Our brains will make the worst jokes to us. They always try to explain and classify stimuli from the outside world. Sometimes they perceive threats from the weakest information collected by the body and the environment. Occasionally, they are overactive and cause the most serious diseases, such as hallucinations, epilepsy, paralysis, and coma, even if the body does not have any physical problems.
This is the area that Irish neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan has been studying for many years. She lives in London and specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of intractable diseases, such as patients with epileptic seizures, but they do not necessarily suffer from epilepsy. Her task is to expose the public’s misunderstanding of psychosomatic illnesses (note: psychosomatic illnesses refer to diseases that are caused by psychosocial factors but mainly manifested by physical symptoms).
For example, people will think that the psychosomatic disease is not serious, or not at all, or even pretending to be. O’Sullivan will use some creepy stories to lead us to explore those dissociative disorders (dissociative disorders, Note: Dissociative disorders refer to the disintegration of memory, self-awareness, or cognitive functions. The cause is usually extreme People who cannot live on their own due to high stress or extreme trauma).
O’Sullivan and Oliver Sacks are both extremely talented writers. From her research cases, we can easily appreciate her sympathy for patients. In her new book «The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness«, O’Sullivan travelled around the world to investigate a series of strange and interesting diseases, and more importantly, they are all highly contagious.
In Sweden, a girl became listless, and hundreds of other children fell into a similar coma. A teenager in Nicaragua saw a scary little man wearing a hat, and dozens of other children in the school began to see the same ghost. Dozens of American diplomats in embassies around the world claimed that they all suffered from similar illnesses, such as headaches, fatigue, and memory loss, but there was no evidence that they had physical problems.
O’Sullivan said that psychosomatic diseases are far more common than we thought, but few people admit that they have this disease. She explained that, in fact, “not accepting the diagnosis will worsen the condition, and then seek medical advice and keep doing tests, hoping to get another diagnosis, even if it’s not their true cause at all. The result is that you His life has become a mess.»
I interviewed O’Sullivan at her home in London to discuss these mysterious diseases and medical diagnoses.
- You mentioned a very strange disease. In Sweden, hundreds of children fell into a coma and became bedridden. What did you find when you visited these girls?
I visited two little girls, one was 10 years old and the other was 11 years old. The 10-year-old girl has been in this strange state of coma for a year and a half, and her sister started appearing 6 months ago. The scene at the time was shocking. When we walked into my sister’s room, she didn’t react at all. Although she looked like a healthy person, when her father tried to lift her up, she was as soft as a rag doll. No matter what happens, she will never open her eyes, and she has been like this for the past year and a half. Her parents used a straw to feed her liquid food to sustain her life.
- This is called «resignation syndrome«.
When this phenomenon first appeared, people thought that children had become indifferent, because they slowly lost interest in the world and gradually fell into a state where they were completely unable to communicate. This disease has appeared in Sweden since the beginning of the 21st century, and it has occurred even now. The most amazing thing is that these are not ordinary children. The patients all come from families seeking asylum in Sweden, and when they may be expelled from Sweden, they will have Survival Survival Syndrome. Many of them come from the republics of the former Soviet Union, or from small groups with particularly difficult lives, such as the Yazidi. They may have come to Sweden to escape some terrible things in their homeland. But the two children I met came to Sweden when they were 2 years old. They are now 10 and 11 years old, so this disease must have something to do with their lives in Sweden.
- You also saw the doctor who treated them all the time. What did the doctor say?
When I talked to the doctor who received me, I wanted to talk about the obvious connection between the children’s loss of hope and the appearance of symptoms, but she was not very happy to talk about this topic. On the contrary, she hoped that my neuroscientist could speculate about what was wrong with the brains of these two children. Of course, I think this is a very interesting conversation, it can give us a lot of inspiration about motivation and consciousness, but it does not directly hit the core of the problem. The children become like this because they may be deported.
- Why do these children fall into a coma and become bedridden?
I want to first distinguish the meaning of disease and illness (both are usually translated as disease, but the meaning of disease and illness is slightly different, and diseases in the following refer to illness. Translator’s Note). When we talk about the disease, it refers to a specific and objective disease, not our view of our own body. And illness refers to how we feel sick, which is affected by expectations in our brains.
