6 Things Your Body Does Every Day (That Can Destroy You)

Life is dangerous: You could slip in the shower, get hit by a bus, mauled by a bear or drown in breasts (it happens, look it up). It always pays to be safe, and a life lived cautiously is a life lived long. For those of us who walk the cautious road and avoid the three lethal B's--buses, bears and breasts--wherever possible, life should be more or less safe. Right?

Not in the slightest. See, it turns out just waking up in the morning can be as dangerous as any drunken all-night lion-punching marathon, and you can just as easily kill yourself sneezing as you could playing Gun Hockey (and at least Gun Hockey's fun... well, up until Shotgun Overtime, anyway).

What, did you think that was a throwaway example? No, sneezing will jack your shit up. Though it's one of those annoying biological functions that serves a deceptively useful purpose (it's your body's way of getting dirty snot out of it) and often provides a convenient excuse for spitting in your enemies' faces, it's still basically a time-bomb planted inside your nose.

A sneeze can rupture your ear drums, break your spine or straight up murder you. It's like Mortal Kombat inside your face. People have slipped discs in their backs, broken ribs and triggered heart attacks from a simple sneeze. And keep in mind, we're not talking about fragile people who were also at the end of a long battle with a terminal disease. These were just normal people, going about their normal lives, until they got a whiff of pepper and woke up six hours later in a dumpster laying atop their shattered limbs.

FINISH HER!

Coughing just sucks. It has no redeeming qualities: it's not endearing in any way; there is nobody on Earth that will find you more sexually attractive due to a cough (cue the coughing fetishists--we know you're out there, Internet). But dangerous? Oh yes. On those long, seemingly endless hacking fits, there's always the chance you will suffocate on your own body's so-called protective mechanism--which responds to choking threats by shutting off your airways. Good call on that, body; that's like responding to objects moving rapidly at your face by shutting down your eyeballs.

Pictured: Your body and you.

There are also cough induced rib fractures, rupturing of the diaphragm and even abdominal herniation. That's a broken rib, a ripped diaphragm and part of your torso leaking out a little, all because you coughed. It's not even rare; it's mentioned that "each individual injury is well documented in the literature," meaning these kinds of things happen all the goddamn time. The rib fracturing and hernias happen often enough that the Wikipedia pages for each affliction list coughing as "a common cause." The page actually describes a man who had all these things happen at once. Yep! You're basically one coughing fit away from beating the shit out of your insides.

"Dear lord! I should have never left Chauncy alone in this Pepper laboratory!"

Man, there just isn't much of a downside to a good crap: It gives us time alone, to think, to read--to better ourselves in a plethora of ways. Pooping is what most of us in the Western world do instead of meditating. Aside from the occasional bathroom that must be exorcised, burned and the Earth beneath it salted so that nothing might ever grow on that accursed land again, there's no downside to a good, solid (sorry) bowel movement, right?

Truly, a spiritual experience.

Oh god, there is so much. But don't worry, straining to force it out isn't fatal or anything--you might just get away with a mere crippling injury. All that straining can cause diverticulitis (Caution! Picture!), hemorrhoids (Caution! Another picture!) and rectal prolapse (Thank Christ, no picture). Diverticulitis is a condition where pockets in your small intestine become filled with blood, which can then burst, filling your bowels with blood and your blood with dook, and extra bacteria in your body is never a good thing. Hemorrhoids are well known enough that we can just skip over disturbing, intimate descriptions of them (they're like varicose veins in your asshole) but rectal prolapse? That's the kind of injury that makes John Carpenter weep.

It is a weakening of the ligaments that hold your intestines together, and in the worst case scenario, your intestine comes loose and hangs out your anus. Oh, we're sorry; we should've capitalized that. That should read "The Worst Case Scenario," because crapping out intestines is the worst thing that can happen in any possible situation. DO NOT DO A GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH FOR THIS.

Look, a puppy!

Luckily you can avoid all that by... oh, wait. There's not much you can do to avoid it, aside from never, ever straining, or you know, never pooping again.