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Posts tagged disease
Morgellons Disease
Jan 23rd
Morgellons disease is a mysterious skin disorder characterized by disfiguring sores and crawling sensations on and under the skin. Although Morgellons disease isn’t widely recognized as a medical diagnosis, experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are investigating reports of the condition, which they refer to as unexplained dermopathy.
Morgellons Disease
If you suspect that you have Morgellons disease, you may have many questions about the condition. Here’s what you need to know about Morgellons disease, including practical tips for managing your signs and symptoms.
What are the signs and symptoms of Morgellons disease?
People who have Morgellons disease report the following signs and symptoms:
- Skin rashes or sores that can cause intense itching
- Crawling sensations on and under the skin, often compared to insects moving, stinging or biting
- Fibers, threads or black stringy material in and on the skin
- Severe fatigue
- Inability to concentrate and short-term memory loss
- Behavioral changes
- Joint pain
- Vision changes
Morgellons disease shares characteristics with various recognized conditions, including Lyme disease, liver or kidney disease, schizophrenia, drug or alcohol abuse, and a mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by parasites (delusional parasitosis).
How widespread is Morgellons disease? More >
Congenital Insensitivity To Pain – People Who Can’t Feel Pain – CIPA
Dec 14th
CIPA or congenital insensitivity to pain is one of the rarest diseases in the world. A very rare condition and it is also known as congenital analgia. People diagnosed with this condition have their pain sensors turned off and they can’t feel any pain. The condition is extremely dangerous as these people are prone to danger not knowing the level of pain inflicted.
Congenital Insensitivity To Pain – People Who Can’t Feel Pain
What caused the disorder? It is an unknown condition when the brain that recognizes the pain does not connect to the nerves that sense the pain. This unknown condition only happens to the pain sensors. People with CIPA have their other sensory areas completely checked and normal. Incredibly a rare disease, 35 people in the United States is diagnosed with CIPA. Sadly, people with CIPA has low survival rate and many doesn’t live that long to the age of 25 making the case a difficult case to study.
Pains are relatively a unique sense. It keeps us out of trouble, our body defense against harmful actions and not being able to feel pain is totally dangerous. Children especially will need to know how to sense this pain. We need to know what we should or shouldn’t do when we feel pain and we also know how not to cause pain to ourselves. Pain can help you to avoid danger and what causing this danger.
Anhidrosis, a condition of the body’s inability to sweat is found in people with CIPA. This condition can worsen the issue. With Anhidrosis, people with CIPA are not able to feel extreme temperature. Together with this and the body’s inability to sweat only means that their body is unable to regulate its temperature. More >
Trichotillomania
Dec 10th
Trichotillomania is hair loss from compulsive pulling or twisting of the hair until it breaks off.
Trichotillomania
Causes
Trichotillomania is a type of compulsive behavior. Its causes are not clearly understood.
It may affect as much as 4% of the population. Women are four times more likely to be affected than men.
Symptoms
Symptoms usually begin before age 17. The hair may come out in round patches or across the scalp. The effect is an uneven appearance. The person may pluck other hairy areas, such as the eyebrows, eyelashes, or body hair.
These symptoms are usually seen in children:
- An uneven appearance to the hair
- Bare patches or all around (diffuse) loss of hair
- Bowel blockage (obstruction) if people eat the hair they pull out
- Constant tugging, pulling, or twisting of hair
- Denying the hair pulling
- Hair regrowth that feels like stubble in the bare spots
- Increasing sense of tension before the hair pulling
- Other self-injury behaviors
- Sense of relief, pleasure, or gratification after the hair pulling More >
Möbius Syndrome
Dec 9th
Background
Möbius syndrome is due, in part, to loss of function of motor cranial nerves. Although von Graefe described a case of congenital facial diplegia in 1880 , the syndrome was reviewed and defined further by Paul Julius Möbius, a German neurologist, in 1888 and 1892. Because of these contributions, Möbius is now the eponym used to describe the syndrome. p
Möbius Syndrome
The definition and diagnostic criteria for Möbius syndrome vary among authors. Both von Graefe and Möbius accepted only cases with both congenital facial diplegia and bilateral abducens nerve palsies as constituting M ö bius syndrome. In 1939, Henderson broadened the definition and included cases with congenital unilateral facial palsy.
