Advertisement
Rare and strange medical syndromes are difficult for many people to understand and often difficult to treat, according to medical experts.
Read on to learn about three unusual and confusing medical conditions.
Under these three conditions, those affected believe they are dead, suffer from severe size distortions in their visual perception, or speak in a foreign language and do not understand why or how it happened.
EYE SPY A BIG PROBLEM: CALIFORNIA DOCTOR REMOVES 23 CONTACT LENSES FROM A WOMAN’S EYE
Here’s what you should know about these three conditions.
Cotard Syndrome or Walking Dead Syndrome
Cotard Syndrome, sometimes called Walking Dead Syndrome, is a relatively rare neuropsychiatric disorder first described in 1882 by Dr. Jules Cotard, a Parisian neurologist.
That’s what Dr. Anne Ruminjo, a second-year psychiatric resident at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, and Dr. Boris Mekinulov, attending physician at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn.
They describe the condition in a case report published in the medical journal Psychiatry MMC.
According to specialists, those affected with Walking Dead Syndrome believe that they have lost body parts or their soul to the dead.
(iStock)
Cotard syndrome includes one of “a series of delusions” based on the belief that a person has “lost organs, blood, or body parts” or “has lost their soul or is dead,” the doctors note in their report .
Cases have been identified in patients with “mood disorders, psychotic disorders and illnesses,” they said.
“Most cases of Cotard respond better to electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) than pharmacological treatment,” they say in the report.
BUBONIC PEST INFLUENCED DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN IMMUNE SYSTEM, NEW STUDY SUGGESTS
The doctors explained a case of Cotard Syndrome that they were involved in as part of their work.
“Ms. L, a 53-year-old Filipino woman, was admitted to the psychiatric unit when her family called 911 because the patient complained that she was dead, smelled of rotting meat, and wanted to be taken to a morgue to be treated could be dead,” the doctors reported.
“The patient complained that she was dead, smelled of rotting meat and wanted to be taken to a morgue so she could be with the dead.”
They said the patient was afraid “paramedics” were trying to burn down the house where she lived with family members – and admitted to feeling “hopelessness, lack of energy, decreased appetite and drowsiness”.
DURING THE COVID PANDEMIC, TUBERCULOSIS DEATHS ROSE, AGAIN YEARS OF DECLINE
After drug treatment during a hospital stay, the patient – upon discharge, the doctors said – “denied niehilist or paranoid delusions and hallucinations and expressed hope for her future and the desire to participate in psychiatric follow-up care”.
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (AIWS) is a set of symptoms that produce a “change in body image,” reported Dr. Anne Weissenstein, Dr. Elisabeth Luchter and Dr. Stefan Bittmann from the Pediatric Mind Institute in Gronau, Germany, in a report published in the Journal of Pediatric Neurosciences.
“A change in visual perception is detected by misperceiving the sizes of body parts or sizes of external objects.”
“A change in visual perception is found in [the] misperceiving the size of body parts or sizes of external objects,” the doctors noted.
They added: “The most common perceptions [occur] at night.”
Alice in Wonderland syndrome sufferers sometimes experience severe distortions in their perception of size, similar to the mythical character Alice in Wonderland.
(iStock)
While all causes of AIWS cases “are still not precisely known,” doctors said some causes include “typical migraines, temporal lobe epilepsy, brain tumors and psychotropic drugs, and Epstein-Barr virus infection.”
AIWS has no effective treatment, they noted.
Treatment plans consist of migraine prophylaxis (medication) and migraine diet, they reported.
FLORIDA OFFICIALS REPORT RECORD NUMBER OF INFECTION CAUSED BY “FLESH EATING” BACTERIA AFTER HURRICANE IAN
“There are chronic cases of AIWS,” they also emphasized.
Foreign Accent Syndrome
Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) is a speech disorder that causes a sudden change in spoken words, making the sufferer perceive as speaking with a “foreign” accent, according to the University of Texas at the Callier Center in Dallas.
According to its website, the center treats thousands of patients with a variety of hearing, speech and language disorders.
People with Foreign Accent Syndrome speak in a tone that sounds like a foreign accent. The condition is most commonly caused by brain damage, doctors say.
(iStock)
FAS is most commonly caused by brain damage from “a stroke or traumatic brain injury,” the center notes.
“Other causes have also been reported, including multiple sclerosis and conversion disorder – and in some cases no clear cause has been identified.”
Speech can be altered “in terms of timing, intonation, and tongue placement,” the center explains, “so that it is perceived as foreign.”
“Remarkably, the brain damage had altered her intonation and she spoke with a German-like accent.”
However, the language of a sick person remains “very easy to understand” and does not “necessarily sound disorderly”, the center further notes.
FAS has been documented in cases around the world, the same source states, including accent changes from “Japanese to Korean, British English to French, American English to British English, and Spanish to Hungarian.”
AFTER FENTANYL KILLS HER LOVER, RECOVERY DRUG USERS FIGHT TO END THE STIGMA OF ADDICTION
In perhaps the most famous case of FAS, a 28-year-old woman was hit in the head by shrapnel after British bombers attacked Oslo, Norway, on September 6, 1941.
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, Walking Dead Syndrome, and Foreign Accent Syndrome are rare conditions that can be difficult to treat, doctors say.
(iStock)
The particular case is described in a medical abstract by Dr. Erland Hem, associate professor in the Department of Behavioral Medicine at the University of Oslo, Norway and published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
She was “severely injured” with a “large defect in the skull frontally on the left side” – and doctors didn’t think she wouldn’t live.
“The brain damage changed her intonation and she spoke with a German-like accent.”
After being unconscious for three to four days, she then awoke — and had “right-sided hemiplegia and complete aphasia,” according to the medical summary.
“She gradually recovered and was discharged from the hospital two months later,” says the same source.
DO YOU SEE GHOSTS IN THIS VIDEO? VERMONT PARANORMAL RESEARCHERS RELEASE THEIR FINDINGS
“Remarkably, the brain damage had altered her intonation and she spoke with a German accent.”
“That caused her problems during the war: she wasn’t served in shops, for example.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The case history was published after the war by Norwegian neurologist Georg Herman Monrad-Krohn.
It is the most famous case of Foreign Accent Syndrome, the Abstract Notes.
