There are tons of weird health conditions out there, and many of them sound too weird to be anything but the invention of a bad science fiction writer.
- Alien Hand Syndrome. This condition occurs after stroke, and it’s when two parts of the brain break from the part of your brain that controls voluntary movement. This means one hand may do things while the other hand is trying to accomplish another task. It’ll knock food out of your hand or unbutton your clothes. There isn’t any treatment for it right now.
- Synesthesia. You may have heard of this one, actually. It’s when experiencing one sense stimulates another sense involuntarily. For example, some people may “see” music, meaning that certain music will make them see certain colors. It is not known to have any other effects biologically.
- Body integrity identity disorder. This is a disorder in which someone believes that some part of their body doesn’t or shouldn’t belong to them, and that they would feel much better without it. This sometimes causes people to insist the body part in question be amputated, and if doctors refuse to do it for them, sometimes they’ll just do it themselves. There isn’t any treatment except psychotherapy.
- Spontaneous human combustion. More than just a phenomenon from cult films about rock ‘n’ roll, this appears to actually have happened several times over the past hundreds of years. Of course, it’s not necessarily spontaneous, since there always ends up being a cause, but those causes could be strange, like an item of clothing catching fire or gases from autopsies causing small explosions.
