Hey there and welcome to Life Noggin
It's a beautiful butterfly, and now it's a dragon!? Wow! The human body is pretty resistant. Not only is it pretty good at growing, but
if you get a cut, a bruise, or even break a bone, your body usually has a way of repairing
itself. But sometimes, the same mechanisms that keep
you healthy can mutate and cause your body to grow and develop more or less than it would
normally. Imagine that one day, you find a huge lump
on your ribcage, and, even after getting it x-rayed, you still don’t know what’s going
on. Eventually you find out that you have a rare
genetic disorder where your body becomes more and more immobile due to a dehabillitaing
amount of bone growth, to the point where you relish the escape of video games since
it’s one of the only activities where you don’t feel left out. Well that’s the life of Daniel Williams,
an 11-year old boy living in Houston, Texas. And all of this is happening because Daniel
has what’s known as “stone man syndrome”. Stone man syndrome, also known more officially
as FOP, is a disorder where tissue from your muscles, tendons, and ligaments are gradually
replaced by bone. This causes bone to form outside of your skeleton,
which can begin to limit how much you can move around. Generally, people with FOP begin to notice
it when they’re kids, with symptoms starting in their neck and shoulders, and then moving
down their body and into their limbs. For Daniel and other people with FOP, safety
is a big deal. That’s because physical trauma, even things
that would otherwise be beneficial like surgically removing the bone growth, can cause their
FOP to flare up. While there is still no cure, scientists /have/
tracked the cause for FOP back to a mutation in a specific gene in your DNA. So maybe with more research, there’s hope
for a cure in the future! Now, FOP is pretty rare, but it isn’t the
only condition that causes excessive growth in your body. There’s also neurofibromatosis, or Nf, which
has three different types, but is generally a genetic disorder that mainly affects nerve
cell tissues. It can cause tumors to grow on your nerves,
which may be benign, but can also be dangerous as they compress your nerves and other tissues. Sometimes the tumors are even cancerous. There’s no cure for Nf, but treatments can
help to control the symptoms. Unlike with FOP, sometimes it’s recommended
to remove any harmful growths through surgery. Radiation therapy is also sometimes an option. Another condition along the lines of abnormal
bodily growth is epidermodysplasia verruciformis, or EV, more commonly thought of as “tree
man syndrome”. In this extremely rare skin disease, wart-like
lesions begin to cover your body, resembling tree bark. The growths can be limited to a small cluster
of only a few warts, or expand to the point where they cover a large part of your body. There’s currently no cure. You can remove the warts surgically, though
it may only be a temporary solution, as they can sometimes come back. Any of these conditions can certainly affect
the quality of your life. Hopefully one day we can find a cure for all
of them, or at least find more effective ways to treat their symptoms. Are there any other conditions you want us
to talk about? Let me know in the comment section below! Did you know that it's possible for your hand
to have a mind of it's own!? Curious to find out more? Check out this video! Sometimes the hand will do the opposite of
what you want it to do, like closing the fridge door after you just opened it, or trying to
take off your clothes after you just put them on. As always, my name is Blocko, this has been
Life Noggin, don't forget to keep on thinking!
