We’ve all seen it in movies or on TV – someone’s hand gets possessed and does all sorts of crazy things.  There was a movie about it – Idle Hands – where the protagonist with the antagonistic hand ends up killing a whole lot of people.  On an early episode of “Angel” Lindsey gets a new hand and it writes “kill, kill, kill” and all sorts of stuff.  One of my favorites is the scene from Evil Dead where Ash’s hand gets possessed.  Observe:

Fun, huh?  Anyway.  As it turns out, Alien Hand Syndrome is a real thing.  It’s certainly (at least I don’t think so) as extreme as poor Ash up there, but it’s still a tough thing to deal with.  It can be caused by a number of things – sometimes doctors will surgically separate the hemispheres of an epileptic’s brain – that can cause it.  It can also happen because of a brain injury.  Basically, the part of the brain that controls that appendage isn’t in cahoots with the rest of the brain that controls the rest of the body.  Hence the name “alien.”  It is simply not controlled by the conscious part of the mind.  Really makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Here is a video interview with a woman who suffers from alien hand syndrome.  The video isn’t as exciting as the one above, but it is still pretty interesting.

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photo by Robert McDon.

Because of our interest in all things bizarre in the medical world,  we spend a lot of time scouring the internet for news of the weird.  At the risk of being a bit controversial, we submit to you a condition we found via News of The World, a UK website.  In a 2007 article they tell us about Sarah, a then-24-year-old girl with a very strange medical condition.

She can’t stop having orgasms.

She has 100 to 200 orgasms per day.  She can’t use a hairdryer, ride in a car, or even be in a noisy room full of people because the vibrations send her into fits.  She has a condition called Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS), and before you start feeling jealous, imagine not being able to control when (or where) you reach your “happy place”.  She’s a beautician, and she has to deal with having all these orgasms every day right in front of people.  You can imagine, it’s pretty hard to get things done when your body is busy climaxing all the time.

PSAS is likely a nerve disorder, though not enough people have done studies on it to know for sure.  The condition is pretty rare.  It was only first documented in 2001.  It seems that most triggers are certain types of drugs.  For sure, Sarah’s symptoms didn’t start until she’d been on anti-depressants and then went off them.  Ever since then, she’s been suffering with this disorder.

Because the condition is thought to be nerve-related, physical therapy is one possible treatment.  Similarly, because the nerve disorder thought to cause PSAS is pundendal nerve entrapment, surgery is another option.  Surely there must be something that can help people like poor Sarah.  Too much of a good thing is still…too much.

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What would you do if you felt like you had bugs crawling on you?  How about if you felt like you had bugs crawling OUT of you?  What if you started pulling long fibers out of your skin?  Or if you had unexplained sores all over your body?

Now, think about what you would do if you had one or all of these symptoms, and nobody believed you.

That’s exactly what has happened to many people who suffer from a disease they call Morgellons.  The name comes from a 17th century medical letter that spoke of children who had bristles growing out of their backs.  Mary Leitao gave the disease this name when she couldn’t get any doctor to recognize there was something actually wrong with her son.  He had the symptoms listed above, and all medical specialists told Leitao that she was projecting her own fears illness on to her son via Munchausan By Proxy and that there was nothing really wrong with him.

There are many other sufferers who have faced the same challenge – to have debilitating pain and itching, lack of mental clarity, extreme fatigue and have doctors tell them they were crazy.

A few doctors, however, have taken note and are convinced that Morgellons is a real disease.  One theory is that the fibers are plant-based and that the cause for tree tumors has found its way into the human body.  Another theory is that the fibers are the shells of worms that invade the human body.  Neither theory is exactly comforting, although they are more comforting that the conspiracy theories that abound related to government toxin cover-ups and alien invasions.

Certainly if you suffer from these symptoms you should seek out a doctor who believes in finding a cure to help.  And our advice?  Stay away from the internet, because you never know what they are going to come up with next.

Click for information about Lung Cancer or Varicose Veins

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