Since the dawn of time, a problem has haunted a section of mankind. They just can’t stop their hair from falling out. With the hair loss industry estimated to be worth almost $3 billion, it is little wonder that many people have invented weird and wonderful treatments for this perpetual problem.

From the ancient Egyptians to modern man, many have tried and failed to stem the ravages of time and keep the hair on their heads. Maybe these bizarre cures didn’t work, but you have to admit they were creative.

10 Animal Fats

Man’s seemingly futile quest to retain a full head of hair isn’t a new phenomenon. Recorded evidence of baldness treatments extends all the way back to ancient Egypt. For Egyptians, appearance indicated a person’s status, role in society, or level of political influence. It’s no wonder that men who lost their hair would try anything to get it back.

The Edwin Smith Papyrus, the oldest-known surgical treatise on trauma, contains an ancient hair loss remedy. The papyrus recommends treating baldness by applying a balm consisting of the mixed fats of lion, hippo, crocodile, cat, serpent, and ibex. Although this may sound completely unpalatable to people today, it illustrates clearly how much Egyptians valued their hair.^[1]

9 Xervac

Balding men in 1930s America needed to look no further then the Crosley Corporation’s Xervac. Inventor Dr. Andre Cueto had spent several years researching the problem of baldness and came to the conclusion that hair fell out due to a reduction in blood flow to the scalp.^[2]

A user of the Xervac device would place a bicycle-style helmet on his head. This was attached by a hose to a large device on the floor. The Xervac then alternated cycles of suction and pressure to increase blood flow to the scalp. Supposedly, this process would lead to the growth of new hair.

As this device is no longer in use, we can conclude that it must have been just a load of hot air!

8 Pigeon Droppings

Hippocrates is often considered to be the father of modern medicine. His name is associated with the Hippocratic Oath, which urges physicians to “do no harm.” While his legacy lives on, his cure for baldness does not.

Plagued by baldness himself, Hippocrates recommended a treatment consisting of pigeon droppings, opium, beetroot, horseradish, and spices to cure hair loss. Although this had to smell funky, it would have done little to help the “follicly challenged” patients under his care.

Hippocrates is still remembered in the pursuit of a full head of hair. In a man with male pattern baldness, the rim of permanent hair around the back and sides of the head, which is used for hair transplants, is known as the “Hippocratic wreath.”^[3]

7 A Laurel Wreath

One of the most influential figures in world history, Julius Caesar (whose name ironically translates as “abundant hair”) was embarrassed by his baldness. Roman biographer Suetonius reported that Caesar’s baldness was “a disfigurement which troubled him greatly since he found that it was often the subject of the gibes of his detractors.”^[4]

A hairless head was regarded as ugly in Roman times. The poet Ovid wrote: “Ugly are hornless bulls, a field without grass is an eyesore, so is a tree without leaves, so is a head without hair.”

Caesar’s lover, Cleopatra, devised a remedy of ground mice and horse teeth. When that failed to work, Caesar began wearing a laurel wreath to hide his baldness. The wreath had been awarded to him for his many battlefield victories. Caesar’s technique was used in later years by great performer Elton John, who used elaborate and unusual hats to cover his baldness onstage.

6 Bull Semen

This cure is a load of BS—bull semen, that is.

Used in salons across the US and UK, bull semen is touted as a potential treatment for hair loss. According to this theory, bull semen is incredibly rich in protein (yuck) which will help to feed and stimulate hair growth.^[5] We can only speculate as to who first tried this or why, but it’s probably best to “moove” on to the next cure before we throw up!

5 Thermocap

The Thermocap, another wacky invention to help balding men, was marketed by New York’s Allied Merke Institute in the 1920s. Based on a series of experiments by French scientists, the institute claimed that hair follicles did not die but instead lay dormant, waiting to be restimulated.

