Top Strange Diseases You Didn’t Know About

Swine and bird flu, ebola, zika. The names of these diseases at one time fell into the headlines of almost all publications. But there are thousands of people in the world suffering from no less terrible diseases, which many have never even heard of.

Alien hand syndrome

The story of this syndrome may well form the basis of a horror movie, although for some people this strange disease is a daily reality. The phrase that the right hand does not know what the left is doing loses all figurative meaning and is taken literally when it comes to people with this strange disorder.

Alien hand syndrome is a complex neuropsychiatric disease in which the patient’s hand, no matter how strange it may sound, behaves regardless of its intentions. From the outside, such a person may seem obsessed. His sore hand may arbitrarily copy the movements of a healthy limb or demonstrate incomprehensible gestures. But this is not the biggest danger from the “anarchist hand”. In some cases, it can beat, choke a person, including the “owner”, and at the same time it is impossible to control the actions of the limb.

This disorder was first described in the early twentieth century by the German neurologist Goldstein. It can be a “side effect” of head trauma or botched brain surgery that damages the corpus callosum, frontal region, or thalamus of the brain. As a result of such injuries, one hand of a person seems to be knocked out of control of the central nervous system. In addition, alien hand syndrome can manifest itself as a complication of a stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, or a tumor in the brain.

Morgellon disease

With this disorder, the patient feels as if insects or worms are crawling under his skin. In addition, he complains that these worms bite him, after which black fibers appear under the skin.

According to approximate data, about 14 thousand people suffer from this disorder in the world. Often the disease is accompanied by exhaustion, temporary memory loss, joint pain and visual impairment. The first mention of this amazing disorder dates back to the XNUMXth century, when several children died in France at once after some mysterious “dark hairs” appeared under their skin.

In modern times, this disorder was remembered in 2002. It all started with the fact that a certain Mary Leitao discovered some skin lesions in her child and suggested that the baby had the same disease that “knocked down” the children in France.

After careful research, scientists came to the conclusion that Morgellon’s disease is a mental disorder accompanied by hallucinations. Experts explain the appearance of dark marks on the skin with bruises resulting from scratching the body.

Fibrodysplasia – stone man

The bodies of people suffering from this rare disease literally turn to stone. This extremely rare disorder results from mutations in ligaments and tendons that turn soft tissue into bone. This disease affects approximately 1 in 2 million people. But what is most terrible, such people cannot be helped even by surgical intervention. Any operation on the petrified part further activates the growth of bone tissue. In some cases, it may take only 10 years for a person to become completely immobile.

The history of this strange disease dates back to 1938. When the American Harry Eastlack was 5 years old, he broke his leg. The fracture site did not heal properly, and his knee and hip joints lost their mobility. It turned out that new bone processes appeared in the muscles of his thigh. When the young man reached the age of 20, his vertebrae began to fuse into a monolithic bone. Before his death, and he died at the age of 39 in 1973, he could only move his lips. This man suffered from a progressive form of fibrodysplasia. Harry Eastlack bequeathed his skeleton to researchers for further study of his strange illness. Today Eastlack’s skeleton is kept at the Philadelphia Museum of Medical History (Mutter Museum).

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

For people with this disorder, objects around them seem much larger or smaller than they really are. For example, dogs in their eyes may look the size of a mouse, and tiny bugs – like a huge building. By the way, something similar happens to people under the influence of drugs.

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome is a temporary condition. Sometimes its symptoms can appear on the background of migraine attacks, but most often when a person is on the verge of sleep. Distortions in the perception of the surrounding world most often relate to the dimensions of objects, but sometimes also to time (when a person cannot adequately assess time intervals).

Experts believe that this disorder may be caused by changes in the back of the brain, which is responsible for the perception of visual information.

Exploding Head Syndrome

During an attack, the patient hears a very loud sound (as if something incredibly huge has collapsed to the ground) and sees bright flashes before his eyes. In fact, all these are hallucinations, which, however, can bring a person to horror.

The disorder was first described in 1876 by the American neurologist Silas Ware Mitchell. Specialists from Virginia, who studied the disease, found that in the modern world, about 13,5% of people suffer from this disorder. As a rule, an attack occurs in stressful situations, against the background of severe overwork or anxiety. But to say where the syndrome of the exploding head comes from, the researchers can not yet.

