• What bizarre disease kills everyone it affects by the time they’re a teenager?
Why is there a disease known as “Alice in Wonderland” syndrome?
These are 10 of the most bizarre diseases that scientists and doctors are still trying
to understand.
10 – Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder • Ever since the first commercials for erectile
dysfunction showed up on TV, everybody has had a joke for “erection lasting longer
than four hours.”
• Well, this is basically that.
It’s a real problem for people, and it doesn’t only affect men.
• In fact, this is far more common in women.
Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder is exactly what it sounds like – when genitals are
aroused all the time for no reason.
• It’s not even in response to things that would normally arouse you, it just happens,
and nobody is quite sure why.
9 – Foreign Accent Syndrome • Brain injuries are strange, awful things.
Scientists are still struggling to understand them, and things like this only make them
more unusual.
• Sometimes, people suffer brain injuries or wake up from surgery, and they just have
a foreign accent.
No explanation, no warning, nothing.
It just comes out of nowhere.
• This is a condition known, obviously, as foreign accent syndrome.
• One of the better-known recent cases of foreign accent syndrome is Lisa Alamia from
Rosenberg, Texas.
• She went under for jaw surgery in December of 2015 with a Texas twang, saying “y’all”
all the time.
When she woke up, she had a British accent, and had no idea why.
8 – Morgellons Disease • There are very few explanations out there
for the kinds of things that happen with Morgellons disease.
• It’s a rare skin condition in which people break out in rashes or sores that cause
intense itching and a feeling of something crawling under the skin.
• These symptoms are consistent with mental disorders about believing you have parasites
when you actually don’t.
• Also, the sores and rashes produce cotton-like fibers from within them, and doctors still
have no idea where it comes from.
7 – Acute Flaccid Myelitis • The United States saw a huge increase
in cases of acute c in 2016, and doctors are still trying to figure out why.
• This is a disease involving inflammation of the spinal cord and it can cause weakness
in the limbs, a loss of reflexes, and a loss of muscle definition.
• It’s still a very rare disease – the “increase” in cases in 2016 resulted in
only 144 documented cases in 37 states.
• That rarity is part of the reason doctors are still unsure what causes it – they haven’t
had that many chances to study it.
6 – Pica • This is an eating disorder in which people
compulsively eat things that have no nutritional value whatsoever.
• No, not like McDonald’s French fries.
More like dirt, paper, and animal feces.
• This is a pretty common disorder in kids ages one to six, but the unusual cravings
can also occur in pregnant women.
• It seems related to a deficiency of zinc or iron, but there’s no single way to test
for it scientifically.
• Luckily, if you come into the doctor’s office saying, “yeah, um, I can’t stop
eating paint chips,” they usually have a good idea of what’s going on.
5 – Marburg’s Disease • More is known about the cause and origin
of Marburg’s Disease than many of the other diseases on this list.
It’s caused by a similar set of pathogens as ebola… and it has similar results.
• The African fruit bat is the native carrier of Marburg’s disease, and doctors aren’t
really sure how the disease made the jump from bats to humans, but it did.
• Now it causes bleeding from basically everywhere it possibly can, and doctors have
very little idea of how to treat it.
• The good news is, it is also like ebola in that it seems to only transmit to other
people through bodily fluids. 4 – Micropsia
• Alice in Wonderland syndrome is scientifically known as Micropsia.
It is a condition in which swelling around the cornea causes objects to look smaller
than they actually are.
• It’s most common in kids between the ages of 5 and 10, and can lead to panic and
migraine headaches.
• There is also a similar condition called MACropsia, which has the exact opposite effect
– things look larger than they actually are.
3 - Moebius • Most of the people who suffer from Moebius
Syndrome had the beginnings of it at birth.
• It is a facial disorder that usually shows up as a form of paralysis.
People with Moebius Syndrome typically cannot smile or frown, or even move their eves side
to side.
• The root of the problem is shrunken facial features in the bottom half of your head.
The chin and mouth are unusually small, and the tongue is abnormally shaped and shorter
than usual.
• Moebius Syndrome is linked to a number of other complications, like speech impediments,
swallowing difficulty, and sleep disorders.
• The condition only affects about 2 in every million people, and doctors have yet
to figure out its causes.
2 - Progeria • Progeria is a disease that is always fatal,
because its symptoms basically age the human body at several times the normal rate.
• Children with Progeria are usually born healthy, with signs of the syndrome usually
showing up around two years of age.
• Even children with vastly different ethnicities and backgrounds tend to look similar when
contracting Progeria, with all of them losing body hair, failing to grow, and showing aged-looking
skin.
• Most children with progeria die around the age of 14 from heart failure.
• Doctors think they have traced the cause of the disorder to an unstable protein in
a particular gene, but they haven’t figured out what to do about it.
1 - Kuru • When Kuru first hit Papua New Guinea,
it was considered the result of sorcery.
• People would lose control over their limbs, and their emotions.
People called it the “laughing death.”
• Obviously, it wasn’t sorcerers causing the issue.
Which is kind of unfortunate, because that would have been a cooler explanation.
• The actual explanation is that Kuru stems from a funeral ritual in which people eat
the bodies of their family members after death.
• That seems to be the how, but doctors are still sure about the why, and what the
connection is with similar diseases in other species, like Mad Cow disease.