The bald and somewhat gullible user would wear the cap for 15 minutes a day to allow the device’s blue light to stimulate new hair growth.^[6]

4 Headstands

In yoga, the headstand is known as the king of all poses due to the wide number of benefits. One is the supposed prevention of hair loss. The theory behind this is similar to that of the Xervac. By inverting the body, yogis believe that there will be an increase in blood flow to the scalp, which prevents hair loss.^[7]

For those unable (or unwilling) to do a headstand, many companies now offer inversion tables. These devices allow you to suspend yourself upside down for extended periods of time. If your world has been turned upside down by baldness, this might be the cure to make things right.

3 Hot Sauce

Although it’s too eye-watering for most, this remedy does at least have a toehold in scientific fact. In a 2003 paper published in the Korean Journal of Dermatology, scientists describe how capsaicin (the active ingredient in chili peppers) helped to regrow hair at a faster rate on mice.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence to suggest that this works on humans.^[8] If you are tempted to give it a go, please be careful that the hot sauce doesn’t get in your eyes!

2 Cow Urine

In traditional Indian medicine, cow urine is still used today to treat a wide range of conditions.

Known as gomutra, cow urine is purported to be effective in the treatment of hair loss. For maximum effect, the urine should be from a virgin cow and is supposed to be collected and drunk before sunrise. (Other doctors recommend against drinking urine as it can cause illness, rash, or both in humans.)^[9]

Don’t have access to a nearby cow? Fear not. In 2009, an Indian company released a soft drink containing 5 percent cow urine.

1 Castration

Our dear friend Hippocrates first reported this final cure for baldness—castration. His theory began when he noticed that eunuchs (castrated men) never lost their hair.^[10]

Unwilling to test this idea himself, Hippocrates stuck to pigeon droppings. However, a 1960 paper backed up Hippocrates’s theory when it found no development of male pattern baldness in people who had undergone castration. A hair “cut” too far, some might think!

There are different kinds of quack doctors. Some are just out to make a quick buck and prey on the sick, while others really, truly believe that they’ve found the next miracle cure or that they’re going to heal all the ills that plague mankind. But both kinds of quacks would be nothing without the people who believed them.

10 Louis XIV And The Royal Touch

There’s a lot of pressure and responsibility that goes along with being the monarch, and quite a few monarchs have been said to possess the “royal touch” and the capability to heal illnesses—especially scrofula, a type of tuberculosis. The idea started with England’s Edward the Confessor during his rule, which ended in 1066. Even Henry VIII was said to have the touch, which he passed along to ill subjects in the form of a protective coin that they could wear around their necks.

Some monarchs pushed the royal touch more than others. France’s Louis XIV saw around 3,000 people during his coronation alone, all waiting to be saved and cured by the touch of the king. Over the course of his reign, he was said to have touched, and perhaps healed, around 350,000 people.

The gift was said to be passed on by a particular oil by which the new king was consecrated. It had been handed down from king to king and had originally been brought to Earth by a dove that appeared at the 496 baptism of King Clovis. Kept in Reims Cathedral for hundreds of years, it was said to be the heaven-sent oil that bestowed healing powers on the kings.

Some monarchs discouraged it, with some—like William III—saying that good sense would most likely be more useful than a king’s touch. Eventually, it fell out of favor, and that happened largely with Louis XIV. The fate of the royal touch was helped along by an observation by Voltaire, who had stated that if he really did have the ability to cure scrofula by the touch, he certainly should have cured his mistress, who instead ultimately died from it.

9 Dr. Adolf Fritz, Ghost Surgeon

According to the story, Dr. Adolf Fritz was a German medic who died during World War I. Not content to leave his life’s work unfinished, he began possessing the bodies of Brazilian men, turning them not exactly into surgeons, but into faith healers.

His first occupation was of Ze Arigo, who acted as a vessel for the German doctor until 1971. Part of his routine was that he would visit with an ill person, and then write out a cryptic prescription for whatever it was that was ailing them. Conveniently, the only person who was able to read his handwriting was his brother, who also conveniently happened to be a pharmacist. Later, he moved on to psychic surgery, which he performed without cutting into the patient, removing tumors and such from bodies without leaving a mark on them.

