Tim has a condition that makes his Bones 150% denser than granite. No one noticed until he was almost two years old. Initially, it all started with an episode of facial paralysis. "My father says that one day I got into the car and was smiling, but only with half of the face and thought that he was playing a joke," recalls Tim. However, his paralysis did not disappear.
Our skeleton takes 25 years to "mature"
The skeleton is one of the parts of our organism that takes longer to develop until it reaches its adult form. At birth, our bones are far from mature, but over time, our body goes through a process of ossification by which the cartilage becomes bone.
For most of us that process is complete by the time we are 25, says Dr. Gabriel Weston, host of the BBC television series "Incredible Medicine: Doctor Weston's Casebook." However, for some people, like Tim, that process is twist. Moreover, their strange cases can help doctors find the answers to other more common ills.
Pressure on the brain
Doctors took X-rays and concluded that Tim had an extremely rare illness that he shared with only 50 other people around the world. "I have sclerosteosis, a condition characterized by having excessive bone density," he explains. Although it does not sound like anything particularly negative, this illness put Tim's life in danger.
When he was a child, his skull began to grow so thick that it began to put pressure on his brain and on the cranial nerves.
Such intracranial pressure can cause facial paralysis and potentially death. To relieve it, the doctors had to cut off the skull, remove a part of the bone, hollow or slice it and put it back. Thus, "there is more room for the brain immediately."
Without cure
Doctors could treat Tim to relieve the symptoms of excess bone, but no one understood why his body made bone grow larger than normal.
His illness is so rare that there has not been medical research on it.
However, Tim's Case drew the attention of scientists who are studying a much more common bone disorder: osteoporosis. This disease seems to be at the opposite end of what happens to Tim: it is a loss of density in the bones, which leaves them weak and fragile.