Other authors are more restrictive in attempts to eliminate conditions of a different pathogenesis being labeled as Möbius syndrome. These investigators require the presence of a congenital musculoskeletal anomaly in order to make the diagnosis. In most studies, Möbius syndrome is defined as congenital facial weakness combined with abnormal ocular abduction.
Pathophysiology
The complete pathophysiological description of Möbius syndrome remains elusive. Whether nerve, brainstem, or muscle aplasia is the primary event has not been established. Nerves that may be involved include cranial nerves (CNs) VI through XII, with general sparing of CN VIII. CN III and CN IV can be involved, but only rarely. The facial nerves (CN VII) are involved in all cases, the abducens nerves (CN VI) in a high percentage of cases (75%), and the hypoglossal nerves (CN XII) in only a minority of cases.
Numerous theories exist concerning the primary underlying pathogenesis. More >
100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body – Part VIII
Dec 9th
Disease and Injury
Most of us will get injured or sick at some point in our lives. Here are some facts on how the human body reacts to the stresses and dangers from the outside world.
unicorn injury
- Monday is the day of the week when the risk of heart attack is greatest. Yet another reason to loathe Mondays! A ten year study in Scotland found that 20% more people die of heart attacks on Mondays than any other day of the week. Researchers theorize that it’s a combination of too much fun over the weekend with the stress of going back to work that causes the increase.
- Humans can make do longer without food than sleep. While you might feel better prepared to stay up all night partying than to give up eating, that feeling will be relatively short lived. Provided there is water, the average human could survive a month to two months without food depending on their body fat and other factors. Sleep deprived people, however, start experiencing radical personality and psychological changes after only a few sleepless days. The longest recorded time anyone has ever gone without sleep is 11 days, at the end of which the experimenter was awake, but stumbled over words, hallucinated and frequently forgot what he was doing. More >
100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body – Part V
Oct 8th
Sex and Reproduction
As taboo as it may be in some places, sex is an important part of human life as a facet of relationships and the means to reproduce. Here are a few things you might not have known.
Hotmale
- On any given day, sexual intercourse takes place 120 million times on earth. Humans are a quickly proliferating species, and with about 4% of the world’s population having sex on any given day, it’s no wonder that birth rates continue to increase in many places all over the world.
- The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm. While you can’t see skin cells or muscle cells, the ovum is typically large enough to be seen with the naked eye with a diameter of about a millimeter. The sperm cell, on the other hand, is tiny, consisting of little more than nucleus.
- The three things pregnant women dream most of during their first trimester are frogs, worms and potted plants. Pregnancy hormones can cause mood swings, cravings and many other unexpected changes. Oddly enough, hormones can often affect the types of dreams women have and their vividness. The most common are these three types, but many women also dream of water, giving birth or even have violent or sexually charged dreams.
- Your teeth start growing 6 months before you are born. While few babies are born with teeth in place, the teeth that will eventually push through the gums of young children are formed long before the child even leaves the womb. At 9 to 12 weeks the fetus starts to form the teeth buds that will turn into baby teeth. More >
100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body – Part III
Sep 24th
Bodily Functions
We may not always like to talk about them, but everyone has to deal with bodily functions on a daily basis. These are a few facts about the involuntary and sometimes unpleasant actions of our bodies.
sneeze
- Sneezes regularly exceed 100 mph. There’s a good reason why you can’t keep your eyes open when you sneeze–that sneeze is rocketing out of your body at close to 100 mph. This is, of course, a good reason to cover your mouth when you sneeze.
