Unusual syndromes in medicine

exploding head syndrome

Unusual syndromes in medicine

"exploding head" syndrome is an uncommon sleep disorder, until recently little publicized in the medical literature. This syndrome is characterized by exploding sound or a loud noise arising in the head right before going to sleep or during sleep. This "explosion" may be accompanied by a flash of light, shortness of breath and a feeling of horror.

Experts suggest that this is due to stress and overexertion person. After resting most of the symptoms of the syndrome are lost.

foreign accent syndrome

Unusual syndromes in medicine

The symptoms of this syndrome - a speech disorder, manifested in minor changes of intonation, speed and accents, due to which the patient's speech is similar to the dialect a foreigner trying to learn a foreign language. This syndrome typically occurs after severe traumatic brain injury or stroke, its peak is manifested through one or two years after injury. Total 1941 registered about 50 cases of this disease. Some of them after a special treatment and training again, "he learned" to speak correctly, but most suffer a lifetime.

Fairly well-known case of foreign accent syndrome occurred in Norway in 1941 after a young woman, Astrid L. was shot in the head by shrapnel during the bombing. After she recovered from the injury, she spoke with a strong German accent, and this discouraged their fellow-Norwegians. Another case of foreign accent syndrome occurred in England, when 60-year-old Linda Walker after stroke spoke with a strange accent is more like a Jamaican than her native English.

The syndrome of fatal familial insomnia (insomnia with a fatal outcome)

Unusual syndromes in medicine

This is a rare incurable hereditary disease known only 40 families prone to it. The man hardly sleeps less and less is more tired, suffering hallucinations and headaches, and a few years later die from overwork.

When a fatal familial insomnia affected the thalamus - the brain region involved in sleep. It thalamus is a communicator connections between the cortex of the hemispheres and the body, transmitting signals in both directions in the necessary areas of the cortex, or parts of the body. It is believed that the reduced effectiveness of backfilling pulses through the thalamus. When a fatal familial insomnia is a violation of this function.

The disease begins between the ages of 30 and 60 years, an average of 50, continuing from 7 to 36 months, after which the patient dies. It described the disease is relatively recent, in 1986.

The insensitivity to pain

Unusual syndromes in medicine

There are a number of people who have a small genetic mutation turns off pain signals transfer mechanism of the nerves in the human body. It would seem that such a life - without the pain and suffering - just a dream, but in reality the patient at risk every second, as may at any time be cut, burned or injury, without noticing it immediately. Pain - is an indicator of danger, and our lives without becoming dangerous.

People who are not sensitive to pain, does not cost anything to break such an important life-joints, like the knee or the elbow, as well as some long bones, because they do not understand what kind of force you need to apply when performing such seemingly simple movements like walking or stretching limbs. Not sensitive to the pain of children who are not experiencing any discomfort, squeezing his eyes out of their sockets, pull teeth and nails. In two patients there were no lips, and the tongue - they chewed in their infancy after being started teething. This rare genetic anomaly have found a British scientist by studying the genome consisting of three members of distantly related families living in Northern Pakistan. In these families regularly had babies who were not familiar with the feeling of pain. Some of them made a living street performances, during which pierced his body with knives and needles, and went over the coals. Despite the insensitivity to pain, the carriers of the mutant gene can feel touch, heat, cold and taste.

The medical literature describes only a few cases of the hereditary lack of pain sensitivity. The first such report dated 1932.

Moebius Syndrome

Unusual syndromes in medicine

It is a congenital anomaly characterized by a lack of facial expression due to abnormal development of several cranial nerves and facial paralysis. People with Moebius Syndrome can not laugh, their face looks like a mask. It is also difficult for them to swallow.

Medicine knows this disease since the late 19th century, but its possibilities of therapy to this day is very limited, and the reasons for the development - are unclear. Fortunately, we recorded quite a few people suffering from this syndrome.

kotardi syndrome (syndrome living corpse)

Unusual syndromes in medicine

The syndrome is caused by a stable tendency to suicide and ongoing depression. People with this diagnosis have complained that they have lost absolutely everything that connects people with the world of living: the tastes, preferences and even his own body, or part of it. They are convinced that they are no longer men, but simply walking corpses. Somehow paradoxically plea of ​​"dead" gives the patient confidence in their immortality. Sometimes confusing progresses to such an extent that the patient can say, if feels like his body is decomposed. Ostensibly he smells his own rotting flesh and feel worms eat it from the inside. This form of depressive disorder was first described by psychiatrist Jules Cotard in 1880.

werewolf syndrome

Unusual syndromes in medicine

Scientifically, this syndrome is called hypertrichosis, and it is characterized by the fact that a person begins to grow hair. Everywhere and uncontrollably, including the face. Total known 50 cases, most of them are inherited. Predominantly a disease of women.