Ze Arigo died in 1971, but Dr. Fritz showed up in a couple more bodies. Currently, he’s inhabiting Rubens Farias Jr., and he’s moving on from just plain psychic surgery to astral healing and a sort of medicine that treats a spiritual “body” in order to cure the physical one.

In 1997, members of the Heart Disease Research Foundation visited Farias and witnessed him in action. Diagnosis took only a few seconds, and most patients were given a shot containing an unidentified brown liquid, usually given around the area of the complaint. Occasionally, he actually performed a brand of surgery, usually assisted by actual, qualified medical personnel.

He ended up getting attention from the police in 1999, and when his office was raided, it was found that in addition to a stash of rather conventional medicines he was giving away without a license, he also had an armed guard with an illegal weapon, and plenty of allegations of fraud—including one from the illegally armed guard, swearing that people had died in his custody before being taken to a more traditional hospital.

Needless to say, no real evidence of an actual World War I surgeon named Dr. Fritz has ever surfaced, either.

8 Johanna Brandt’s Grape Cure

According to Johanna Brandt’s 1925 book, The Grape Cure, her method and medicine is mankind’s only hope to completely overcome cancer. She stresses that her methods are great as preventatives as well, and that following her instructions will help keep people cancer-free and even destroy cancer.

Her instructions are fairly simple. You have to prepare the body, first, with two or three days of fasting, drinking lots of water, and a few warm-water-and-lemon-juice enemas. All that means is the grapes will have a clean slate on which to start working their magic. After that, you have a few glasses of water, and your first grapes-only meal. Then you follow it with grapes-only meals every two hours from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM and repeat for a week or two.

A week or two may also be a month. Her directions aren’t really all that specific, but she is incredibly specific about the idea that you only eat grapes. You can eat all the different parts of grapes, and all the different colors of grapes (presumably, so you don’t get sick of eating grapes), but she definitely wants you to eat only grapes. At the very least, you should be eating 0.5 kilograms (1 lb) of grapes every day and 2 kilograms (4 lb) at the most. If you start to feel upset or resentful at the mere mention of grapes, skip a few meals, because in order to work best, you have to embrace and enjoy the grapes.

Needless to say, the American Cancer Society says that while grapes are, in fact, good for you, they’re not going to be curing cancer by themselves any time soon.

7 Peter Mandel And Colorpuncture

In the 1960s, Peter Mandel developed a new process of healing that balanced acupuncture, holistic healing and spirituality. He believed that the cause of sickness was an imbalance in the unconscious mind and the physical body, and that everything could be brought back to harmony with something he called colorpuncture, or acu-light therapy.

Colorpuncture is exactly what it sounds like. The therapy uses all the points of acupuncture, but applies different lights with different color frequencies to those points. According to Mandel, the application of color to the right places on the body helps to fix the relationship between the soul and the body, easing the stress between the two that is ultimately making the person ill. Light is applied to the skin using an “acu-light wand,” which not only applies the light but focuses it as well.

And, in order to ensure other parts of the body are in harmony with the treatment, practitioners also use things like healing crystals and sound therapy along with the colorpuncture. Mandel’s US Esogetic Colorpuncture Institute claims success in treating migraines, sleep disorders, respiratory disorders, and learning disorders in children.

6 Charles Baunscheidt And Baunscheidtism

On page 33 of his book on Baunscheidtism, 1800s doctor Charles Baunscheidt tells his reader that they’re on the cusp of numerous medical breakthroughs, all stemming from the realization that bloodletting probably isn’t the way to go about curing disease and illness. He hopes that soon, the world will stop the practice altogether, because he has something much, much better in mind—the Lebenswecker.

