Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Freak-show

It's true: nature shows on Animal Planet and Discovery Channel always ensure an aesthetically pleasing, educational viewing experience. However, if there is ever a choice between engaging in Shark Week or watching a TLC documentary, TLC takes the cake - hands down. This blog is dedicated to mind-boggling, medical marvels of the world. You're about to be blown away.


Meet Brooke Greenberg from Reisterstown, Maryland. Brooke weighs 16 pounds, and is 30 inches tall. Believe it or not, Brooke is 16 years old. Frozen in time, Brooke's condition is identified as "Syndrome X". She has an estimated mental age of 9 months to a year.


21-year-old Aditya "Romeo" Dev, the world's smallest bodybuilder, hails from Punjab, India. The bodybuilding star from India
weighs about 19 pounds and is 2 feet, 9 inches tall. Dev told "Good Morning America" that the most he has ever lifted is 10 pounds : about half his weight. He is currently pursuing another passion in addition to weightlifting : singing and dancing.


Radhakant Bajpai's record ear hair measures nearly 10 inches long, which may be the longest ear hair in the world. Bajpai held the record in 2003, according to Guinness.


Christopher Sands, 25, suffers from chronic hiccups. He has not been able to get rid of his hiccups for more than two years.


For nearly four decades, Sanju Bhagat carried the body of his own twin inside him. Doctors discovered Bhagat had one of the world's most bizarre medical conditions — fetus in fetu, an extremely rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin.


Dede Koswara, 35, with gnarled growths sprouting from his hands and feet, sits in front of his house in the village of Tanjung Jaya, West Java province, Nov. 21, 2007. According to reports from the U.K. paper The Telegraph, Dr. Anthony Gaspari, a dermatologist from the United States, recently cut about 4 pounds of the hornlike growths from Koswara's limbs. The growths started appearing on his body when he was a teenager and earned him the "tree man"


James O'Neal, a grocery store cashier in Redmond, Wash., suffers from a genetic condition called neurofibromatosis that left his face disfigured; he compares his appearance to that of the "Elephant Man." Now, his customers and friends are raising money to help him have reconstructive facial surgery that will offer him a more normal appearance.


Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (aka, PSAS), results in unrelenting, persistent genital arousal. Women that suffer from this syndrome explain that they feel like they are on the brink of an orgasm ... all the time.


Eighty-seven reports of patients with seizures induced by listening and/or playing music and one personal observation are reviewed. Music-induced (or musicogenic) seizures are currently classified among the reflex seizures precipitated by complex stimuli. According to the available information, they are defined as focal seizures due to a discharge involving lateral and mesial temporal and orbitofrontal areas. The specific musical component responsible for seizure precipitation is still undetermined.

Pictures and captions courtesy of ABC News.

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