1-Progressive Multifocal Leukoncephalopath:
Imagine you’re recovering from a heart transplant. You might feel as if you’ve been given a new lease on life. Sure, you have to take drugs that suppress your immune system so your body won’t reject the donor heart, but hey—beats the alternative, right?

Shortly after the procedure, however, you start to develop weird symptoms that you’ve never had before. You’re getting forgetful and clumsy, with lots of headaches and loss of vision. One day, you wake up and are totally unable to speak, though you can see the words you want to say just fine in your head. Welcome to progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, or PML because no way is that getting typed out again.
PML is one of those oh-so interesting diseases that specializes in kicking you when you’re down. It’s caused by the JC virus (so named after the initials of its first identified victim), which lies dormant in the body until something comes along to compromise the immune system. Organ transplants, AIDS, and even just good old-fashioned stress can all suppress immunity and give the JC virus its chance to shine.

JC “shines” by eroding the protective coating of the nerves in your brain and causing progressive deterioration that manifests as weakness in the arms and legs, memory loss, aphasia, and—wait for it—death. Here’s the fun part: according to the National Institutes of Health, “By age 10, most people have been infected with this virus.” [Emphasis added to better convey the horror.]

2-Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome:
We’ve all been there: your kid is up all night throwing up, and you know you aren’t making it to work in the morning. Sometime around hour four of your child’s extremely noisy and painful vomiting, however, you start to wonder if maybe you should talk to your pediatrician about this. By hour six, you’re in the emergency room to treat the child’s severe dehydration. The doctor treating your child guesses that it’s probably either a stomach bug or a case of food poisoning and, since everything seems okay now, you’re free to go.

Two weeks later, it happens again. And then again a month after that, followed by another bout three weeks later. This goes on for years.

“Cyclic vomiting syndrome” sounds official and science-y, but look closely at that name; it means, basically, “throws up every so often.” It just describes what’s happening without any clue to the reason why. It’s thought that CVS is linked somehow to migraines, as sufferers often have both and CVS sometimes responds to migraine medication, but mostly the official diagnosis consists of “dunno. Magic?”

Having no obvious cause might be enough to get CVS on the list of interesting diseases all by itself, but what’s really weird about the ailment is its regularity. Vomiting episodes tend to happen, not necessarily in response to certain foods or medications as with allergies, but at around the same time of day, as if the child was allergic to afternoons. Nobody knows why CVS strikes, how long it will last, or why it seems to clear up on its own over a period of months, years, or decades. We’re going with magic.

only two

3-Jumping Frenchmen of Maine:
Jumping Frenchmen syndrome was discovered among French-Canadian lumberjacks in Maine and Quebec in the 1870s, and it’s hardly been observed elsewhere, leading researchers to believe it’s probably inherited.

Most with the syndrome don’t experience any symptoms. That is, of course, until you sneak up behind the person who has it and shout something crazy like: “HIT YOUR WIFE!” Instantly, the sufferer’s arm shoots out and knocks his no doubt long-suffering wife to the floor. This is a totally involuntary reaction, as if Obi-Wan Kenobi was following these people around doing the Jedi mind trick on them all the time to lower their resistance to shouted commands.

The disorder is also characterized by an extreme startle reflex that involves jumping, hitting, or shouting. Less commonly, victims of the disorder have the incredibly irritating habit of repeating back the last thing that was said to them. Try that yourself and see how many friends it wins you.

George Miller Beard, the researcher who first described the syndrome in 1878, speculated about what could be causing the condition. About the best he came up with is that the mens’ extreme, exaggerated responses were “culturally conditioned,” which is a scientist’s way of saying “eh, they’re French. Whattya do?”

4- Parry-Romberg Syndrome:
Humans find symmetry attractive. In studies, people from every culture in the world routinely rate more symmetrical faces as more beautiful than faces with even a slight asymmetry. The reason is probably that the ability to look the same on both sides of your face signals that you’re in good health and can resist the damage caused by illness and aging.

Parry-Romberg syndrome wrecks all of that by selectively attacking one side of your face until its tissues have atrophied and withered up, leaving your face lopsided. It mostly strikes females between the ages of five and fifteen, because afflicting the half of humanity that isn’t usually judged by its looks wouldn’t be horrible enough, and scientists think it might be caused by an autoimmune disorder.

Adding to the agony of having one side of your face deflate while you’re still too young to understand why the world hates you, Parry-Romberg syndrome is often accompanied by severe pain from the forehead through the cheek and jaw. In one out of three cases, the condition worsens to the point that the sufferer can no longer open or close her jaw.

As is par for the course with humanity’s more interesting diseases, treatment options are limited and it isn’t really possible to stop the progress of the disorder, though reconstructive surgery is sometimes done after the disease has run its course. The good news is that Parry-Romberg isn’t fatal, so sufferers can expect to carry their unsightly deformity through life for a solid sixty or seventy years. Silver lining!

5-Pica:
The word “pica” is derived from the Latin name for the magpie, which is known for collecting and eating odd items. Humans with pica eat an astonishing variety of non-food substances, including:

Dirt
Rocks
Feces
Ice or frost
Paper
Glass
Mucous
Hair
As befits such a diverse list, pica isn’t caused by any single thing. The term is a blanket diagnosis for bizarre eating habits that aren’t linked to a culturally sanctioned practice such as women in west Africa eating soft stones, during pregnancy.

Pica is common among children and pregnant women, although at least one study suggests that as much as 65 percent of the population has had at least one bout with it. Sometimes it’s caused by an identifiable mineral deficiency, as with many dirt eaters who are cured with an iron supplement. Other times, as with coprophagy—the eating of feces—pica is a secondary diagnosis for mental illness.

The threat that pica poses to your health depends largely on what’s being eaten. Children often eat paint chips that are contaminated with lead, for example, and the health risks of eating feces probably go without saying. Treatment usually involves ruling out mineral deficiencies and other physical causes, at which point you’re officially crazy.

6-Foreign Accent Syndrome:(Nigerian celebrities are mainly the patients)
Okay, this one is just weird.

Picture yourself surviving a car accident with minor injuries. Maybe you banged your head against something when your Porsche flipped over one of the police cruisers that was chasing you after a botched diamond heist—whatever. When you wake up in the hospital to find one good cop offering you a cup of water and another, edgier cop who’s got nothing to lose demanding you come clean about your associates, you open your mouth to ask for a lawyer. What comes out sounds like your voice, but for some reason you seem to be mocking the police with a hilarious—and picture-perfect—foreign accent. And you can’t stop doing it, no matter how many times Bad Cop hits you with a phone book.

Foreign accent syndrome strikes unpredictably among people who’ve recently suffered brain injuries as a result of trauma or stroke. It can also come on suddenly after a bout of epileptic seizures. Nobody knows what, exactly, makes a person switch accents, and there’s no treatment of any kind.

People who develop this bizarre, semi-comic disorder have trouble expressing themselves, making and keeping friends, and not getting punched in the face for “pretending” to have caricatured racist accents


So, yeah. Interesting diseases can sometimes be real jerks, and you should probably get those headaches checked out.

Culled from:http://all-that-is-interesting.com/interesting-diseases

Pica disorder occurs most often in children and pregnant women, but it is usually temporary. Pica disorder also occurs in people who have intellectual disabilities. Click on the link below to read more about pica and the treatment for pica.
http://www.gigihealth.com/pica-disorder-are-you-suffering-from-pica/