Doctors Share Their Favorite Pet Theories

A popular thread on medical Reddit, also known as r/medicine or Meddit, asked users for their “favorite personal theory in medicine that you will never get published.”

Commenters — who identified as a range of healthcare professionals, including doctors, pharmacists, and nurses — had scores of theories, and found that rarely was their observation an n of 1.

The original poster, MrFishAndLoaves, identified as a physical medicine & rehabilitation physician, and their theory was that the “length of your allergy list correlates with your risk of fibromyalgia.”

Here are some of the other top posts in the thread:

1) Farmer Sign

If a farmer is in pain, something is seriously wrong. Or, as Herzeleid, identified as a family medicine doctor, put it: “Long term exposure to livestock and/or agricultural equipment is toxic to nociceptors.”

Commenter SOFDoctor, a physician, was consulted on a farmer with a new limp whose wife made him see the doctor. Even though the farmer said he had no pain at all, he actually had a femoral neck fracture.

Someone replied that if a farmer comes to the emergency department because their wife made them, “they get pushed close to the top of the prioritization.”

2) Meth Good for Survival?

Commenter quaddi, identified as a doctor, theorized that “meth use acts as a vasopressor and reduces mortality in sepsis.”

“If you keep the heart rate up, there will be enough O₂ going around to keep at least some basic processes going,” an anesthesiologist commented.

Several posters noted that prescription methamphetamine (Desoxyn) appears on their hospital pharmacy lists, though it’s not often prescribed.

3) Imminent Death

“Seeing deceased relatives is a reliable prognostic indicator.” While the commenter wasn’t identified as a healthcare professional, numerous contributors agreed with this one.

Many chimed in with additional related signals, such as seeing friends and favorite animals that predeceased a patient, and “any talk about going on a trip, needing to pack to travel somewhere, etc.”

“On a very similar note, sudden feelings and expressions of feeling great after major events,” added pharmacist azwethinkweizm. “You’d be surprised how many times I’ve seen ‘patient reports feeling very well, better than they’ve felt in a long time’ in a chart followed by a deceased note days later.”

“It’s a rule at our facility to call close relatives in for a visit in cases like this,” the poster added.

4) Worse Outcomes for Nicer Patients

A hematologist wrote that rude patients “have better [overall survival] and oncologic outcomes than nice ones.”

One gastrointestinal physician assistant said they were “convinced being exceptionally nice is a risk factor for pancreatic cancer.”

A commenter identified as a nurse said, “In my experience this goes beyond oncology to all [rude] patients. There are so many jerk frequent flyers I have in my ICU [intensive care unit] that would have died a dozen lives ago if they were nice people.”

5) Mesoamerican Nephropathy

This one actually has been published, but the relatively new research may not be propagating to all corners of healthcare.

Commenter Frank_Melena was astounded by the “degree that metabolic syndrome-related disorders seem to hit Central Americans like a freight train compared to other ethnicities.”

“The amount of Hondurans in their 40s I’ve seen with borderline or full blown [end-stage renal disease], toes getting cut off from diabetic ulcers, triglyceride pancreatitis, etc., is off the charts compared to similarly aged people of other ethnicities here in South Louisiana,” they wrote. “And it’s not purely [socioeconomic status]-related. I say this based on my experience in a public hospital where the majority of my patients are non-Hispanic and highly impacted by some form of poverty + lack of access to healthcare + metabolic milieu.”

“I will never have the dataset to prove this but years of research conducted by the University of My Eyeballs confirms it conclusively,” the poster wrote.

Commenter Civil-Comparison-314 said the observation was “100% true. I’m a vascular surgeon so I see tons of these types of patients and the Mexican/Central American and Native/American Indian folks with DM [diabetes mellitus] 100% get earlier and more aggressive nephropathy and arteriopathy. They are losing toes and even legs and going on dialysis in their 30s and 40s. My Caucasian and African American DM patients (unless they’re type 1) don’t have those complications until their 50s-70s.”

Other Theories:

One commenter believes there’s “a higher chance of a newborn going to the NICU [neonatal ICU] if one parent works in healthcare and an even higher chance if both parents do.”

Another theorized that starting out with an empty ICU means it will fill with neurosurgical patients.

And apparently the feet have much to say about health. A commenter said foot color on arrival to the trauma bay is a reliable predictor of mortality. Another vouched for that: “I once worked with a surgical resident who would accurately predict the patient’s ASA score [used to predict the risk of a surgical procedure based on patient characteristics]. When I asked how he learned to do this, he just said he graded how bad their feet looked out of 4.”