Now we imagine that we are one of these asylum-seeking children, and we all know that a person may lose hope in life when facing deportation. How will we react when we begin to feel these physiological changes? From the perspective of disease, our body will be affected by our subjective consciousness. Think about what will happen if you are deported. At first, you will feel a little uncomfortable, and then you will not have any energy, then you will feel that you can’t get out of bed, and then you will close your eyes. It is not uncommon for people to have physical symptoms when they are thinking, encountering things, and under stress. What is unusual for these children is that their situation is extreme.
- Another unusual thing is that not only one or two children have this symptom, but there are hundreds of children. It is like an infectious disease that has swept the families that settled in Sweden.
Still, this question, is it really unusual? To some extent, disease in a broad sense is a social construction. If there is a saying among the local people that certain stimuli can cause certain symptoms in the body, and you are convinced of this, then these stimuli will really easily cause your body to collapse and produce the same symptoms. We should not distinguish between the body and the mind. Our mind and body are interconnected. As you can see, these children have lost their ability to take care of themselves.
- In your case studies, whether in Sweden or elsewhere, a problem that is often mentioned is that people don’t like to hear that they have a psychosomatic illness. Similarly, in your patients, if someone suddenly becomes ill, they will think that they have epilepsy, but you think that a large part of it is actually a psychosomatic disease.
At least a quarter of the patients who told me that they had epilepsy and seizures were purely psychosomatic. This is a very common way for the body to respond to certain types of stress. It usually starts with a physical condition, such as fainting. For example, a young man got on a crowded train. It was very hot and people fainted. This is normal. But it will plant the seeds of fear in the human brain. The next time he takes the train, he will think, «I hope I won’t faint again this time.» Then he will unnaturally check his body. Causes symptoms to intensify and eventually develop.
- You also investigated other psychosomatic diseases, which are also contagious. In Nicaragua, some Miskitos were in a trance and had terrible hallucinations. What happened to them?
This is an interesting disease called «grist sickness» (Miskito, similar to English crazy sickness, sometimes translated as «hysteria»). Some symptoms and medical diagnoses only exist in certain cultures. Grisi signs exist only in the Miskito tribe of Nicaragua who lives on the coast of Miskito. It mainly affects young people, especially female students. Patients will behave insanely, they will run around madly, then fall to the ground and have seizures. The patient’s family said that the disease was so severe that it would take several adult men to catch the girl. It appeared wave after wave in the Miskito people like a sea wave. If one student gets sick, the entire school will be infected.
- How do the Miskitos view this phenomenon?
They believe that people who are sick are entangled in a soul called Duende. Patients often see ghosts, a small man with a hat. They believe that this ghost entangled the patient and caused the illness. This situation often occurs in young women who are sexually threatened, and they often receive unkind attention from older men.
- How did the Miskitos deal with grisi siknis?
They treat it with traditional rituals. The local healer will pour herbs on the child. Surprisingly, this method is very effective. It is important for us to understand that this is a complex social mechanism that locals will use to deal with specific social problems. In a conservative society, girls appear grist sikni under certain pressure. This is a way for them to express their pain and seek help, without having to engage in awkward conversations or explaining the exact problem.
- So, doing this kind of ritual that sounds like an exorcism is better than going to the hospital to see a doctor?
Indeed it is. I think we need to consider what we can learn from these people. In the United Kingdom and the United States, if someone has the same seizure, they will go to the hospital for brain scans and various tests, but the cure rate is only 30%. The cure rate for Miskitos is 100%. This is not to say that we should all begin to accept religious ceremonies and use traditional healing methods. We should ask ourselves: What kind of information does the onset of this disease want to convey to us?
When a child in Miskito gets sick, people from the entire ethnic group will gather to help the sick, but we will isolate those who are sick. We can learn from this more compassionate, group-based response.
- In Kazakhstan, you also investigated a completely different psychosomatic disease. What did you find?
This wonderful trip took place in two small towns in central Kazakhstan-Kalachi and Krasnogorsk. It started in 2011 when a middle-aged woman was setting up a stall, and then suddenly fell asleep. The people at the other stalls had no way to wake her up. She was sent to a good hospital and all the test results were normal. No one can explain what happened. A week later, she woke up on her own and returned to normal again. Unfortunately, this phenomenon spread. In the next few years, 133 people fell into a mysterious sleep, and some people also experienced various other symptoms, such as hallucinations. The government of Kazakhstan attaches great importance to this, trying to find out why. They took hair samples, air samples, and water samples, hoping to find poison or anything else that could explain all of this.
