Halloween Horrors; Scary Symptoms

Halloween Horrors

Many creepy characters, such as Vampires and Werewolves, are actually based on some scary symptoms and diseases founded in medicine...

Edward Cullen is not accurate – ‘Vampire disease’ medical term = Porphyria. This is where a sufferer will experience an extreme sensitivity to light. Gruesome facial disfigurement can be as a result of exposure to the ultraviolet rays in sunlight. With exposure to sunlight,  A sufferer’s ears or nose can be literally  ‘eaten away’,blisters cover the skin, their lips will turn red and burn until they peel back from the gums which in turn will recede and show their teeth in a weird, fang like way. They do not sparkle in the sun…

& Jacob isn’t either – Hypertrichosis / Ambras syndrome is also known as ‘Werewolf Syndrome’ is when there is an abnormal amount of hair growth on the body. It affects both males and females. There are only 50 known cases and even laser surgery can’t cure it.

Other Awful afflictions…

You’re a Zombie?  Well sort of…Cotard's Syndrome, also known as ‘walking corpse syndrome’, is a mental illness where a person believes they are dead.  Symptoms range from: feeling like they have lost a vital organ /all their blood is missing to more severe cases whereby they think ‘they can smell their own flesh rotting’. Some suffers have been known to feel ‘immortal’ and, because of this, they try to test themselves with suicidal acts.

Jersey Shore – its just bad.People who watch it have issues but this brings me to Rabies (you'll understand the link when you see the symptoms). A bite from an infected dog is the main cause of rabies in humans. Symptoms are quite disturbing and include: hyper-sexuality, frothing of the mouth, sensitivity to light, desire to bite and excitability (see it sounds like Jersey Shore). Unfortunately, if you start getting these symptoms, the outcome is death within days.

Elephantiasis – also called Lymphatic Filariasis (LF) is a horrible swelling of the limbs caused by parasitic worms. There are over 1oomillion sufferers have immense trouble participating in normal day-to-day tasks due to the large tumour like growths. Luckily it is easily curable and companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Merck and Co have donated drugs to cure it for free and, according to Dr Mwele Malecela, chairman of the Global Programme to Eliminate LF , ‘it should be wiped out by 2020’.

Old Child -Progeria - also known as 'Hutchinson Gilford Progeria syndrome' is an extremely rare disease which causes rapid premature aging in young children.It currently only affects around 40.The life expectancy for a sufferer of Progeria is only 13-20 years.

What the Smurf ? Blue skin disorder is pretty much self-explanatory. Luckily It doesn’t affect your health just your appearance; you’ll look like you just washed up on an ice burg.

 The Fugate Family, also known as the ‘blue people’, lived in Kentucky in aptly named ‘Troublesome creek’. Even though the gene was hereditary, passed on from generation to generation, they still had a big family. Now I’m jealous because I’ve bought a big tub of Snazaroo in blue to dress up at Halloween and it doesn’t work well with me; at least they can dress up easily like a Na’vi!