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Think Your Body Is Infested With Insects? You're Not Alone. (nationalgeographic.com)
Erika Engelhaupt, National Geographic: A few years ago, a man began telling his family members a horrifying tale: There are bugs living inside him. [...] He shows the classic signs of what scientists call delusory parasitosis, or Ekbom syndrome, an unwavering but incorrect belief that the patient's body has been infested with something. For years, entomologists have insisted that these delusions aren't as rare as psychiatrists and the public may think. And now, a study by the Mayo Clinic suggests they're right. The first population-based study of the condition's prevalence suggests that about 27 out of a hundred thousand Americans a year have delusions of an infestation. That would mean around 89,000 people in the U.S. right now are plagued by the condition.
For many sufferers of such delusions, the infestation takes the form of insects or mites, usually tiny and often described as biting or crawling on the skin. Others report feeling worms or leeches or some kind of unknown parasite. Many of the afflicted turn up, eventually, in an entomologist's office. And as the entomologists tell them, only two kinds of arthropods actually infest humans: lice and a mite that causes scabies. Both are easy to identify and cause characteristic symptoms. Bedbugs or fleas might infest a house, but they don't actually live on or inside the human body; they just feed on us and leave. Likewise, there are mites that live on our skin, especially the face, but they're a normal part of everyone's body, much like the bacteria living in our guts.
For many sufferers of such delusions, the infestation takes the form of insects or mites, usually tiny and often described as biting or crawling on the skin. Others report feeling worms or leeches or some kind of unknown parasite. Many of the afflicted turn up, eventually, in an entomologist's office. And as the entomologists tell them, only two kinds of arthropods actually infest humans: lice and a mite that causes scabies. Both are easy to identify and cause characteristic symptoms. Bedbugs or fleas might infest a house, but they don't actually live on or inside the human body; they just feed on us and leave. Likewise, there are mites that live on our skin, especially the face, but they're a normal part of everyone's body, much like the bacteria living in our guts.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/l...
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I love the direction this new Slashdot is taking.
Well, when I'm dealing with code that is infested with bugs all day . . . I sometimes dream about them at night. So I guess that means I'm infested with bugs in my sleep.
Quite bizarrely, I sometime figure out the problems while I'm dreaming.
But I also have nightmares, where I am furiously debugging problems in code that doesn't exist . . . a waste of prime dreaming time.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I have a, er, uh, ah, a friend, who has this. It is a very persistent and realistic sensory illusion. But if you examine the skin, while the sensation is going on, nothing is there. There are no mites, no spiders, no insects, nada.
It can be a symptom of an oncoming migraine. Some forms of migraines are depression of activity in some parts of the brain. Some types of migraines are like electrical storms in the brain, like seizures in parts of the brain. I think the spiders on the skin sensation is part of the second, the brain storms.
With a lot of training you can learn to ignore the sensations, just as in the military you get trained to ignore an itch. But the sensation is still there and very real to the person experiencing it.
There are medications that help with migraines, such as Valproic acid, which appear to reduce the sensation or at least make it less realistic and more tolerable.
Psychological problems now belong on slashdot?
In the comments section, definitely.
They're not insects. They're called Body Thetans.
"Likewise, there are mites that live on our skin, especially the face, but they're a normal part of everyone's body"
Exactly what I would tell myself to cope with a rare and horrifying face infestation.
The second paragraph of the SlashDot article states there are only two arthropods (insects and their relatives) that actually infest humans. In addition to the follicle mites cited as eyelash mites in other replies, botfly larvae are another. And botflies are actual insects. Rare but not unknown are also human infestations by blowflies and screwflies. Search Wikipedia for "Myiasis".
There are mites in our skin that we aren't expected to feel but sometimes people report feeling them. There is zero evidence of delusion, a simpler explanation would be that in some conditions people might be sensitive to things that are normally unnoticeable.
If people report something that is objectively true should we really label them delusional just because we don't expect them to know it? Once medical staff decide you're delusional you face an uphill battle to get them to take you seriously about anything.
That phrasing is kind of weasily, isn't it? Botflies, hundreds of species of worms from eyebrow to foot, flukes, toxoplasma, vampire bats... from the very small to the very large this world is filled with creatures that like to eat people. If someone believes they're infested they need to be taken seriously and given a battery of tests. To do otherwise is foolish in a non-doctor and could well be malpractice for a real doctor. This article does no one good.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
We are not descended from apes, we are apes.
Nah. Mostly idiots.
bickerdyke
We never should have left the oceans.
And has anyone noticed that it's not the little printed pieces of paper who feel unhappy?
bickerdyke
Somewhere (likely one of the original two Smalltalk books) there is a cartoon from the development of Smalltalk where the transcript on the screen shows something like "2 + 2" resulting in "3" with the programmer exclaiming something like "It works!". And the implicit notion is that the entire development environment and parser/compiler and Bitblit graphics and class hierarchy and so on is up and running, so what is a little minor (likely easily fixable) math error between friends?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.