- There is a mine nearby, so they may be poisoned.
It used to be a mining town. These people have worked and lived in uranium mines for many years and never got sick. This uranium mine has been closed since the 1990s, and it took them 20 years to get sick. This is not to say that they shouldn’t investigate whether the mine is poisonous, but that the tests are very detailed and meticulous, but nothing is found.
- What do you think?
When I first saw pictures of this town, I thought it was very poor. The whole town is dilapidated, buildings are crumbling, and people have no jobs. At first, like many doctors, I guessed that these people were suffering from schizophrenia due to too much stress and then fell into a coma. But when I got there, I found that the situation was completely different.
These people were transported to this secret uranium mine in the 1970s. They called it paradise, which I couldn’t understand at first. But after listening to their stories, I realized that this was indeed a paradise in central Kazakhstan. It is taken care of by Moscow. There are cinemas and a large hospital. The shops are full of goods that are not available in other parts of Kazakhstan. But then everything changed. The uranium mine was closed, and their lives changed from being specially treated to very difficult.
It is not uncommon for people to experience physical symptoms when encountering events and stressful conditions.
- Because after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians no longer support these towns in Kazakhstan.
The uranium mine was closed and the town lost its protection. But the residents were not sick yet. You originally thought that someone would get sick from stress, but they survived these difficult times. The problem occurred around 2010. At that time, because the government closed a lot of entertainment venues, people’s lives were less fun. There are only 300 people left in the town, and the living conditions are very simple. Therefore, the government wants to move them to a larger town, but people do not want to move.
When they told me this story, I realized that it was not because of the difficulties of life, but because people were unwilling to move out of their towns. It’s like a love story. The small town has brought them great help and comfort. They are willing to wait here until the day when it rejuvenates, but they also realize that this day will never come. Sleeping sickness emerges as a solution to a complex problem. When they left the town and resettled, these people recovered. They did not choose to leave the town, it was the sleeping sickness that helped them make the choice.
- These patients believe that they are due to uranium poisoning, and they do not want to hear the diagnosis of this psychosomatic disease.
Local residents still think so. The study did not find any toxic substances, but until today, people still believe that they are poisoned, so they will leave the town. This is understandable. In people’s minds, people with psychosomatic diseases are very fragile, or they are either lunatics or liars. If this is the case, who would admit that they have this disease?
- When you talk to people who have had sleeping sickness, I think you should have said that they are not poisoned. It should be difficult to communicate between you.
On this point, I also learned something from them. I believe in a Western medical point of view, that is, if I can explain to people what happened to them physiologically and why it is a psychosomatic disease, they will believe me and be relieved. But the facts are quite the opposite. The people here only believe in their own explanations. When you try to bring up the topic of psychosomatic illness, no matter how tactful you are, they don’t want to listen. Now I understand that sometimes it is the right choice not to mention this. If the mind-body disease itself is just to solve a real problem, then it may be unwise to try to make it public.
- It is not like the answer of a Western neuroscientist to convince people of a wrong diagnosis.
I’m not encouraging people to believe in a diagnosis that I don’t believe in, but I try to listen to what others are saying so that I can understand where the problem is. Western doctors often argue with patients. I said that this is a psychosomatic disease, and the patient said, «No, this is not.» Such a dispute is meaningless, and neither side will get the results they want. It is reasonable for me to explain psychosomatic illnesses to patients, but at the same time, I will listen more to their own stories. Sometimes, psychosomatic illness is a concrete narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I need to understand how people perceive their emergence. Obviously, reasonableness has a limit.
- So far, the cases we have discussed are those who have lost their homes or believe in soul possession. But you also wrote that American diplomats in Cuba have a series of symptoms, such as dizziness, headaches, memory problems, fatigue, etc., which is the so-called «Havana Syndrome.» There are many reports that the enemy must have used secret weapons against the American diplomats in the embassy. But you don’t think so, do you?