Also called the Resuscitator, Baunscheidt’s medical tools are needles—very, very sharp needles. Poking the skin with the needles allows the bad stuff that’s making a person sick to drain away in a method that is much safer than bloodletting, according to Baunscheidt. Baunscheidt’s methods were incredibly popular, beginning with his first designs of the tool that he perfected in 1865. It was so popular, in fact, that the company that continued to produce the Lebensweckers only stopped doing so when it was bombed by Allied forces in 1944.

Later, Baunscheidt would go on to add the use of oils to his practice, saying that application of his secret concoction to the skin would help draw out the toxins faster. The more irritated the skin was in this secondary source of trauma, the more distracted the body would get by it and the faster the original illness would drain away. He had quite the list of illnesses and troubles it was supposed to cure, ranging from baldness to whooping cough to a variety of mental illnesses.

5 James Morison And The Vegetable Universal Pills

When it comes to the world of medicine, James Morison is an incredibly interesting and rather two-sided character. On one hand, he was pretty revolutionary in his thinking. He believed that illnesses in the body were ultimately caused by something in the blood, and that the mind and body were linked in both health and sickness. On the other hand, he derided doctors, saying that prescribing too much medication to their patients was nothing short of a criminal act. He also thought that he had found the perfect cure for everything—his miracle Vegetable Universal Pills.

Originally a businessman, he started his campaign in 1825. He was so interested in just helping people that he originally gave his pills away; when no one was taking it seriously, he decided to charge for them. Five years later, he was making what today would be approximately $4 million a year; he eventually built the British College of Health to sell the pills from.

Throughout the decade, Morison wasn’t without his problems. He was confronted a few times with lawsuits claiming that overdosing on his pills had caused more than a few deaths, but it wasn’t long before he was over that little setback, with his pills clearly advertised and labeled as only the real thing. According to the claims, they were good for curing anything from cholera to jaundice to liver ailments. They could even relieve limb and joint pain and treat snakebites.

Morison died in 1840, and his son was content at that point to just let the company run itself. The pills themselves went through a few different variations, and by the 1900s it was found that they actually contained ingredients like myrrh, aloe, and rhubarb.

4 William Bates And Sun Gazing

When it comes to remembering little bits of knowledge that we first learn when we’re young, one of those is invariably something about not staring at the Sun because it’ll hurt your eyes. That’s the exact opposite of the instructions of ophthalmologist William Bates.

According to Bates’s turn-of-the-century techniques, looking directly at the Sun was precisely how you kept your eyes healthy and your vision sharp. He recommended regular sun gazing, and specified some eye exercises that you could do while you were staring at the Sun. He suggested circling the Sun with your eyes, then moving them in a figure eight pattern in order to strengthen your eye muscles and your vision. The point was that the light waves from the sun were necessary to keep your body and your eyes functioning at a healthy level, and they needed to be exposed to the full spectrum of light to keep vision from getting weak.

The Bates Method is still around, too—although now, the suggested technique is called “sunning,” and it involves keeping your eyes closed.

3 Royal Rife And His Cancer Zapper

There are two different points of view when it comes to the work of Royal Rife. Some people insist that he’s an absolute and outright fraud, while others insist that he was unfairly targeted by major medical organizations and his works shut down, because they didn’t really want the cure to cancer to get out.

Working in the 1930s, Royal Raymond Rife (alternately an optics engineer, a chauffeur, and a mechanic) created a microscope with a massive rate of magnification. (He also claimed he had a degree from Georgia Tech, but Georgia Tech has denied that.) The microscope allowed him to see all the germs and bacteria that he said were responsible for human illness, and because it’s no good having that knowledge if you can’t do something about it, he built a beam ray that he claimed could target and destroy the microbes that were causing illness. He started using the ray on patients in exchange for donations to his work, but his inventions were ultimately confiscated by the FDA.

Rife claimed that while he had been conducting his trials, he had successfully cured 15 cancer patients that had otherwise been told their cancers were untreatable. After 60 days with his beam therapy, they were cured.

