The human body is a hell of a thing. We walk around in ridiculously complex machines with tons of chemical reactions happening in our organs, tiny sparks of electricity running to and from our brain, and somehow it all holds together. That is, until it doesn't. All kinds of things can go wrong when you're a human being, and in this article we'll share ten of the most bizarre, hard to understand medical conditions in the world. Wash your hands, cross your fingers and let's get to it.
Suction Cup Skin![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
The skin is the largest organ in the human body. It's responsible for a lot of things, most notably keeping our guts inside where they belong. But for Illinois man Jamie Keeton, his skin has some very perplexing properties. 23 years ago, he discovered that
his bare skin has natural adhesiveness when a plastic cup got stuck to it, and over the decades he's refined his ability to X-Men like levels. Cell phones, keys, bottles and other non-porous materials stick like glue to his bare skin, and he's made himself a local celebrity with his medical condition. He recently beat a Guinness World Record for "most cans stuck to a human head," which is kind of cheating if you ask us.
Total Pain Immunity![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
Most of the conditions on this list don't really seem like they'd be that useful for fighting crime, but young Olivia Farnsworth is the exception. The 7 year old from England suffers from chromosome 6 deletion, but doctors have never seen a patient with the unique symptoms she displays. Olivia
feels no pain anywhere in her body -- in January, she was hit by a car and dragged down the street and didn't even feel it. In fact, because she didn't tense up with pain, doctors think her injuries were minimized. In addition, she also needs much less sleep than an average child and can go days without resting, and also never feels hungry. We're pouring one out for all her future ex-boyfriends who are going to have a tough time keeping up.
Crying Crystals![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
One of the primary functions of the human body is to get chemicals that shouldn't be inside it out. We have a number of systems in place to flush impurities - sweating, peeing, you name it - but crying is vitally important. Tears help us clear things out of our sensitive sight organs, and if you couldn't cry things would be pretty bad for you. That's why Laura Pons' odd condition is so troubling. Her tear ducts produce a mineral-heavy fluid that actually
hardens into white crystals in her eyes, requiring medical intervention to remove. Doctors have no idea what causes it, but think it's possible that her eye is creating keratin to protect from bacteria. Let's hope she isn't going to see any sad movies soon.
Eyes Closed For Three Days![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
In the modern world, it's hard to ever feel like you're getting enough sleep. That's not a problem for Natalie Adler, an Australian woman who is afflicted with a totally bizarre unexplained condition. Every few months, Adler gets a funny feeling of extreme heaviness in her eyelids, and the next day she finds herself unable to open her eyes more than a tiny crack. This
unusual situation lasts for three days, during which she's unable to drive or perform many normal tasks. She started having these three-day dark spells after a staph infection at 17, but doctors haven't been able to pinpoint the exact cause.
Never Aging![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
Eternal youth is the subject of lots of stories, but in real life it's not quite so good. Case in point: Brooke Greenberg, a woman who died at the age of 20 in an infant's body. Greenberg is one of a few sufferers worldwide of a condition known only as "
Syndrome X," where the body simply does not grow and mature over time. The brain also doesn't develop like normal, so Greenberg had an approximate mental age of 9 months until her death. She appeared normal at birth, but underwent a number of bizarre traumas including seizures, stomach ulcers and a brain tumor before she turned 6. Medical professionals couldn't figure out the cause of her condition, as her brain looked relatively normal.
Brewery Stomach![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
The stomach is one of the most complex organs in the body, a steaming cauldron of hundreds of different types of bacteria that break down what we eat into the raw energy we use to survive. What makes it even crazier is that different people have different populations of bacteria, and some of those little buggers are weird as heck. Case in point: an unnamed woman in Hamburg, New York who was pulled over after Christmas with a blood alcohol 4x the legal limit. She'd only had a few drinks that day, but that wasn't the cause -- instead, she suffered from "
gut fermentation syndrome," where the bacteria take yeast in food and transform it into ethanol inside their bodies like they were living stills. Nobody knows exactly how it happens.
Body Covered With Nails![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
Body hair is a pretty fascinating thing - it's sort of a throwback from our ancestors who needed it to insulate themselves from the elements in those awful days before there was clothes. But evolution is a complex process, and Memphis woman Shanyna Isom might be evidence that it's going in some strange direction. Since 2009, Isom has not been growing body hair - instead, her
follicles are producing human fingernails. Tests determined that each of her follicles contain 12 times the average amount of skin cells, which causes them to create thicker material. Doctors have no explanation for her bizarre condition, but some treatments have been able to alleviate it.
Perfect Memory![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
Not all medical conditions have purely negative results. Take the few people in the world with still-unexplained
hyperthymesic syndrome, which gives them total recall of any fact they ever learned. Take Brad Williams, a man from Wisconsin who is one of a documented 25 people in the world with it. Williams can bring back memories from any point in his life with trivial ease, telling you what he ate, what the weather was like or just about any insignificant detail. Scientists have subjected him to a battery of tests but they can't pin down exactly what brought on the syndrome.
Upside Down Vision![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
The pathways that our senses take to the brain are complex and fairly delicate, so it's not surprising that things can get a little confusing in there. For a Serbian woman named Bojana Danilovic, it's enough to turn her whole world upside down. Danilovic suffers from something called "
spatial orientation phenomenon," which takes the incoming visual data from her eyes and transmits it to her brain topsy-turvy. She reads books and newspapers flipped over and uses a special computer monitor at work that is rotated 180 degrees. Doctors have no idea what triggered the flip in her optics, but she seems to get around OK.
Unstoppable Sneezing![Unexplained Medical Conditions]()
Sneezing can be pretty annoying, but you usually only do it a few times a day. That's cold comfort to Katelyn Thornley, who for all intents and purposes is just an ordinary 12 year old girl. Spend a few minutes around Katelyn, though, and you'll see the difference: she
just can't stop sneezing. Thornley suffers from a medical condition so rare it doesn't even have a name, and doctors are baffled as to its cause. She sneezes non-stop, as many as 20 times a minute while she's awake. That adds up to a staggering 12,000 sneezes a day. It's made her life miserable, as she can barely eat and is in constant pain from the abrupt, rapid reflex action.
Related: 10 Bizarre Conditions And Syndromes You Didn't Realize Existed
