You ever have a tooth ache?
They can be very painful and distracting, an on-going throbbing pain that just won't
quit.
And of course, deep down inside you know that the only way to get rid of it is a visit to
the dentist, which means shots, drills, sharp pokes in your tender gums... tooth aches are
a real pain.
But what if you had 526 toothaches?
In July of this year a seven year old boy in India complained to his mother of jaw pain,
though initially it was ignored as it was minor.
Eventually though his parents noticed swelling in his lower right jaw, and the boy complained
of increased pain.
Taking him to a dentist in the city of Chennai, doctors did a routine x-ray of his mouth to
pinpoint the cause of the swelling, and were shocked when the image finished processing.
Right there in the boy's lower jaw was a large sack, embedded directly into the bone itself!
From what the x-ray showed it looked like the sack was full of teeth to boot, and of
different sizes.
The boy was immediately brought into surgery and placed under general anesthesia.
Doctors then drilled into the jaw from the top, opting not to break the jawbone from
the sides so that the boy would not need reconstructive surgery.
Once they had drilled through the bone and accessed the sack, it was simply a matter
of fishing out what doctors described as basically a fleshy 'balloon'.
For up to five hours after the surgery the doctors carefully sliced through the sack,
extracting an incredible 526 teeth from inside of it!
Ranging in size from .004 inches (.1 millimeters) to .6 inches (15 millimeters), each and every
tooth was fully formed with a crown, root, and even enamel coat.
While the boy will make a full recovery, he suffers from a condition called compound composite
odontoma, though in his case what exactly caused the condition is not clear.
Typically genetics is to blame, but environmental factors such as pollution or radiation exposure
in the womb or as a young child could also be to blame.
In his case, his parents believe he may have had the teeth for quite a long time, as they
first noticed him complaining of swelling and pain in his jaw when he was as young as
three years old.
Unfortunately he would not sit still for doctors, and thus examining him at such a young age
proved impossible.
Odontomas as it turns out are benign and the most common tumors discovered on the human
jaw.
Typically this condition is discovered during the first two decades of life, and is as equally
prevalent amongst boys as it is girls.
Sometimes, as in our case today, they are only discovered when they cause swelling and
intense pain, but most commonly they are discovered when their presence prevents a normal tooth
from erupting out of the gum line and into the mouth.
Other times they can be seen growing out of the gums and in the way of a normal, healthy
tooth, leaving an individual looking something like as if they had a shark's mouth with rows
of tiny teeth.
Surprisingly, people who suffer from compound odontomas often describe no pain at all, and
its only the eruption of many, smaller teeth, or their prevention of a normal tooth erupting,
that prompts discovery of the condition.
While they pose no real health hazard on their own other than impeding normal tooth growth,
they can make tasks such as chewing very difficult if they prevent the eruption of full-sized
teeth.
If untreated though, a person could live a perfectly normal life other than occasional
swelling and pain.
What really makes our case today unique though is the fact that most compound odontomas don't
have teeth as well developed, with the mass being a mix of dentin, cementum, and pulpal
tissue all existing in a disorganized mess- sort of like someone took the ingredients
for teeth and then tossed them about the room.
Having the eruption of many, fully formed teeth is rare, and having a whopping 526 of
them is even rarer still!
Despite posing little health risk, compound odontomas should still be treated in order
to prevent the formation of dangerous cysts.
They can also lead to great discomfort while eating, swelling, and naturally, the prevention
of normal-tooth growth.
Thus dentists recommend that they be removed immediately, and if you happen to notice any
persistent pain in your jaw, well you may be playing host to a freakish amount of extra
teeth!
Also, dentist bills for the teeth we already have are expensive enough, so getting rid
of them before they financially ruin you for life is probably a good bet.
Having more teeth than a shark would be pretty horrifying, but even more horrendous is a
very rare condition often referred to as ‘tree-man’ syndrome.
Known in the scientific world as epidermodysplasia verruciformis, this rare medical condition
can leave a person with wart-like skin lesions that can grow completely out of control, and
leave the body looking like it is made of hard, gnarled wood.
The condition is extremely rare, and only a handful of confirmed cases have been documented
by modern science.
Caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, the disease is brought on in very select individuals
who have a genetic weakness to the disease that limits their body’s ability to fight
off the infection.
