When most people think of bizarre medical conditions, what first comes to mind is the ‘tree man’ or a few other fascinating at the same time horrible ailment documented and exhibited in the Discovery channel. But the fact is, the world of is infinite. So here we have 15 bizarre medical conditions you’ve never heard of. I certainly didn’t.
1. Hemispatial neglect: one-sided world.
‘Hemispatial neglect’ is a bizarre, otherwise intriguing medical condition that damages one side of the brain (say, the left side) such that, the left side of the world gets completely neglected thereafter. Give a man suffering from ‘hemispatial neglect’ to draw a circle, he’ll draw half a circle.
This strange medical condition is usually causes as a result of an injury. Unfortunately, recovery for the said medical condition is typically slow and a long-time commitment. (source)
2. Stone Man Syndrome: muscles turn into bones.
There is a certain medical condition called ‘Stone Man Syndrome’ that converts human muscles and other soft tissues into bones. Till date there’s no cure to this bizarre medical state.
On the bright side, such condition is found in 1 out of every 2 million people. Beginning from infancy the signs of a person suffering from ‘Stone Man Syndrome’ are that of having an abnormally shaped small big toes. When growing up, the child develops painful nodules around the back, head, neck and shoulders. About 80% of the time, this condition is misdiagnosed and consequently mistreated.
The earliest known case of ‘Stone Man Syndrome’ was in France in 1692. Currently there is a organisation called International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva Association that researches and supports people suffering from this horrible medical condition. (source)
3. Fatal familial insomnia: dying to sleep.
There is a rare kind of chronic sleeplessness called ‘fatal familial insomnia’ that leads to inevitable death. It’s caused by a gene inherited from a parent which remains dormant until the patient hits their 40s or 50s.
‘Fatal familial insomnia’ occurs both in humans as well as animals, striking first in the nervous system and damaging brain functions. Slowly the patient undergoes behavioral changes, loss of memory & intelligence and suffers severe insomnia.
The story goes that a man from Vietnam, known by the name Thai Ngoc in the year 2004 claimed that he hasn’t slept one bit since the year 1973 (i.e. 31 years). Scientists believe that Ngoc actually takes ‘micro-naps’ throughout the day without even knowing it. (source)
4. Syndrome X: anti-aging disease.
Brooke Greenberg was born in 1993 and died in 2013. At the time of his death Brooke was 20-years-old and looked like a toddler. This is precisely what ‘Syndrome X‘ does. It’s like an anti-aging disease and is known to have affected only 6 people around the world. Beside loosing the capability to aging physically, the patient also stops aging mentally, despite living for decades. Researchers have estimated that Brooke’s mental age was that of a nine months to one year older child.
So far no one knows what causes this disorder or how to cure it. (source)
5. Blue man Syndrome: Real life Smurfs.
There was a man who shot to worldwide fame when his skin turned permanently blue after years of self-medication. While Paul Karason aka ‘Papa Smurf’ had self-administered colloidal silver causing a condition called ‘Argyria’, there’s another disorder called ‘methemoglobinemia’ that results in blue skin coloration.
In ‘methemoglobinemia’ the color of blood changes from red to brown and the skin, from white to blue. It’s a hereditary disease and is known to cause some rather serious illness like coma, seizures and even death. There’s a whole family called ‘Blue Fugates’ who had blue-tinged skin and lived in the Troublesome Creek Hills in Kentucky.(source)
6. Witzelsucht: inappropriate wisecracker.
Under this rare condition a person tends to crack inappropriate jokes in the least appropriate times. This neurological disorder leads the patient to blabber pointless stories and make sexual comments and puns even after getting hints of people disapproving her/his abnormal behavior. Damaged frontal lobe sometimes (by trauma or tumor) causes ‘witzelsucht’. (source)
7. Hyperthymesia: highly superior autobiographical memory.
Those suffering from ‘hyperthymesia’ are infatuated by their past. They have an extraordinary capability of recalling a vast amount of past episodes of their lives. This bizarre condition is called ‘hyperthymesia’, otherwise known as having autobiographical memory.
