Tasting music, hardly needing sleep, no weight gain and superhuman endurance –it sounds like the results of a drug binge.
In fact, some people’s bodies may be giving them all this without any form of external input. Indeed, rather than being all gloom and suffering, some medical conditions can actually give that extra bit of colour.
We’ve round up our top five fabulous-to-have conditions. From the outside, at least, they look interesting to us. Having them might not be so much fun, though.
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Don’t need sleep
A common complaint is that there are too few hours in the day. Is this just a symptom of modern living? And then, you feel your eyelids drooping as you sit behind your desk.
Most people need about eight hours of sleep per night. And then, there are some who can do fine with just six. But how fabulous would life be if you didn’t need to sleep more than a few hours. All that extra time for reading, working, partying, to name but a few.
Legend has it that Margaret Thatcher needed only four hours of sleep per night – whether this is actually true is unclear. Judging by her political record some might argue that she only got four, while actually needing much more.
Either way, research published earlier this year in the journal Current Biology found that the key to whether you need six or eight hours of sleep lies in a gene called Period 3. This sleep gene isn’t the whole story of course, but it sure makes for a good scapegoat.
Slim without trying
While most of us constantly have to watch our weight, some people have just the opposite problem. So-called ectomorphs, people with a lean and thin body type, usually have a hard time bulking up.
In part this is because of faster metabolisms – that means more food is needed to keep the body going. Just as in the case of how much sleep you need, your metabolism is significantly influenced by your genes.
Various factors, including what you eat and whether you’re physically active, also influence how much weight you carry. It is just that the “right” genes make it so much easier.
Many ectomorphs hate being thin, and find their struggle to gain weight and muscle mass very distressing. We say: well, that’s like having tax problems – a nice problem to have.
Taste the music
Imagine tasting or feeling music or involuntarily linking letters and numbers to certain colours. This kind of sensory mingling can be triggered by the use of certain psychoactive drugs. But for some people it is the result of a condition called synaesthesia.
The most common form of synaesthesia is called colour-language synaesthesia, which involves associating numbers and letters with specific colours. “8” may be red, “o” may be white, and so on.
Interestingly, the colours are usually not seen in the mind’s eye, but are projected outside the body.
Synaesthesia is involuntary and many people with the condition may not even know that their experience of the world is in any way different. Others hide their unique abilities because of fears relating to how others may respond. Yet, some would not have it any other way.
The novelist Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, is probably the most famous synesthete.
Batteries never go flat
If walking up three flights of stairs has you out of breath, chances are you only have yourself to blame. But if you’re believing (as, sadly, all too many of us now do) that you could only, for example, cycle the Tour de France if you were on drugs, you’re also wrong. Some people just do have genes that help them keep going longer than the rest of us.
The Finnish cross-country skier Eero Mantyranta, for instance, dominated his sport in the 60s to such an extent that he was accused of doping. It was only decades later that scientists discovered that Mantyranta was from a family with a very rare gene mutation.
The mutation caused an excessive response to erythropoietin in his body, which led to extraordinarily high numbers of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, according to the journal Scientific American. The high number of red blood cells is what gave Mantyranta his incredible endurance.
Today, the World Anti-Doping Organisation is concerned that gene therapy may be used to artificially introduce such genes into athletes’ bodies.
Alcohol tolerance
And finally, it seems that some people can drink one drink after another, while others fall asleep merely at the sight of alcohol.
How much alcohol you can drink without losing it, is influenced by a wide range of factors. These include, age, gender, weight, fitness, use of prescription drugs, how fast the alcohol was consumed, whether any food was consumed and a family history of alcohol addiction, according to the US Centres for Disease Control. In western society, an inability to handle drink can be socially and professionally limiting.
Wishing you could drink more may be a bit infantile, but it appears alcohol tolerance can be learned (though you’re on a slippery slope if you’re thinking of developing this particular trait). – (Marcus Low, Health24, July 2007)
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