By Frank Kamuntu
The human body can be truly incredible, yet totally bizarre. Your body even knows how to signal that something isn’t right with your health. Everything from skin rashes to a cough that just won’t quit could be a sign that your body is in trouble. Here’s what to watch out for, according to doctors.
Unintentional Weight Loss
If you’ve lost more than 10 pounds with no diet or exercise changes, get it checked out, says Richard Wender, MD, chief cancer control officer at the American Cancer Society. Unexplained weight loss happens most often with pancreatic, stomach, esophageal, or lung cancer.
Itchy, Blistery Skin Rash
This reaction, which breaks out on the elbows, knees, butt, back, or scalp, may look suspiciously like eczema, but it could be a more serious issue: celiac disease, an autoimmune condition in which ingesting even the tiniest amount of gluten causes your body to attack its own intestines. Up to 25 percent of people with celiac have this rash, known as dermatitis herpetiformis. Many patients have no digestive symptoms. When someone with celiac consumes gluten, the body releases an antibody known as IgA, which attacks the intestines; sometimes IgA also collects in small blood vessels underneath the skin, triggering the telltale rash.
Changes In Handwriting
When you think of Parkinson’s, you probably think of tremors, but a more telling early Parkinson’s warning sign is handwriting that gets much smaller. “I have patients write a sentence such as ‘Today is a nice day’ 10 times,” says Michael S. Okun, MD, national medical director for the Parkinson’s Foundation. “As they write, each sentence gets smaller and smaller, and the words become more crowded together.”
Parkinson’s disease occurs when nerve cells in the brain become damaged or die off. They stop producing as much dopamine, a chemical that sends signals to produce movement; this causes muscle stiffness in hands and fingers, which affects handwriting. Two other early red flags of Parkinson’s: loss of smell—so you don’t notice mouthwatering odors—and really intense dreams in which you thrash, kick, and punch during sleep.
Random Bursts Of Anger
For many people, depression doesn’t translate to weeping or lying listlessly on the couch. More than half of patients with depression have irritability and anger; in fact, those depression symptoms are associated with a more severe, longer-lasting form, according to a 2013 University of California, San Diego study published in JAMA Psychiatry.
“A classic case: Someone never suffered from road rage before, but now if they get cut off, they get so furious, they go crazy blaring their horn,” says Philip Muskin, MD, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. If you’re constantly snapping at your spouse or the slightest annoyance gets your heart racing—and these reactions have lasted for more than two weeks—there’s a real chance that depression is the culprit.
Nagging Cough
Coughs don’t usually mean cancer, but if you develop a cough that won’t disappear, even though you’ve never had allergies, asthma, or sinus problems, take note. It could be lung cancer or—if accompanied by hoarseness—cancer of the larynx or throat.
Snoring
It’s a commonly known symptom of sleep apnea, which is associated with increased heart disease risk. But snoring may play a bigger role in cardiovascular disease than experts thought. A 2013 study published in The Laryngoscope found that even among patients without sleep apnea, snoring was linked with thickening of carotid arteries in the neck; such damage is a precursor to stroke and heart attack. Snoring was more strongly associated with this wall damage than were smoking, high cholesterol, or being overweight.
Why? Snoring may damage the carotid arteries, which supply blood to the brain. “We think the arteries are reacting to the vibration of the snoring, since they’re very close to the throat,” says study author Kathleen Yaremchuk, MD, chair of the Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
Unexplained Bleeding
Any unexplained bleeding—coughing up blood (lung cancer), unusual vaginal bleeding (cervical or endometrial cancer), blood in stool (colon or rectal cancer), blood in urine (bladder or kidney cancer), or bloody nipple discharge (breast cancer)—should be brought to your doc’s attention.
Inflamed Gums
Gum disease could increase the risk of heart disease by 20 percent, according to a study in the Journal of the Indian Society of Periodontology. “The link has to do with the body’s response to inflammation,” says Stuart Froum, DDS, director of clinical research at NYU College of Dentistry. Frequent cleanings (every three to six months) by a dentist can usually control early-stage gum disease. Treating gum disease was associated with fewer hospitalizations among people with heart disease or type 2 diabetes, according to a 2014 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
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