It’s not just that I don’t believe it. These reports are biologically impossible. They are just anecdotal rumours, just like believing that you are possessed by a ghost. The hypothesis of sonic weapon attack is not convincing. In December 2016, a U.S. diplomat stationed in Cuba heard a strange voice, and at the same time showed a series of strange symptoms, including headache, dizziness, unstable standing, and difficulty concentrating. So there were rumours that people in the embassy were attacked by sonic weapons.
- It may also be some kind of microwave energy weapon.
Well, the development of the whole incident is very interesting. At first, people thought it was a sound weapon because someone heard the sound. Then others also said that they got sick after hearing the sound. However, there is a medical problem here-sound does not damage the brain. Unusually loud sounds can damage hearing through the ears, but will not damage the brain. Scientists had to accept this fact, so they said, «It may not be a sonic weapon within the hearing range, it may be something beyond the hearing range, such as a microwave weapon.»
There is another problem here. The prerequisite for thinking that there are sonic weapons is that people hear the sound, so now the assumption that it is a microwave weapon is illogical because people cannot hear the microwave weapon. Moreover, there are many biological reasons why microwave weapons are impossible-such weapons simply do not exist. I am not a weapon expert, but I am a doctor of medicine. I know that if a person is attacked by a microwave weapon, the microwave weapon must not only target the brain. If a kind of microwave energy is directed at a person from a long distance, it is impossible to only damage the brain. Why don’t their kidneys, heart, and lungs have blood vessel problems? This is biologically impossible. But the theory of microwave weapons has always existed, and it has been reported in the media until now.
It’s not just that I don’t believe it. The claims in these reports are biologically impossible, but they are just anecdotal rumours.
- The US government sent some top doctors to investigate, and they believed that some secret weapon might have caused these symptoms.
Yes, the media reports on the content of the report and the gap between the content of the report itself are very interesting. Steve (the author of this article), have you read that report?
- No.
This is our main problem. I have read the report, but most people don’t. According to the report, the people under examination have a wide range of symptoms, and they are not even sure that these people have encountered the same thing. In the end, they excluded a large number of people who reported that they were affected by the attack, and focused on a smaller number of people. Then, they ruled out the explanation of the psychosomatic disease and did not explain why. Then many diagnoses related to psychosomatic diseases were given, but the facts were covered up with euphemisms. For example, they would use the word «functional», but add parentheses and write «functional, not spiritual». This is a way for doctors to euphemistically give the diagnosis of psychosomatic diseases. They did mention that it was microwave energy, but when you read the entire report, you will be surprised to find that there is very little evidence. They have not even seen the relevant personnel.
- So what do you think happened to the American diplomats in Cuba?
We have no way of knowing what happened to the first person, because in this sudden situation, the first person may have a completely different disease from the others. But he will set the tone for what follows. When you understand the experience of the embassy staff, you may feel terrible. They were told that they might be attacked by sonic weapons, so if they heard strange sounds again, they had to hide behind the wall. They also need to keep meeting, check their bodies, and see a doctor if they have any symptoms. When people are asked to check their bodies, anxiety will continue to escalate.
- This incident happened after 50 years of tension between the United States and Cuba. The US Embassy in Cuba has just opened during the Obama administration. People are worried that Cubans will install eavesdropping devices in the building. They have good reasons to be nervous.
These people have reason to believe that they may be threatened because there are many precedents that eavesdropping devices will be installed on the ambassadors to Cuba and Russia. And they were told that the attack could happen at any time, and they had to check their bodies. Imagine what happens when you check your body for abnormalities? You will really find yourself having a problem. If someone says to you, «You have a disease or been attacked, please check your body,» you will immediately find the stinging and discomfort that you usually don’t notice.
- But this phenomenon is not limited to Cuba. Diplomats at the US embassies in China and Germany also reported similar symptoms.
Now this phenomenon has spread all over the world, with cases in London and Germany. But this is the characteristic of infectious symptoms. It is also worth noting how the diplomats in Cuba learned that they might have a psychosomatic illness. The doctors involved in the incident stated that these diplomats were not acting or pretending to be sick, and they did not want to be sick.
Now, if this is your view of psychosomatic disease, you are saying to your patient, «Well, this is your choice. You are either pretending to be sick, crazy, wanting to be sick, or you are Attacked by a sonic weapon.» Which explanation would you choose? The answer is obvious.