Strange But True Medical Mysteries and Rarities
By AOL Health Editors Nov 17th 2009 12:10PM
Categories: Family Health
Sure, most of us have heard of diabetes, Parkinson's and even Crohn's disease. But what about those rare -- sometimes even mysterious -- diseases and conditions? Here, we present an array of rare and often shocking diseases and disorders as well as some mysterious illnesses, which doctors still haven't been able to solve.
Click through the gallery below to learn about rare and sometimes mysterious diseases and conditions. Note: You will need to disable your pop-up blocker.
Characterized by intense feelings of anxiety and dread, automysophobia is the fear of being dirty. People who have automysophobia are overcome with fears about getting themselves dirty or being around things that are unclean. Though this fear is more irrational, than rooted in the person actually being dirty, symptoms can include severe panic attacks, intense feelings of dread and an increased heartbeat. A person suffering from a phobia like automysophobia, can be overwhelmed with anxiety and fear at both the presence and the perceived presence of their particular phobia trigger. Anxiety disorders and phobias like automysophobia can be treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy, relaxation techniques and other courses of treatment.
Mysterious Diseases
Automysophobia
Characterized by intense feelings of anxiety and dread, automysophobia is the fear of being dirty. People who have automysophobia are overcome with fears about getting themselves dirty or being around things that are unclean. Though this fear is more irrational, than rooted in the person actually being dirty, symptoms can include severe panic attacks, intense feelings of dread and an increased heartbeat. A person suffering from a phobia like automysophobia, can be overwhelmed with anxiety and fear at both the presence and the perceived presence of their particular phobia trigger. Anxiety disorders and phobias like automysophobia can be treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy, relaxation techniques and other courses of treatment.
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Dissociative Amnesia
If 32-year-old former police office Andy Wray is away from his family for more than 48 hours, he forgets who they are. Wray suffers from dissociative amnesia, a disorder that causes extreme short-term memory, reports "The Daily Mail."
Doctors attribute Wray's dissociative amnesia to the stress and dissociative anxiety he endured during his four years in the police force. Two years after retiring from the force, he suffered from a breakdown related to the trauma he had witnessed on the job. He experienced periodic headaches and bouts of dizziness, and when he went to a local hospital for treatment, he was found wandering the halls with no memory of who he was.
Though he can still recall historical events and skills like driving a car, Wray's reserve of personal memories is gone. Milestones like his marriage to wife, Jo, and the birth of his daughter, Chloe, have all been wiped from Wray's memory. He even has to carry a piece of paper with his name and address on it in case he gets lost.
BARM / Fame Pictures
Incurable Hiccups
For two years, Christopher Sands (pictured), 25, suffered from incurable hiccups. By his own estimates, Sands hiccupped every two seconds for 12 hours per day, adding up to an astounding 7.9 million hiccups a year, reports the Daily Mail. He has had to give up working and driving and struggles to sleep or keep down food. After trying every cure imaginable -- from hanging upside down to sitting in a compression chamber to even having surgery on a stomach valve -- Sands finally uncovered the culprit. He has an inoperable brain tumor.
Doctors posit that Sands' nearly half-inch tumor, which was discovered through an MRI scan and lies on the brain stem, may be the cause of the hiccups due to the brain stem's effect on the nervous system. While Sands is still waiting to find out if the tumor is malignant, doctors aren't optimistic about its removal because of its positioning on the brain stem.
Causes of persistent or intractable hiccups -- those that last longer than a month -- can run the gamut from the largely benign, such as gastroesophageal reflux or a sore throat, to more acute central nervous system disorders, including stroke, cancer or an infection. While very rare, intractable hiccups can cause exhaustion, lack of sleep, and weight loss.
SWNS.com
Severe Allergies
Ten-year-old Molly Harrad suffers from severe allergies that cause her skin to breakout in blisters and a rash if she so much as handles loose change or wears rubber-soled shoes, reports the Daily Mail. She wears 100 percent cotton gloves, socks and clothes at all times to prevent her skin from coming into contact with potentially harmful substances. Even walking across the carpet can trigger painful blistering. At school, an assistant specially prepares her lunch to prevent food contamination that could elicit anaphylactic shock. While she's been diagnosed with various food and skin allergies, doctors are still puzzled by her severe condition.
