could come in handy for a lot of people, especially this time of year.
One Reddit user shared: “Woke up today feeling a off. Now as the evening is setting in, I am feeling that old familiar feeling in my head. I’m sick,” while posting the above screenshot from the Vitals app.
It revealed that there were three ‘outliers’ in his wrist temperature, as the metrics fell out of its usual range, signalling that something was up.
Users were shocked when they shared the news, as one commented: “I didn’t even realize the Apple Watch measures wrist temperature until seeing this post…”
A different user said that they had the same experience: “Mine too, I’m still sick but watch noticed before I did.”
Apple Watch is widely used by exercise nuts (Getty Stock Photos)
A third user shared: “I started using Vitals when it first came out on the beta and since then I’ve gotten sick about twice. Both times it knew a couple days in advance and I hadn’t felt anything wrong.
“Kinda insane how useful this feature can be.”
Despite its usefulness in detecting illness from time to time, it shouldn’t be used as the be all and end all to treat medical conditions.
The feature to measure blood oxygen is currently banned in the US after a claim arguing Apple violated health tech company Masimo’s pulse oximetry patents.
You may not have heard of ‘gleeking’ before, but you’ll probably feel disturbed after finding out what it is.
There’s actually a high chance that you’ve done it before without knowing it, but trust social media to make the term go viral and plaster it all over your timeline.
The bizarre action did the rounds on TikTok, with one creator showcasing just how easy it is to do in a viral clip.
The content creator showed her ‘gleeking’ skills off. (TikTok/@skysaferian)
The gross trend centres around the act of shooting saliva out from under your tongue – which can often happen when you’re yawning.
If you’re sat thinking that you are now a ‘gleeker’, you’re right, but can you do it on demand?
The man in the clip explains that only one percent of the human population can gleek on demand, but a medical profession thinks that ‘everyone’, with some hard work and training, can do it after some extensive practice.
Clear your plans.
Here’s the science behind it though, because there’s a reason behind why people gleek in the first place.
So, in your mouth, there are three pairs of major saliva glands, as well as thousands of smaller ones.
Two of the major ones are located on the bottom of your mouth – the submandibular glands and the sublingual glands, if you want to know their real names.
When eating, these glands start pushing out saliva and usually any excess drains away through ducts under your tongue.
But sometimes this can build up and the pressure on the glands from your tongue causes it to squirt out.
As I mentioned earlier, this typically happens by accident, but if you fancy giving it a go on demand there are some ways you can boost your chances.
Mark S. Wolff, DDS, PhD, dean of the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania told health.com that eating something sour can help to stimulate your salivary glands – you can then push your tongue out of your mouth, lift it up and curl the tip of your tongue back so it’s behind your top teeth.
With some hours and late nights, you could be a gleeker too. (TikTok/@skysaferian)
Dr Wolff told the publication: “If you tense the muscles in the tongue right, it squeezes the duct and saliva squirts right out.”
He went on to say ‘everyone can do this’, but it will most likely take some practice to get to the point where you can do it on command.
Well, what other plans did you have for this weekend?
We’ve all had them before, you sit down on the throne, do your business, wipe and see nothing on the toilet paper – it’s a great feeling but one that only comes around every so often.
You’d usually check again, and if it’s clean, then you’re in luck and you can go about your day with a big smile plastered across your face for that weird, yet rewarding, outcome.
The famous ‘ghost poo’ has an explanation. (Getty Stock Photo)
Over the last few months though, the ghost poop trend has been going viral on social media platforms, as several people share their own takes on what it feels like to have a ghost poop.
Content creators, specifically on TikTok, have been covering the phenomenon, which is basically when you take a dump and don’t see any residue when you wipe.
Some others have also used the term to describe a time when they’ve felt like they’ve done a number two, but find nothing in the toilet.
It turns out that hundreds of people have experienced the odd phenomenon, prompting the hashtag #Ghostpoop to make the rounds on TikTok.
But ever since the first Ghost poop video went viral in 2021, we have been left confused as to why it happens, so medical professionals have decided to step in and explain what it means.
Dr. Rabia De Latour, gastroenterologist at NYU Langone Health, and Dr. Felice Schnoll-Sussman, gastroenterologist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, spoke to the Today show about the weird occurrence, and how it is fairly common.
A ghost poop could make your day – it is about the little things, after all. (Getty Stock Photos)
The doctors explained that a number of factors could cause them, with one being that your poop is so ‘well-formed’ and ‘firm’ that it didn’t leave anything on your behind to clean up.
But the publication also explained what determines it: “The texture of stool and how much you need to wipe can depend on a few factors: Fibre intake, gut health, the amount of water and other nutrients absorbed from stool in the large intestine, and how well the anal sphincter muscles function.”
Lovely.
Some people use the term for when they feel like they’ve pooped but actually see nothing in the bowl.
The medical experts explained that there’s nothing to worry about if this happens, as your poo was probably extremely ‘dense’ and went ‘straight down the toilet’.
Apparently, this is ‘perfectly normal’ and means that you have a ‘very healthy bowel movement’. Don’t we all aspire to that?
What to do, what to do, what to do for a ghost poo? (Getty Stock Photo)
But another explanation for this is that you’ve just farted instead of pooped, so it might be worth keeping tabs on that – maybe a wipe will help you determine the outcome.
“The sphincters get stimulated, and you do pass something, but it’s just air,” Dr. Felice explained.
However, if you keep feeling like you need to poop but nothing comes out, it could be something more serious, and you should speak to your doctor, say Dr. Rabia and Dr. Felice.
The publication also state that this could be an early symptom of inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s, colorectal polyps, or anal cancer.
