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Imagine if you were allergic to water. Or if eating bread could make you drunk. For some, this is part of their everyday life. Today, we're discussing some very rare medical conditions. Don't miss a video! Subscribe NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss?sub_confirmation=1 About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss Facebook: https://facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Discord: https://discord.io/mentalfloss Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss 6 Super Rare Medical Conditions | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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If I said I was drunk on bread, you'd probably think I just had one too many pieces of focaccia
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But for people with auto-brewery syndrome, being drunk on bread, or any carb, is a reality
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ABS causes carbohydrates to actually ferment in the stomach, producing ethanol, the ingredient
0:15
in alcohol that makes people feel and act tipsy. So how come most of us can hit the unlimited
0:20
breadsticks at Olive Garden without staggering out like it was a three-martini lunch? Well
0:24
first of all, it's a very rare condition. A 2021 report found fewer than 100 cases reported
0:29
worldwide since 1952. But also, it takes an extremely unbalanced microbiome in your gut to
0:35
create the kind of environment that can turn carbs into ethanol. And it really is like being drunk
0:40
People with ABS who take a breathalyzer after eating carbs will fail. In fact, some people find
0:45
out they have auto-brewery syndrome when they fail a breathalyzer and know that they haven't
0:48
had any alcohol at all. So do these poor people have to do keto for the rest of their lives
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The good news is, most of the time, ABS is resolved with just one treatment. The treatment itself
0:58
depends on what microbe doctors think is causing it. An antibiotic or antifungal medication may
1:02
work. Probiotics to help balance out gut bacteria may also be prescribed. Some patients may relapse
1:08
and need another round of treatments, and some may never find the right combination of things
1:12
that works for them. Meaning a low-carb diet may be in the cards for life. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy
1:17
editor-in-chief of Mental Floss, and this is The List Show. ABS is just the first super rare
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medical condition we'll be discussing today. Let's get started. In 2008, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett starred in a David Fincher movie about a man who was
1:35
born elderly and aged backward. Maybe you've read the F. Scott Fitzgerald story it was inspired by
1:41
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Hutchinson-Guilford-Progeria Syndrome is the real-life version of this disease. In fact, it's sometimes called Benjamin Button Disease
1:50
It's not quite the same as the fictional illness, but you can see the similarities
1:53
Instead of aging completely backward, old to young, a child with HGPS ages very quickly
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The condition is caused when a specific gene makes an abnormal protein called progerin which causes cells to break down more quickly than usual Outwardly a child with HGPS has wrinkled age skin slow growth hair loss and stiff joints Inside they experience
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health issues we typically associate with older folks, bone loss, hardened arteries, cataracts
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and arthritis. Although the fictional Benjamin Button dies as an infant at the age of 85
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sadly, most children with progeria have fatal heart attacks or strokes in their teens
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Luckily, HGPS is quite rare. It only occurs in one out of four million live births
2:35
In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, when Alice eats a cake marked, eat me
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she quickly grows to be more than nine feet tall, which is how some people
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with Alice in Wonderland syndrome feel. They may also feel unusually small
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or perceive other people and objects to be larger, smaller, farther, or closer
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than they really are. One young AIWS patient commonly perceived buildings growing taller and closing in on him
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And in one very Alice-like incident, he reported that his fingers grew too big while he was trying
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to play chess. He was unable to grasp the pieces. We don't know quite what causes Alice in Wonderland
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syndrome, although we are fairly certain it's not cake. Certain cough medicines, specifically those
3:14
containing dihydrocodine or methyl ephedrine, have been reported to trigger symptoms. But according
3:19
to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, other research suggests that underlying causes
3:24
could include strokes, brain tumors, aneurysms, viral infections, epilepsy, migraines, eye diseases, and depression. Even Lyme disease and H1N1 influenza have been suggested as culprits
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In short, there's still a lot we don't know about AIWS yet, and that's largely because it's so rare
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From 1955 to 2016, only 200 cases required medical attention, though the condition might
3:47
be underdiagnosed. It's also notoriously hard to nail down because the symptoms are fleeting
3:52
as a neuroscientist and AIWS expert Mohib Kostandy describes it. The distortions typically
3:58
last for a short period of time, making it difficult to get a brain scan during the episodes
4:02
to further research what's going on. This also makes it challenging to treat. In most cases
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treatment is provided based on whatever doctors believe the underlying cause is
4:11
migraines or epilepsy for example Imagine if you could climb the Burj Khalifa jump from a plane at 25 feet drive a motorcycle off of a cliff all with no fear Okay so I did just describe Tom Cruise
4:24
but there's also a real medical condition called Orbach-Vita disease, where one of the side effects