Walking corpse syndrome

In science, this deviation is known as Cotard’s syndrome. This is a rare mental illness caused by dysfunction of the parts of the brain responsible for sensations and emotions. Sometimes it can be caused by traumatic brain injury.

The patient believes that he has died or lost some vital organ, but, nevertheless, still continues to walk and be aware of what is happening around. Many of the patients with Cotard’s syndrome believe in their immortality and begin to test this theory in practice, which ultimately leads to suicide. Such people, as a rule, do not eat, do not wash, and spend most of their time in the cemetery, which they consider their home.

Progeria – accelerated aging

We are all afraid of the signs of aging: the appearance of wrinkles, loss of hair and teeth. But sometimes the typical symptoms of old age appear unnaturally early – even in childhood.

Children with the extremely rare disorder known as progeria begin to look older on the outside before they are 2 years old. At the same time, intellectual development fully corresponds to their real age. As a result of profound delays in the development of the body, which begin between 9 and 24 months, the child begins to show signs of abnormal facial development. It looks disproportionate, the eyes are bulging, the jaw is underdeveloped. Already by about two years of age, the child loses hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. Further, the amount of subcutaneous fat in the body rapidly decreases and the elasticity of blood vessels is lost. The cause of death of such patients in 90% of cases is a heart attack or stroke. The disorder progresses rapidly and the children develop diseases that usually affect people in old age, including arthritis and cardiovascular problems. As a rule, people with progeria rarely live beyond the age of 13.

Foreign accent syndrome

From the outside, it may look like a person is playing a trick on you: for no reason at all, your relative or good friend suddenly began to speak with a foreign accent. Moreover, this accent is not similar to any language known today. Of course, this can be a prank, but for some people, changes in habitual speech begin suddenly and are completely uncontrollable. Officially, this diagnosis was made at different times to 60 people. The first case known to the scientific world occurred in 1941 with a Norwegian woman.

Foreign accent syndrome is an involuntary change in speech that often occurs after brain damage. Until 2002, scientists considered this disease as a psychiatric disorder. But scientists from the University of Oxford found that all studied people with foreign accent syndrome have common brain disorders that lead to changes in intonation, longer pronunciation of vowel sounds and some other abnormalities. The disorder can be triggered by a concussion or stroke. But researchers also know of a case where a very severe migraine became the cause of the syndrome.

Aquagenic urticaria – water allergy

Allergies can be caused by a variety of substances – from nuts and berries to paints and dust. But imagine, there are people in the world whose skin becomes covered with burning spots after each contact with water. This is the water allergy. By the way, in such patients, even tears or hugs with a sweaty person can cause a reaction. Science knows at least 30 cases of water allergy.

Congenital insensitivity to pain

Everyone has their own pain threshold. But there are those who do not feel any pain at all. Such people never feel a toothache or headache, their joints do not hurt after stretching, they are not even afraid of physical torture. It would seem that it is simply amazing! But not everything is so simple. People with this disorder often inadvertently mutilate themselves because they simply do not feel when they “cross the line.” They may scratch their eye, bite off the tip of their tongue, or walk on a broken leg, oblivious to the problem.

Experts have several theories to explain this disorder. Firstly, such a state can be caused by an extremely high amount of endorphins in the brain. Secondly, the cause may be a congenital mutation of neurons that dulls the sensitivity to pain.

“Laughing Death”

Let’s say right away that “laughing death”, or Kuru’s disease, is now history. But under certain circumstances, the epidemic has every chance of repeating itself again.

The disease manifested itself exclusively among the natives of New Guinea, or rather, only among the representatives of the Fore tribe. For the first time about the disease, manifested by sudden bursts of manic laughter, it became known in the 1950s. A group of American and Australian researchers have been observing people with such strange behavior for several months. In patients within 1-3 months, limbs began to tremble, they lost the ability to walk, stand, speak coherently, strabismus appeared, and uncontrollable laughter arose before death. After the death of the unfortunate, scientists discovered that their brain looks like Swiss cheese or a foam sponge with holes. After many years of research into this strange disorder, the American physician Carlton Gajdushek suggested that the causative agent of the disease was transmitted in the tribe due to cannibalism common here. When cannibalism among the members of the tribe was stopped, the epidemic also went away. By the way, Dr. Gaidushek was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976 for this discovery.