- Coughs clock in at about 60 mph. Viruses and colds get spread around the office and the classroom quickly during cold and flu season. With 60 mph coughs spraying germs far and wide, it’s no wonder.
- Women blink twice as many times as men do. That’s a lot of blinking every day. The average person, man or woman, blinks about 13 times a minute.
- A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball. No wonder you have to run to bathroom when you feel the call of the wild. The average bladder holds about 400-800 cc of fluid but most people will feel the urge to go long before that at 250 to 300 cc. More >
Weirdest Diseases – Part X – Epidermolysis Bullosa
Sep 21st
Epidermolysis bullosa (EB) is a group of inherited bullous disorders characterized by blister formation in response to mechanical trauma. Historically, epidermolysis bullosa subtypes have been classified according to skin morphology.
Epidermolysis bullosa - squamous cell carcinoma
Recent discoveries of the molecular basis of epidermolysis bullosa have resulted in the development of new diagnostic tools, including prenatal and preimplantation testing. Based on a better understanding of the basement membrane zone (BMZ) and the genes responsible for its components, new treatments (eg, gene or protein therapy) may provide solutions to the skin fragility found in patients with epidermolysis bullosa.
Pathophysiology
Epidermolysis bullosa is classified into 3 major categories, including (1) epidermolysis bullosa simplex (intraepidermal skin separation), (2) junctional epidermolysis bullosa (skin separation in lamina lucida or central BMZ), and (3) dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (sublamina densa BMZ separation).
Researchers have proposed a new category termed hemidesmosomal epidermolysis bullosa, which produces blistering at the hemidesmosomal level in the most superior aspect of the BMZ. Epidermolysis bullosa simplex usually is associated with little or no extracutaneous involvement, while the more severe hemidesmosomal, junctional, and dystrophic forms of epidermolysis bullosa may produce significant multiorgan system involvement. More >
Weirdest Diseases – Part IX – Pica
Jul 17th
Definition: Pica is a pattern of eating non-food materials (such as dirt or paper).
Pica
Causes: Pica is seen more in young children than adults. Between 10 and 32% of children ages 1 – 6 have these behaviors.
Pica can occur during pregnancy. In some cases, a lack of certain nutrients, such as iron deficiency anemia and zinc deficiency, may trigger the unusual cravings. Pica may also occur in adults who crave a certain texture in their mouth.
Symptoms: Children and adults with pica may eat:
- Animal feces
- Clay
- Dirt
- Hairballs
- Ice
- Paint
- Sand
This pattern of eating should last at least 1 month to fit the diagnosis of pica. More >
Weirdest Diseases – Part VIII – Alice in Wonderland syndrome
Jul 13th
Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS, named after the novel written by Lewis Carroll), also known as Todd’s syndrome, is a disorienting neurological condition which affects human perception. Sufferers may experience micropsia, macropsia, and/or size distortion of other sensory modalities. A temporary condition, it is often associated with migraines, brain tumors, and the use of psychoactive drugs. It can also present as the initial sign of the Epstein-Barr Virus (mononucleosis). Anecdotal reports suggests that the symptoms of AIWS are fairly common in childhood, with many people growing out of them in their teens. It appears that AIWS is also a common experience at sleep onset.
Alice in Wonderland syndrome
Signs and symptoms
Eye components are entirely normal. The AIWS is a result of change in perception as opposed to the eyes themselves malfunctioning. The hallmark sign of AIWS is a migraine, and may in part be caused by the symptom itself. AIWS affects the sufferer’s sense of visual, sensation, touch, hearing as well as one’s own body image.
The most prominent and often most disturbing symptom is that of altered body image: the sufferer will find that they are confused as to the size and shape of parts of (or all of) their body.
The eyes themselves are normal, but the sufferer ‘sees’ objects with the wrong size or shape and/or finds that perspective is incorrect. This can mean that people, cars, buildings, etc. look smaller or larger than they should be, or that distances look incorrect; for example a corridor may appear to be very long, or the ground may appear too close. More >