The dismissal of his findings and the ultimate suppression of his work was the stuff that conspiracy theorists love. Even today, there are plenty of theories about how and why Rife’s work was shut down by the so-called “medical mafia,” who orchestrated a downfall steeped in bribes and betrayals, ultimately leading to the end of his medical career, even though there are still a handful of his devoted followers trying to resurrect his methods.

2 Ryke Geerd Hamer And German New Medicine

No one can deny that Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer suffered a terrible tragedy when his 17-year-old son was shot and murdered while on holiday. That moment was the turning point not only in Hamer’s life, but also in his career; it wasn’t long after his son’s death that he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

And he realized that the two were invariably linked.

Hamer claims to have examined the lives of thousands and thousands of cancer patients, and he kept finding the same thing over and over—that their cancer diagnosis came after an incredibly traumatic event. He concluded that shock and surprise were the main causes of cancer, and that the development of the disease was the body’s response to the situation.

He calls this response the Meaningful Special Biological Program(MSBP), and the event that causes is it is the Dirk Hamer Syndrome (DHS), after his son. From the moment of the DHS, it’s possible that the outcome is eventually cancer. Oftentimes, the part of the body impacted will have something to do with what the crisis was—a mother worrying about her child will develop breast cancer, for instance.

In response, he developed something he called German New Medicine, and he says that not only is it based on common sense, but it’s pretty much the exact opposite of what regular doctors will have you doing. Instead of the traditional things like chemotherapy and radiation, the first step in recovery is therapy that reduces the original stress that started the process, thereby reversing it.

1 Norman Baker And The Crescent Hotel

Norman Baker was pretty prolific in his endeavors. He ran for the US Senate and for governor of Iowa, he was a popular radio host, organizer of a vaudeville troupe and magic show, a machinist, a high school dropout and, if his claims were to be believed, the man who discovered a cure for cancer.

Baker had the ear of an incredible portion of the country, as his anti-Catholic, anti-Semite, Republican, and small-town supporter radio show could often be heard across the country. When Herbert Hoover was elected president, Baker even got an invitation to meet with him. It was in 1929, though, that he slammed the American Medical Association and declared that he was the one that could cure cancer. Along the way, he took on a whole host of subjects that he said were causing health problems for people, including fluoride in the water and aluminum pots.

In 1930, his vaudeville showmanship came in handy when he staged a massive show in front of 17,000 people to demonstrate that he could, in fact, cure cancer. In front of the witnesses, his assisting medical team removed part of a patient’s skull, performed the magical cure, and declared him cancer-free. Two years later, he was on trial for peddling a cancer cure that was nothing more than a concoction of water, watermelon seeds, clover, and corn silk.

Eventually shut down by the Federal Radio Commission, Baker made his way to the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and promptly painted the entire Victorian mansion purple, black, orange, yellow, and red, turning it into a sort of holistic healing retreat. It was while he was selling his miracle cures at the Crescent Hotel that he got in trouble for mail fraud and was eventually shut down for good.

While modern medicine is borderline miraculous, there are a number of downright scary disorders that we’ve yet to find a cure for. Unlike other incurable diseases, such as the common cold, these conditions aren’t exactly easy to live with — many of them can even result in individuals being ostracized.

10. Berardinelli-Seip Congenital Lipodystrophy

Occurring in every one out of about 10 million births, Berardinelli-Seip congenital lipodystrophy (BSCL) is a condition marked by a severe lack of fat tissue in the body, with fats being stored in unlikely places around the body such as the liver and muscles. Because of these odd symptoms, patients with BSCL have a rather distinctive look and appear very muscular, almost superhero-like. They also tend to have prominent facial bones and enlarged genitalia.

