Mr Perry, 59, can eat whatever he likes - including unlimited pies,
burgers and desserts - and never get fat. He cannot put on
weight because of a condition called lipodystrophy that
makes his body rapidly burn fat.
He used to be a chubby child, but at age 12 the fat dropped off
"almost over night". He initially tried to eat more to gain weight,
but it had no effect. Mr Perry, of Ilford in Essex, endured a decade
of tests before the illness was diagnosed. It finally emerged that his
body produces six times the normal level of insulin. Doctors have admitted
that the condition would be a "slimmer's dream".
The Man Who Doesn't Feel Cold
Dutchman Wim Hof, also known as the Iceman, is the man that
swam under ice, and stood in bins filled with ice. He climbed the
Mt. Blanc in shorts in the icy cold, harvested world records and
always stands for new challenges.
Scientists can't really explain it, but the 48-year-old Dutchman is
able to withstand, and even thrive, in temperatures that
could be fatal to the average person.
The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep:
stayed awake 24 hours a day for years
Rhett Lamb is often cranky like any other 3-year-old toddler,
but there's one thing that makes him completely different: he
has a rare medical condition in which he can't sleep a wink.
Rhett is awake nearly 24 hours a day, and his condition has baffled
his parents and doctors for years. They took clock shifts watching
his every sleep-deprived mood to determine what ailed the young boy.
After a number of conflicting opinions, Shannon and David Lamb
finally learned what was wrong with their child: Doctors diagnosed Rhett
with an extremely rare condition called chiari malformation.
"The brain literally is squeezed into the spinal column.
What happens is you get compression, squeezing, strangulating of
the brain stem, which has all the vital functions that control sleep,
speech, our cranial nerves, our circulatory system, even
our breathing system," Savard said.
The Woman Who Can't Forget
That's the story of AJ, an extraordinary 40-year-old
married woman who remembers everything.
McGaugh and fellow UCI researchers Larry Cahill and
Elizabeth Parker have been studying the extraordinary case
of a person who has "nonstop, uncontrollable and automatic"
memory of her personal history and countless public events.
If you randomly pick a date from the past 25 years and ask
her about it, she'll usually provide elaborate, verifiable details
about what happened to her that day and if there were any
significant news events on topics that interested her. She usually
also recalls what day of the week it was and what the weather was like.
The 40-year-old woman, who was given the code name AJ
to protect her privacy, is so unusual that UCI coined a name for
her condition in a recent issue of the journal
Neurocase: hyperthymestic syndrome.
The Girl Who Eats Only Tic Tacs
Meet Natalie Cooper, a 17-year-old teenager who has
a mystery illness that makes her sick every time she eats anything.
Well, almost anything. She can eat one thing that doesn't
make her sick: Tic tac mint!
For reasons that doctors are unable to explain, Tic tacs are the
only thing she can stomach, meaning she has to get the rest of
her sustenance from a specially formulated feed through a tube.
The Musician Who Can't Stop Hiccupping
Chris Sands, 24, from Lincoln, hiccups as often as every two seconds -
and sometimes even when he is asleep. He has tried a variety of cures,
including hypnosis and yoga, but nothing has worked. Mr Sands
thinks his problem stems from an acid reflux condition caused by
a damaged valve in his stomach. "If the acid levels are severe
enough they are going to do keyhole surgery and grab part of my
stomach and wrap it around the valve to tighten it," he said.
Mr Sands, who is a backing singer in the group Ebullient, said
the condition has hampered his career as he has only been able
to perform four times. In the next couple of weeks --
as of the day of the report--, doctors at Nottingham's Queen's
Medical Centre will put a tube into his stomach to monitor acid levels
and decide if keyhole surgery is possible.
The Girl That Collapses Every Time She Laughs