Werewolf Syndrome

How much hair on the human body is considered normal? It’s all very subjective, of course. But there are people, looking at whom, everyone will say with confidence: there is really an extremely large amount of hair on their bodies. This applies to individuals with hypertrichosis, sometimes called werewolf syndrome. They have excessive hair growth that continues even after laser treatments. Today, about 50 people with this disorder are known in the world.

Hypertrichosis can be congenital or acquired. The cause of the congenital “version” of the disease is called genetic mutations. Acquired hypertrichosis can develop as a result of improper treatment of baldness.

tree man syndrome

As a rule, people decide on a variety of procedures to get rid of warts on the body. Even if there are few growths. One can only imagine what a person feels, whose body is completely (or almost completely) covered with warts. This is the reality of the few people in the world who have the disease epidermodysplasia verruciformis. This is a genetic disease in which the number of skin growths increases uncontrollably.

The skin of people with this disorder resembles the bark of a tree. The most famous “tree man” is the Indonesian Dede Koswara. In 2008, 95% of the growths on his body were removed, however, most of them reappeared. To live without terrible warts, the Indonesian had to do 2 operations every year. Koswara died in 2016. By this time, he had already undergone 16 operations.

Although initially warts are benign, over the years they have every chance of degenerating into malignant ones. This disease is caused by a rare mutation in the EVER1/EVER2 genes. Although the function of these genes is not well understood by researchers, mutations in them make a person susceptible to human papillomavirus types 5 and 8, which normally do not cause disease.

blue skinned people

The color of the skin of people can vary significantly – from black to snow-white. But how would you react if you saw a man with blue skin on the street, almost the same as the famous movie Avatar? If you, like many, are sure that this is impossible, then you have never heard of the Fugate family from American Kentucky. For 162 years, representatives of different generations of this family were born blue-skinned. And only relatively recently, scientists have identified the cause of this mysterious phenomenon. It turns out that they were victims of a rare blood disease – methemoglobinemia. In people with this disorder, the blood is less oxygenated, causing it to look blue instead of red through the skin.

By the way, there is another disorder that can cause blue skin. This is argyria. In this case, cyanosis is explained by the use of biologically active additives of colloidal silver.

fishy smell syndrome

It is generally accepted that only a person who does not observe good hygiene smells bad. But sometimes you can go to the shower at least every hour, and the unpleasant smell will not go anywhere. For example, as in the case of trimethylaminuria. This disease is also called fishy odor syndrome. Sweat, urine and even the patient’s breath have a specific and very pronounced fishy smell. Symptoms of the disease appear due to the inability of the body to properly break down the aromatic substances contained in food. To date, there is no effective method to completely get rid of the syndrome. But there is evidence that some people have been partially helped by a special diet and antibiotics.

Möbius syndrome

This is an extremely rare genetic disorder that causes complete facial paralysis. Such patients cannot close their eyes, look from side to side, or use facial expressions. Also, the disease is often accompanied by abnormalities of the limbs, such as clubfoot or the absence of fingers.

Vampire syndrome

Humans need sunlight to synthesize vitamin D and certain hormones, but exposure to too much ultraviolet rays can cause damage to the skin. The only question is when exposure to UV rays can be called excessive. For each, this indicator is individual. But in most cases, when experts advise avoiding “extra” sun, they mean the time of noon. But imagine that there are people who cannot appear in the sun even during its sunrise or sunset, when the rays are as safe as possible.

Approximately 1 in a million people suffer from xeroderma pigmentosum, which is excessive sensitivity to UV radiation. The disease is caused by a rare mutation in DNA. Such people must always and completely close the body from the sun, otherwise their skin is covered with burns and wounds. These individuals easily develop skin cancer. Therefore, they have no choice but to hide from the sun, like fantastic vampires.

Eosinophilic gastroenteritis: food allergy

This is a rare condition where eating any type of food puts the immune system into attack mode. As a result, white blood cells enter the gastrointestinal tract and cause inflammation. People with this disorder gradually lose their sensitivity to most types of food. After each meal, they experience vomiting, diarrhea, and severe abdominal pain. Against the background of such a disorder, anemia and peptic ulcer rapidly develop. Many patients have to switch to special liquid or intravenous nutrition in order to survive.

There are many strange and terrifying diseases in the world. Today we talked about only a small part of them.