Jamie Wiseman, Daily Mail / ZUMA Press
Dissociative Fugue
When police found Emily's family, she couldn't recognize her own children, and it took her more than a year to recover her memory. Her brain scan was normal and revealed no obvious causes of her amnesia, which led doctors to diagnose her with dissociative fugue.
According to the Mayo Clinic, people with this condition dissociate by putting real distance between themselves and their identity. For example, you may abruptly leave home or work and travel away, forgetting who you are and possibly adopting a new identity in a new location. A fugue episode may last only a few hours or, rarely, as long as many months. Dissociative fugue typically ends as abruptly as it begins. When it lifts, people may feel intensely disoriented, depressed and angry, with no recollection of what happened during the fugue or how they arrived in such unfamiliar circumstances.
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Panhypopituitarism
With the delicate, baby-like features of only a two-year-old, 26-year-old Jerly Lyngdoh is reminiscent of a real-life Benjamin Button. The only distinguishing trait revealing this 22-pound man-baby's true age is a full set of adult teeth, as reported in Metro.
At only 2-feet 9-inches long, Jerly Lyngdoh (pictured) suffers from what doctors believe is a severe case of panhypopituitarism. The condition, which can result in a shortened lifespan, occurs when the pituitary gland becomes damaged and cannot secrete growth hormones resulting in short stature. Lyngdoh, 26, lives in Meghalaya, northern India with his parents, who dress him in baby clothes. He is only four inches taller than the world's smallest man, China's He Pingping.
Europics
Uncontrollable Belching
For the past two years, Jean Driscoll, 72, has barely been able to venture outside her home in the United Kingdom due to uncontrollable belching.
Two years ago, Driscoll began experiencing chest pains, which led to the irrepressible, noisy belches. Since then, Driscoll has spent more than $1,400 on prescription and over-the-counter medication that have neither treated nor cured her, and she has left two doctors and three hospitals scratching their heads.
Eastnews Press Agency Limited
Swallow Syncope
We all know the dangers of drinking and driving, but how about eating and driving? A 25-year-old woman from Birmingham, England routinely passed out behind the wheel if she tried to eat a sandwich or sip her soda. Doctors routinely checked her blood, thyroid and pituitary glands but found nothing. She didn't smoke, drank only a little and didn't use drugs. Finally, doctors discovered that she suffered from "swallow syncope," a rare disease that causes the patient to lose consciousness when too little blood flows to the brain. In this woman's case, a delay in the electrical signals between the upper and lower chambers of the heart caused the pauses between her heart beats to last up to 2.5 seconds, which resulted in fainting spells. The delay was attributed to an intertwining of nerve systems in the throat and brain. To ease the condition's effects (and allow her to eat in peace), doctors installed a pacemaker to regulate heart beats.
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Prosopagnosia
What if you couldn't recognize anyone's voice but Sean Connery's? That's exactly what happened to a british woman known only as KH, as reported by MSNBC. For years KH couldn't identify the voices of others, including her own children. She read about a disorder that sounded similar to her own, called prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness. After extensive testing, doctors concluded that she is the first documented case of someone born without the ability to recognize familiar voices. Although, doctors have seen a similar condition before, phonaganosia, but this typically occurs after a stroke.
Stephen Shugerman, Getty Images for AFI
Aquaholics
We've been taught that water will make us feel better and look younger, but did you know that drinking too much water can kill you? Andrew Else, 51, from the United Kingdom, was found dead after ingesting a massive amount of water from a garden hose. Else was suffering from a rare "aquaholic" disorder that resulted in an inability to quench his thirst for water. Aquaholics will go to great lengths to satisfy their urges. When undeterred, they can suffer and eventually die from water intoxication, a condition that affects brain functioning and can result in heart failure when overconsumption of water dilutes sodium and potassium levels in the body.