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is the inability to feel fear. Orbach-Vita is a genetic disorder characterized by collagen
4:33
deposits and thickened skin, resulting in papules on the face. It can also cause a hardening of
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brain tissue, which is where fear comes in. Or to be more accurate, doesn't. The hardening of the
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brain tissue means that the amygdala can become calcified. Located in the medial temporal lobe
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in front of the hippocampus, the amygdala is the part of our brains that helps us process emotions
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We know that a damaged amygdala can prevent people from identifying fear in facial expressions
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They simply aren't able to recognize the emotion. But the long-term study of one patient with
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orbach vita makes some researchers think that they sometimes can't feel fear either over a period of
5:08
time researchers at the university of iowa observed an orbach vita patient identified only as sm
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despite their best efforts including exposing her to scary movies haunted houses and venomous snakes
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sm never got scared they had her journal her emotions for months and fear never entered the
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picture in her personal life sm lives in a dangerous area she's been held at knife point
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twice, gunpoint twice, and has been the victim of near-fatal domestic violence. Yet SM never
5:35
felt fearful. However, in 2013, researchers did make her feel fear by having her inhale air with
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a lot of carbon dioxide in it. This suggests that the body might deal with fear associated with
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internal and external threats differently. A total lack of fear doesn't seem to happen in every
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instance of Urbach Vita, but to be fair, we have a pretty small pool to pull from. Only 400 cases
5:55
have been reported since 1929. Not being able to feel an emotion is one thing, but not being able
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to physically feel pain is another, which is exactly what a condition called congenital
6:06
insensitivity to pain causes. It happens when people's nociceptors, the things in our nervous
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system that make us feel pain, don't work correctly or at all. It's an umbrella term for multiple
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genetic diseases and has been estimated to occur in about one out of a million people
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And while it kind of sounds like a good thing who wouldn want to skip the pain of a stubbed toe or a paper cut CIP is actually extremely dangerous Imagine not being able to feel that your appendix has burst or the chest pain that warns you
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of a heart attack. Even small things like scrapes and cuts can become fatal when infected and left untreated
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People with CIP have to be constantly vigilant for self-inflicted wounds on their tongue
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lips, eyes, ears, nose, and fingers. You know how bad it hurts when you accidentally bite your tongue or cheek, but what if
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pain didn't stop you from biting down. Some people with CIP also can't sweat, which means it's much
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easier to overheat, get heat exhaustion, or even heat stroke. A lot of things cause hives, which are
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medically known as urticaria. Allergies, medications, heat, cold, sunlight, even stress. But here's a cause you probably didn't have on your bingo card. Water. While tons of people
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experience hives for one reason or another, there are only 100 to 250 documented cases of
7:17
aquagenic urticaria in the world. As you might suspect, it makes everyday life pretty difficult
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Sweating and crying can trigger a reaction, and showering or bathing can be almost impossible
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Many people with aquagenic urticaria cut down on bathing or choose to use an alcohol-based
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cleanser instead of water. One woman suffers so severely from the condition that taking a quick
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shower causes her scalp to bleed, and even drinking water produces a burning sensation internally
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She mostly sticks to milk, but avoiding water has sometimes left her so dehydrated that it has caused other major medical concerns
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There are treatments for aquagenic urticaria, but they're all met with varying degrees of success
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And they're treatments, not cures. First, there are good old antihistamines, which are recommended for many types of allergies
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Another option is to use creams or petroleum jelly, aka Vaseline, to prevent water from touching the skin
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And finally, sometimes phototherapy using ultraviolet light can be effective. The right treatment can totally solve the issue for some patients, while nothing seems
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to work for others. So what causes it? It's so rare that it's still a bit of a mystery
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There are a few theories, including that the water is allowing some antigen on the skin
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to diffuse into the dermis, or that pressure changes are to blame
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That's it for this episode of The List Show. Got a topic you want to know more about
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Let us know in the comments, and I'll see you next time
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