An English woman suffering from a rare condition known as painful hyperacusis says that everyday noises, such as her children’s laughter, her friends’ voices, and even music cause her paralyzing pain. Until 18 months ago, Karen Cook worked as a cabin crew and lived a perfectly normal life with her husband and their two boys. But then she started experiencing something strange and painful. Most of us shudder at the thought of losing our sense of hearing, but what if that same sense was amplified by orders of magnitude, making everyday sounds, no matter how soothing, impossible to bear? That’s what Karen started experiencing in 2022 when her hyperacusis suddenly set in. All of a sudden, sound became torture for her. The voices of loved ones, chatting with friends, or listening to her favorite music caused her unbearable headaches to the point where she began to isolate herself just to make them stop. Read More »

David, a 10-year-old boy from Singapore, was diagnosed with Prader-Willi Syndrome, a complex genetic condition that makes him feel hungry no matter how much he eats. Imagine filling your stomach with copious amounts of nutritious food and never actually experiencing that sensation of fullness that we know as ‘satiety’. That is what David Soo, a 10-year-old boy from Singapore has to deal with every day of his life. He suffers from a complex rare disease called Prader-Willi Syndrome, which, among other serious symptoms, leaves sufferers feeling hungry regardless of how much they eat. It is caused by the loss of function of genes in a certain region of chromosome 15, and it is incurable. Read More »

A recently-published study detailed the bizarre case of an Italian woman who grew eyelash-like hairs inside of her mouth multiple times. The unnamed woman reportedly visited doctors about her condition over a decade ago, when she was just 19-years-old. She visited doctors and complained of hair growing out of her gums, which had only been documented a handful of times in medical literature. Testing revealed that the young woman also had ovarian cysts, and she was later diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a relatively common hormonal disorder. Women suffering from PCOS tend to produce more testosterone than normal, of which a condition called hiruitism – increased growth of hair on the body – is a known side effect. Read More »

After being exposed to a long-term gas leak in her home for a long period of time, a Los Angeles woman’s immune system turned against itself, making her allergic to food, water, clothing, technology with an electromagnetic field, and even people. 30-year-old Pilar Olave, a Chilean-born actress from Los Angeles, California, has been living in her room, isolated from the rest of the world, for the last two years. Due to severe allergies, coming into contact with certain chemicals, foods and bacteria that most of us carry around can trigger a variety of symptoms, like acute stomach pain, headaches, nausea, heart palpitations and tight chest. For now, Pilar can’t even kiss or touch her own husband, because her body is hypersensitive to bacteria. Read More »

Can you imagine never being able to sleep, thus denying your body and brain the chance to rejuvenate? It’s a scary thought, but sadly it’s what sufferers of a rare condition known as Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) have to go through until it eventually kills them. This mysterious genetic disease affects less than one in 10 million people worldwide and has no treatment or cure. According to a BBC report, Fatal Familial Insomina is almost unheard of because most families who carry the gene have chosen to remain silent about it. It makes sense, given that most people might not want their children to know about the cruel fate that awaits them. There’s no way to predict when or which family members FFI will strike, and since there’s no cure, they tend to avoid talking about it for fear of tempting fate. In recent times, however, a few families have chosen to open up about the illness that has plagued their genealogical tree. Like that of Silvano, a Venetian man who lost his father and two sisters to the fatal illness and succumbed to it himself in the 1980s, at age 53. But he left his brain to science in the hope that doctors might discover more about the condition. The family’s story became the subject of the book The Family Who Couldn’t Sleep, written by DT Max, who managed to trace the disease back to a Venetian doctor in the late 18th century. Read More »

Christmas is a time for parents to be happy for their children’s excitement. But this doesn’t apply to Ray and Tina Cleveland, as their daughter Holly is suffering from a rare disease that causes her heart to stop and leaves her breathless for about 30 seconds, when she gets over excited.

This is two-year-old Holly’s first Christmas since she was diagnosed with the disease and both her parents are very worried, even though they were assured the toddler’s heart will always start beating again. In fact they put up the Christmas tree and started “celebrating” early so that little Holly could get used to all the excitement gradually.

“We even put our tree up early to try and get her used to the twinkly lights before they started appearing everywhere. It’s heartbreaking to see her little face light up and then have to immediately calm her down again. I’ve even avoided asking her what present she wants because I don’t want her to get too excited when she sees it,” Holly’s mother, Tina, explains.

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Haunted houses, cockroaches or any kind of bugs for that matter, snakes, you name it, there’s nothing in this world that will freak this woman out.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like to never experience fear, but there is someone out there who really is fearless, due to a rare disorder, called the Urbach-Wiethe disease, which destroyed a part of her brain called the amygdala, where researchers believe the feeling of fear is born. A 44-year-old woman, whose identity hasn’t been revealed for reasons of confidentiality, suffering from this rare disease, has become a case study for researchers at the University of Iowa.

Scientists have tried everything to provoke her fear – spiders, live snakes, tours of haunted houses – but nothing seems to work. As a matter of fact, she has been exposed to very dangerous and scary situations in her day to day life, for example being held at gun point or knife point, or even life threatening domestic violence, but none of it caused her to be afraid. While it may sound like some cool superpower, her lack of fear and response can also be very dangerous for her as it comes with a lack of preservation instinct.

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