Kazakhstan villagers suffered from illness causing “death-like” sleep for years before the problem was isolated!
The residents of Kazakhstan lived with a mysterious illness that causes “death-like” sleep for over almost 3 years. Soon after the outbreak, villagers even considered relocating themselves, but they didn’t because of a fear of the illness spreading. Thereby leaving them susceptible to the illness that left villagers asleep for days. What’s more, doctors and researchers were yet to find a cure for the illness during the outbreak. Villagers began suffering from deep sleep that would last for several days to weeks.
According to a professor from Tomsk Polytechnic University, Leonid Rikhvanov, of the department of Geo-ecology and Geo-chemistry, “The disease is characterized by the fact that the sickness immerses himself in unusually long sleep, while to bring them into full consciousness is practically impossible on the first day.”
However, while asleep, they would sometimes walk around and appear conscious.
The first case of the illness was reported in March 2013. Symptoms of the illness are memory loss, hallucinations, dizziness and nausea. Some sufferers even experienced strokes. Every age group was affected by the illness. Children experienced seeing winged horses, their mothers suddenly having eight eyes, worms eating their hands and snakes crawling in their beds. A cat called Marquis was also affected, even though they are not susceptible to mass hysteria.
“He seemed to be foolish, throwing himself against the walls, cabinets, meowing,” Elena Zhavoronkova told Time.kz in 2015. “He tortured us until three in the morning. They took him out to the veranda, where there was a dog, so the Marquis began to rush at it.”
“Then he fell asleep in the morning and snored like a man until Saturday afternoon. He did not react to anything, not even to cat food. And when he came to, he was lethargic, could not even jump on a chair.”
For many years the illness remained a mystery.
Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the uranium mines nearby were closed down. In the end it was established that the brains of the villagers were being deprived of oxygen. Although the uranium mines were closed, carbonmonoxide was still being exuded from the mines in smaller concentrations.
Carbonmonoxiide binds to haemoglobin, forming carboxyhemoglobin and leads to a much lower supply of oxygen to the brain. The villagers were immediately evacuated after finding the cause of the problem.
References
The Strange Sickness Of “Sleepy Hollow” That Struck Villagers In Kazakhstan https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/the-strange-sickness-of-sleepy-hollow-that-struck-villagers-in-kazakhstan/