In 2008, scientists at Columbia University found that injection of testosterone inhibits the growth of hair and stimulates hair loss in unusual areas, so that there is already one of the treatment options for this disease.

Stendhal Syndrome

Unusual syndromes in medicine

Another unusual disorder in which a person experiences severe anxiety, tremors, dizziness, hallucinations, and even got into a place where exposed to a large number of works of art. Probably the most dangerous place for those suffering from this disease - the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It is the example of ailments tourists visiting this museum, and has been described syndrome. And for the first time about the warning signs told Stendhal in his book "Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio."

The syndrome of "Alice in Wonderland"

Unusual syndromes in medicine

In this case, the neurological state, man hardly shared objects by size, considering all tiny (micropsia) or huge (macropsia) with respect to the actual size. Such a disorder can be the initial signal Epstein-Barr virus (mononucleosis), may in some cases be called headache - migraine, or indicative of the initial stage of epilepsy. In a healthy person, such changes of perception can cause psychedelic, eg LSD and psilocybin.

Munchausen Syndrome

Unusual syndromes in medicine

We all remember this charming and eccentric literary hero - almost all of us, he was cute. However, people with Munchausen syndrome in real life is not as fun and harmless.

In this syndrome, the person feigns, exaggerates or artificially raises at the symptoms of the disease, to undergo a medical examination, treatment, hospitalization, surgery, etc. In order for treatment to be appointed, pseudo-patients mimic entirely different state:.. From tuberculosis to heart attack, acute abdominal pain to sores and cuts. They swallow keys, spoons and nails - that the real reason appeared for the operation; simulate bleeding from the blood of animals, or even deliberately mutilating her body; handfuls of taking medication, knowing full well that no drugs are not necessary and may even be harmful.

Described case, when one patient so realistically portrayed the "acute abdomen" (abdominal pain), doctors prescribed surgery immediately. Different hospitals have different doctors this lady was operated for a total of more than 40 times! Every time the doctors in astonishment shrugged, finding no sign of any abnormalities, literally anything that could cause a patient described the pain. However, with maniacal persistence she handled and treated in various clinics, having gone through in his life more than 500 hospitalizations.

The reasons for this simulative behavior is not fully understood. The conventional explanation for Munchausen syndrome states that a simulation of the disease allows people with this syndrome get the attention, care, sympathy and psychological support, the need for which they frustrated.

allotriophagy

Unusual syndromes in medicine

detecting part with mental illness desire to eat a variety of non-food items. Patients eat paper, clay, dirt, glue, coal and other substances maloappetitnye.

The syndrome is more common in very young children and people with mental retardation. What happens is that swallow extremely dangerous and sharp objects such as glass, nails, knife and so on. N.

The milder form of the syndrome observed in nervous disorders and during pregnancy as a consequence endointoxication.

Peter Pan Syndrome

Unusual syndromes in medicine

The obstinate unwillingness to grow up, a bad case of infantilism. His appearance term obliged the American psychologist Dan Kaylee.

The most famous example of a patient with the syndrome of Peter Pan - Michael Jackson.

By virtue of hard to explain, but the intuitive reasons for girls this syndrome are substantially independent.

Jerusalem syndrome

Unusual syndromes in medicine

This is a relatively rare disorder - a kind of religious psychosis, which is triggered by a visit to Jerusalem, and exposed her to the followers of any religion. After the trip to this city is mentally unstable person start to think that they - the prophets of God, may seek to establish their own religion and to demand that sinners repented of their sins.

Sometimes their behavior comes to the extremes, and presents a danger to themselves or others, and there is a need for involuntary hospitalization, until the danger has passed the period of behavior.

According to official statistics Psychiatric Center Kfar Shaul, of the two million tourists who visit the city every year, it is observed in approximately one hundred people. It takes two to three weeks after the departure from Jerusalem.

alien hand syndrome

Unusual syndromes in medicine

The complex neuropsychiatric disorder in which one or both hands are on their own, regardless of the desire to master. Another name for the syndrome - Dr. Strendzhlava disease - not by the name of the discoverer, and after suffering its eponymous protagonist of the film Kubrick, whose hand is sometimes itself throws up in a Nazi salute.

Kapgrasa Syndrome (split illusion)

Unusual syndromes in medicine

The illusion consists in the fact that another familiar sick man like him replaced by an imposter - a spy, or even an alien monster. Often, but not always is a form of paranoid schizophrenia.