In one of the two known types of BSCL, medical researchers have also found a mild to moderate intellectual disability — but that’s far from being the patients’ biggest concern. The highly unusual handling and depositing of fat leads to serious problems, such as high levels of fats circulating in the bloodstream and insulin resistance, while the accumulation of fats in the liver or heart can lead to severe damage of both organs and even sudden death. Apart from drugs normally used for patients with hyperglycemia, BSCL patients have to maintain a strict diet in order to keep their fat and carbohydrate intake to a minimum, while also avoiding total proteins and trans fats.

9. Leukodystrophies, or Benjamin Button Syndrome

A somewhat similar condition was depicted in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and the subsequent movie adaptation, but the actual disease is quite a bit different, albeit just as scary. Because of an improper growth of myelin (the brain’s white matter) people suffering from leukodystrophies will experience a gradual decline in development, essentially going from a normal adult to having the thought process of a toddler.

Affecting about one in a few thousand individuals, most cases of leukodystrophies are genetic in nature and also share a number of common features with the less rare multiple sclerosis, which is also caused by the loss of white matter from the brain. The more disturbing types of leukodystrophies are not inherited but may arise spontaneously, even after the individual in question has been living a normal and healthy life into adulthood. Around forty rare genetic disorders comprise leukodystrophies, all of them having mostly similar symptoms. Treatment is usually limited to symptom management.

8. RPI Deficiency, the World’s Rarest Disease

With a single patient suffering from it in all known history, RPI deficiency may well be the rarest disease in the world, although it shares a number of similarities with the aforementioned leukodystrophies. Caused by a low production of the Ribose 5 Phosphate Isomerase (RPI) enzyme, which is pretty much in charge of your body’s metabolism, the disorder consists of a number of mutations and a range of symptoms that aren’t found together in any other disease.

The only known patient to have it was born in 1984 and over the years developed psychomotor retardation, epilepsy, optic atrophy and extensive abnormalities of his brain’s white matter. Despite extensive investigations and research over the years, physicians are yet to either find a cure or even give a prognosis, especially since no other patient is known to exist on the planet.

7. Lesch–Nyhan Syndrome, or Self-Cannibalism

Affecting one in over 300,000 individuals, Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (LNS) is a rare disorder which is also caused by a deficiency of a metabolism enzyme, but with a different and horrifying symptom. Apart from delayed overall growth, nervous system impairment, testicular atrophy, kidney damage and sometimes acute inflammatory arthritis, most LNS patients tend to injure themselves via biting. Without outside help some of them can go as far as literally biting themselves to death, which is why most LNS patients are kept in restraints for most of their short lives. There are even some cases in which their front teeth are extracted in order to keep them from biting themselves.

Despite this atrocious symptom, LNS usually kills via kidney failure, and patients have a two decade prognosis at best. The treatment is either symptomatic or experimental, with no full-on cure existing at the moment. The only good news about the disease is the fact that women are mostly devoid of symptoms and are just carriers.

6. Moebius Syndrome

The rare Moebius syndrome is characterized by complete facial paralysis. It seems that only up to 20 individuals in 20 million births suffer from this congenital neurological disorder, and those who do may also exhibit limb abnormalities (such as missing fingers) and corneal erosion because of their limited ability to blink.

Since facial expressions and smiles are an important part of social interaction, Moebius syndrome patients are erroneously stereotyped as being mentally impaired because of their motionless face and frequent drooling. Most cases don’t appear to be genetic and usually happen after traumatic pregnancies or after the use of certain drugs by the mother, such as cocaine or abortion inducing substances. While therapy can improve motor skills and coordination over the years, and eye drops can battle the implications of impaired blinking, the only so-called cure for the lack of facial expressions is via smile reconstruction surgery.

5. Prosopagnosia, or Face Blindess

Prosopagnosic people are probably the most misunderstood people on this list, and that’s because their condition is hard to grasp from the outside. In short, people with prosopagnosia find it difficult or downright impossible to remember faces, even their own. Some go as far as making funny faces when standing in front of a mirror in a crowded restroom just so they can see which ones they are. They’re not technically face blind, as they can detect faces as clearly as any other human, but their brains can’t memorize what they see.