This allows the virus to essentially take over the skin and cause lesions, which become
extremely hard and take on a very wood-like appearance.
HPV itself can be contracted through unsafe sex practices, but in at least one tragic
case in Indonesia, the HPV infection and resulting tree-man syndrome was brought on by a scraped
knee at the age of 15.
Of about 600 cases a year around the planet, most develop many flat warts which quickly
harden, though an unfortunate minority will see the large wood-like tumors develop which
can grow out of control.
Typically these sufferers will see wart-like lesions begin to grow uncontrollably across
their body, though often the hands and feet are most severely affected.
In time, the lesions become so numerous that new ones grow under the old ones almost like
new growth on a tree leaving tree rings behind.
Within a matter of years the condition can become so severe that individuals can carry
as much as 15 pounds (7 kg) of growths!
The hands and feet are rendered completely useless as the growths overtake the appendages,
causing sufferers to be unable to work or provide for themselves.
Surprisingly though, the skin under the growths is relatively unharmed, and surgeries can
be performed to remove the growths and provide some relief from the condition.
Unfortunately the illness is untreatable, and though growths may slow down or speed
back up randomly, some sufferers require as many as two surgeries a year to remove pounds
and pounds of growths from their body.
In 2017 a man living in Gaza had suffered from tree-man syndrome for ten years, and
when he visited doctors in Jordan and Egypt they recommended amputation, with Palestinian
doctors telling him that there was no effective treatment.
For a decade Mahmoud Taluli had been unable to use his hands and was living in extreme
daily pain.
Then Palestinian and Israeli medical officials arranged for him to visit an Israeli hospital
where he had the growths removed surgically, and in an experimental treatment, had healthy,
unaffected skin grafted from other parts of his body onto his hands.
For the last two years Taluli has returned to Israel for more surgeries, and though the
condition is incurable, the treatments have allowed Taluli the use of his hands for the
first time in ten years.
Yet removing the growths was not easy, and required doctors to slice through the thick,
woody warts and then deep into Taluli’s flesh itself in order to remove the root-
without removing the root the growths would simply return again.
To make matters worse, by touching other lesions on his body and then touching the parts of
his body where they had been removed, Taluli kept reinfecting himself.
To seek a more permanent solution, Israeli doctors are now mapping Taluli’s genome,
hoping to pinpoint the genetic abnormality that leaves his body unable to fight off the
HPV infection.
If located, doctors would then be able to develop an immunological-based treatment specifically
tailored for Taluli, which would eradicate the symptoms forever.
This insight would also help other patients suffering from tree-man syndrome, and could
at last bring much needed relief to dozens of people around the world who have been shunned
and made into outcasts because of their monstrous appearance.
One such man from Indonesia died in a hospital in 2017 after fighting the disease for decades.
Acquiring it after scraping his knee at fifteen years old, bark-like growths began to appear
on his body, most notably on his hands and feet.
Within years his hands and feet were an unrecognizable mess of warts that made them look like tree
roots, and villagers feared that he had been cursed.
The former carpenter struggled to continue working, but slowly the condition made it
harder and harder to actually use tools until it became impossible, though the social ostracization
and fear of his condition, and its possible supernatural origin, also made it difficult
to actually find work.
Eventually his wife left him, taking their kids with him, due to his inability to find
work and provide for the family.
Even his family grew distant, fearful of catching his disease or also believing that it had
been brought on by a curse.
Despite hoping that a cure could be found, the Indonesian man died three months after
being admitted to a hospital at age 42.
At the end he was unable to feed or care for himself due to the extreme growths, and had
largely resigned himself to his fate.
Though the illness is itself not fatal, the condition had left him so weakened that he
died due to several health complications, including hepatitis and both liver and gastric
disorders.
Such extreme medical disorders are thankfully rare, but when they affect a victim, can be
completely debilitating.
Worse, some conditions such as the growths brought on by unchecked HPV infections can
also lead to individuals becoming social pariahs, especially in less developed countries where
superstition is prevalent.
Next time you have a toothache or feel the flu coming on, thank your lucky stars that
you’re one of the millions who’s body self-defense mechanisms work properly, and
aren’t forced to live with such extreme physical abnormalities.
What would you do if you discovered your mouth had a bunch of extra teeth?!
What if you woke up one day and your body was starting to turn into wood?!
Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check out our other video What If You Woke
Up With Shark's Teeth?
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