A women named AJ suffering from the said medical condition describes her memory as “nonstop, uncontrollable, and automatic.” Given a certain date she could tell you what she had been doing that day and what day of the week it fell on. (source)
8. Harlequin Ichthyosis: natural armor made of skin.
Also known as ‘Harlequin baby’, it’s a severe genetic condition where the skin of a human becomes 10 times thicker and grows very rapidly.
The body of a child suffering from ‘Harlequin Ichthyosis’ is covered in an armor like white thick plates of skin with deep cracks in places where a normal skin will have folds. The eyes and appendages become extremely contracted. The deep cracks serves as a rich ground for bacterial infection that can lead to fatal infections.
Given today’s technology, ‘Harlequin baby’ is easily diagnosed via 3D ultrasound. (source)
9. Aquagenic Urticaria: water causes rashes.
This is a bizarre form of physical disease in which whenever the patient comes in contact with water, rashes and hives breakout all over her/his skin. ‘Aquatenic urticaria‘ occurs regardless of the season or temperature of water and is observed more among women than men.
The typical symptoms are sensations of burning or itching, every time the skins is exposed to water. After 1 to 15 minutes rashes will appear followed by pain. People who suffer from ‘aquatenic urticaria’ find it difficult to drink water.
The only treatment for ‘aquatenic urticaria’ is to make the patient’s body comfortable in water via a number of methods. (source)
10. Alien Hand syndrome: one hand goes wild.
This rare disorder causes one hand to behave on its own accord without the patient’s knowledge. Sometimes the afflicted person has to use his normal healthy hand to restrain the alien hand’s impromptu movement. (source)
11. Prosopagnosia: The inability to recognizes faces.
When a person suffers from ‘Prosopagnosia’, her/his ability to recognize face becomes impaired. The rest of her/his brain functions as usual. ‘Prosopagnosia’ occurs after acute brain damage or can be a birth defect. An estimate 2.5% of the world population suffers from this medical condition.
Several attempts at remediation using therapies have had no lasting improvement on ‘prosopagnosia’ patients. (source)
12. Auto Brewery Syndrome: getting drunk by eating any food.
A man named Nick Hess wakes up everyday feeling drunk and vomiting. This unusual medical condition occurs when the guts experiences an overgrowth of yeast turns the carbohydrates in any food consumed into alcohol. The alcohol then spreads into the blood system making the patient experience dizziness, exhaustion and nausea. Hess was suffering from ‘auto brewery syndrome’. (source)
13. Capgras delusion: false belief in identical looking impostors.
Its a delusion where the patient believes that a loved one, be it a friend, parent, spouse or any close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor.
‘Capgras delusion’ is usually seen in people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia or dementia and other kinds of brain injuries. It occurs more frequently among women and are often associated with migraine attacks and diabetes.
Individual therapy is the best way to deal with ‘capgras delusion’. (source)
14. Post orgasmic illness syndrome: allergic to one’s own semen.
Some people are known to experience flu like symptoms (running nose, fever, severe exhaustion, itching of eyes) immediately after ejaculation. They are suffering from ‘post orgasmic illness syndrome’ which takes three years to cure by help of a certain ‘hyposensitization therapy’. In this therapy the patients are injected with a solution containing high concentration of their own semen over the course of a long period. (source)
15. Cotard delusion: A mental illness where you are completely sure that you are dead.
Here, the patients is totally convinced that s/he is dead, literally or figuratively. A statistical analysis based on a hundred people who believe that they are walking corpses showed that 69% of the patients were living in denial of their own existence amid feelings of depression and self-loathing.
Once there was a women known as Mademoiselle X who was utterly convinced that she deserved to die an unnatural death. Therefore she starved herself to death. (source)