While you would think the biggest problem with this condition would be following a movie plot, the sadder truth is the fact that most prosopagnosics are ostracized by people who are offended that they aren’t recognized. Since there’s no long-lasting therapy that can work with this disorder, most patients learn to cope with prosopagnosia by using audio and other visual clues to recognize friends, family and co-workers.

4. Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progresiva, or Stone Man Syndrome

Yet another cruel genetic disease, fybrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) is an odd condition in which most or even all of a person’s muscle tissue, tendons and ligaments become ossified over time. The only moving body parts that don’t turn into bone are the cardiac muscle, the diaphragm, the tongue, the extra-ocular muscles and smooth muscle tissue, essentially transforming the person into a living statue.

Since the extra bones appearing on the body of a FOP patient are formed across joints it can severely restrict movement down to the inability to fully open their mouths, thus causing difficulty in speaking and eating. If that doesn’t sound bad enough, any physical trauma — including attempts to surgically remove the extra bone — are bound to trigger muscle swelling in the area, which in turn may cause more bone growth. While rather gruesome in both appearance and consequences, FOP is very rare, with the condition occurring in about one in two million newborns and only a few hundred cases having been confirmed by modern medicine.

3. Harlequin-type Ichthyosis

Harlequin-type ichthyosis is a genetic disorder that affects just the skin of the patient, albeit in a unique and macabre way. Babies born with this condition have very hard and thick skin that forms large, diamond-shaped plates separated by deep fissures. The shape of the eyes, nose, mouth and ears are also distinctive.

While extremely rare, harlequin-type ichthyosis has been known since at least the mid-18^th century, when a case was described in the diary of a cleric from South Carolina. Until just a few years ago the condition was almost always fatal, since the characteristics of the patients’ skin makes them highly susceptible to infections and dehydration, and also make it hard to regulate body temperature or breathe properly. With recent medical improvements the number of survivors of this severe disorder is steadily increasing, but there’s still no absolute cure for it.

2. Visual Release Hallucinations, or Charles Bonnet Syndrome

Although it appears in people who are otherwise mentally healthy, Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS) can probably make someone feel like they’re crazy or constantly drugged. In short, patients with CBS can experience rather vivid and complex visual hallucinations, despite the fact that all of them suffer from partial or severe visual impairment due to old age or certain diseases such as diabetes or glaucoma. Obviously, seeing things that couldn’t possibly be there, such as mythological creatures or cartoon characters, does little to improve the mental condition of sufferers, especially since most fear they may have a brain-related disease such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

Even though there’s a rather high rate of non-reporting of this disorder, it appears that it has a high prevalence among older adults that have started experiencing significant blindness, with certain studies reporting anywhere between 10 and 40 percent of nearly blind and old patients suffer from CBS. Fortunately, unlike the other conditions on this list, CBS symptoms will simply disappear on their own after one or two years at most, or once the brain has started to adjust to the patient’s loss of vision.

1. Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome

Cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS) is a medical condition that’s bound to completely disrupt the normal life of any otherwise health individual, as its symptoms mainly consist of intense and recurring attacks of nausea and vomiting for no apparent reason. Corroborated with headaches and abdominal pain, the life-disrupting episodes can take hours or even several days, with the sufferers sometimes requiring medical treatment in the ER.

Because of the severe and cyclic nature of nausea and vomiting attacks, CVS patients have a much higher chance of developing a number of other medical complications, such as dehydration, inflammation of the esophagus, tooth decay and even a life-threatening tear of the esophagus. While there’s no known remedy for CVS, there are a number of treatments which may stop or prevent a vomiting attack, or relieve associated symptoms. Currently, it’s known that about three in 100,000 births are diagnosed with the condition, and it seems that even Charles Darwin may have suffered from it.