Top 5 Weirdest Diseases. Two of them I Have Seen in Real Life

Our bodies are immensely complex and fascinating. I hope these diseases cast a light on this fact.

Ondine’s Curse

Your breathing is unconscious until it’s not. Take a deep breath, then breathe out. You’ve made your breathing conscious.

Now imagine if your breathing is no longer taken over by your autonomous system. Not a problem, you could say. I can breathe on my own for the rest of my life. I’ll do it consciously.

Sure, you can! But that would be a short life!

What about when you want to go to sleep? Who takes over? If you fall asleep, you’ll stop breathing. Maybe you’ll take micro naps, but after 3 or 4 days without sleep, you will start hallucinating. The longest record of going without sleep is 11 days.

You won’t die from not breathing, you could die from lack of sleep. To combat this, you’ll probably need to be hooked to a machine that does the job for you.

Ondine comes from a German tale. In the tale, a woman catches his man sleeping with another. So, she curses him by keeping him awake without being able to breathe in his sleep.

This disease is extremely rare. The autonomous breathing center is damaged while the voluntary counterpart remains intact. The damage can be more generalized, like damage to the brain stem. In other cases, it can appear at birth.

Let’s be thankful that our body takes care of that.

Capgras Delusion

You’ve heard of impostor syndrome, right? But now instead of the suspicions being directed toward you, the impostor is a family member or someone close to you — like a crewmate.

Imagine you see your loved one and recognize her. She looks identical, but you hold the conviction that she has been replaced by an impostor.

Capgras syndrome (or delusion) coexists with schizophrenia and some forms of dementia. The problem with this condition is that if the symptoms of schizophrenia or dementia stabilize, the delusion remains.

I saw this condition once in a patient with controlled schizophrenia. Every time she saw her sister, the patient would turn irate. In fits of anger, she would throw every conceivable cuss word.

The patient admitted that the woman looked identical to her sister. But when asked if there were a small chance that that woman was her sister, she remained adamant. There was no way, she would say.

This indicates a delusion, or an irrevocable and unshakable idea.

According to a study, these patients recognize the faces, but their emotional response is the same as with a stranger. This explains why my patient would admit that the person was identical to her sister. But since there is no emotional response, something was off. This arose suspicion in her, making her believe that her sister was an impostor.

The paranoid nature of some patients suffering from schizophrenia doesn’t help either.

Pseudobulbar Affect

Remember The Joker from 2019? The main character has many interesting things going on. But one thing stands out: his laughter.

Does the scene look sad? He laughs. Is the moment appropriate to laugh? Regardless, he laughs.

When the movie premiered, I immediately thought about pseudobulbar affect. Even more so when he showed his card on the bus scene. The card mentioned something about uncontrollable laughter caused by a neurological disease.

I think that by now the general consensus is that pseudobulbar affect is the most likely cause of laughter in Arthur Fleck.

The logic behind it is that uncontrolled laughter can be caused by schizophrenia and bipolar too. But in these two, their laughter is congruent with the mood.

I once met a patient with pseudobulbar affect. And for the first time in my life, I broke character.

I presented myself professionally. Then after hearing his first few laughs, I sucked my lips in. I continued the consultation acting nonchalantly,

“Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh,” I kept repeating in my mind.

The patient would say a few things and then laugh.

“Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh” I sucked my lips and bit them.

The more I told myself not to laugh, the more my urge rose. I guess the patient noticed my effort, so he said something funny. I snorted a laugh.

We then both laughed out loud. His laugh was just heartily and contagious.

I excused myself, of course. The patient just smiled and told me it was all right. Once my laughter was out, I concentrated on the task at hand.

Broken Heart Syndrome

I always thought there was no such thing as a literal broken heart. But there is, and I find this romantic.

This condition was first described in Japan, they named it Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy. During this condition, the left ventricle takes shape like an octopus’ trap, hence the name.

We call it broken heart syndrome over here, I guess we westerners are more romantic.

Despite the romantic name though, the condition doesn’t exclusively happen after a heartbreak. It can happen after any strong emotion. The secreted adrenaline paired with a weakness of the left ventricle wall makes it balloon.

The condition mimics a heart attack: the patient may feel chest pain and shortness of breath. Even the EKG may show abnormalities like in a heart attack. But unlike a heart attack, there is no blockage of arteries. Luckily, patients with a broken heart (syndrome) recover without any long-term damage.

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (broken-heart syndrome) — Harvard Health

No proprioception

Something else we take for granted is proprioception. That is, knowing where our limbs are. If you are in a sitting position, you know that your thighs are in front of you. Your calves are straight, and your feet are flat on the ground. We also know whether they are flexed or relaxed.

We may make it conscious if the need arises. But what if you lost this type of sensation?

Let’s say you want to reach for your phone. To start with, you would have to see where your arm and hand are. Then you would consciously know which muscles to move — not to mention the order and angles. But don’t overextend your arm!

Cases where only the proprioception is affected are extremely rare. Proprioception is usually affected with other sensations: pain, touch, or heat. This is because our nerves come bundled.

The centers where this information is processed are anatomically close. So, damage to our proprioception most likely means other affected areas too— even paralysis.

Conditions like strokes, neurogenerative diseases, or autoimmune diseases are possible culprits.

In The Man Who Lost His Body, a BBC documentary, we see the story of a man who lost proprioception in all his muscles. Including the ones in his trunk. He had to consciously relearn and recreate muscle patterns to accomplish a specific movement.

If he moved this? How would that affect his balance? He would ask himself while practicing.

He practiced day in and day out. Obviously, after many repetitions they somehow became natural. But he must still plot his movements.

When walking, the man must see which foot is in front. You see how he kicks his feet instead of a normal walk.

During nights he must have the lights on; otherwise, how could he see his body in case he wakes up?

Let’s be grateful that we don’t have to do any of that.