There are some truly bizarre medical conditions which affect humans. Some are physical and some are mental. One rare mental condition which is truly strange is called Cotard syndrome. People who suffer from this actually believe they are dead. No amount of convincing can change their mind. We all know what happens when someone dies, they no longer need to eat, drink or sleep. People with Cotard syndrome do the same. They may also believe they do not exist or only some parts of their body are dead such as their brains. This certainly sounds like something out of a horror movie. Some medical professionals believe it is linked with psychosis, clinical depression and schizophrenia. This condition was discovered in the 1800s by a French neurologist named Jules Cotard. Some people who suffer from this disorder believe they are in the afterlife. Others believe they are a rotting corpse. People have been known to recover.

Not many people know this, but there is a mental disorder which causes people to see objects much smaller than they actually are in life. Some say it is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The condition is known as Micropsia and some call it the “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.” Sometimes the object which people are looking at seems very close and sometimes it seems very far away. There is nothing wrong with the people’s eyes who see this. The problem is with how their brain is interpreting the image. While this condition is not 100% understood, it is believed migraine headaches may contribute to it. It is also thought the disorder can affect some of the other senses and is more common among children 5 to 10 years old and is linked to schizophrenia, psychoactive drugs and brain tumors.

There is actually a mental disorder known as Self-Cannibalism. Just the thought of this makes people queasy. The medical term for this condition is Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome. A person exhibiting this problem tries to consume their own body parts. There is also a term for this action called autosarcophagy. The body causes an overproduction of uric acid, which leads to a compulsive habit of lip and finger biting in most of the cases. There is another unfortunate side effect to this which effects over 60% of the people who have this disease.  They have to have their teeth removed so they wouldn’t do harm to themselves. This has to be done, because some of these people will bite off their lips, cheeks and tongues. It is said this disorder can range anywhere from a mild disorder to a life-threatening one. It is hard to imagine anything much worse than this.

There is a disorder in which a person actually believes they are being transformed into an animal. This disorder is known as Lycanthropy. There are different types of this disorder, one is known as Boanthropy. This is where a person believes they are a cow or an ox and you may find them down on all fours chewing on grass. Doctors think this condition originates from a dream and eventually takes over the body of the individual. There are subdivisions of this disease. This may be inappropriate, but it does remind me of an old joke. A man goes to a doctor and says his brother thinks he’s a chicken and the doctor says I can cure him, but the man says don’t, we need the eggs.

One syndrome which is known as Aboulomania may be one we have seen ourselves. It is a medical problem which prevents people from making a decision. Some call it “Paralysis of the Will.” Sometimes we all face very difficult decisions and can’t make our minds up, but this is more than that, the people who have this not only suffer over making decisions, but never make them. These people seem normal in every other aspect. Even the simple things paralyze their decisions such as whether to take a walk or stay in the house. The anxiety that builds up in them is crippling. It is so bad it stops them from functioning. Some experts say these people have a need for 100% certainty before they make a decision and are unable to fulfill their own free will when confronted with choices.

One strange mental disorder is known as Synesthesia. The reason I call it strange is people will have it and have one sense stimulated but another sense is also involuntary stimulated. Two senses will get joined together when only one sense is being addressed. A person may look at an image and while doing this smell something. They may also eat something which causes them to hear something. Sometimes people experience seeing colors while they are reading. It has been said many people with this disorder are able to use it to help them create art. This condition is not considered a disease, because people with it only experience things in a more vivid way.

Another strange condition is foreign accent syndrome. People with it will experience an accent connected to an entirely different country. An example of this might be a person who was born in the United States of American and yet suddenly developed a Russian accent. This is a very rare disorder. The accent appears suddenly and is totally unexpected and sometimes occurs after some kind of brain injury. The condition can be temporary, or it can become permanent. This is not to be confused with the condition which occurs where people suffer brain injuries and then talk in languages they never knew.

There are a lot of strange conditions in the world and our bodies are very complicated, especially our brains and we don’t understand them entirely. While space is considered the new frontier, the human body should be considered as another frontier. We don’t even understand most of the information in our own DNA.