People professing “Morgellons” are usually middle aged white women.
Why could this be?
I wonder if some tiny fraction of Morgellons sufferers are simply people who have fading eyesight, and simply do not realize this.
The “fibers” that are claimed are often very small. Such as the vellus hairs on the back of your hand. They are mostly invisible to the naked eye, but can become visible when lotion is applied, or when lighting conditions change, or when viewed at a different angle. This sudden appearance might make it seem like the hairs are “shooting” out of your skin. The hairs were not there, then they were – at least to your eyes.
This phenomenon might in turn be magnified by poor eyesight, which usually takes a turn for the worse after the age of 35.
Women also tend to use a lot more lotion, which both attracts fibers, and contributes to the sudden “appearance” of hairs (both vellus and terminal) when the lotion is applied.
I’m not saying this explains every case. But it might explain some. You need to eliminate such possibilities before moving on to others.
How good are your eyes? Check here:
http://www.preventblindness.org/eye_tests/near_vision_test.html
I don’t have the best eyesight in the world, but my vision is 20/20 with my glasses on. I have seen many of these hair-like fibers jettison out of my skin. They were not like the tiny vellus hairs, but were roughly 100 microns in diamenter and as long as 5 inches. They looked identical to regular har except that they were transparent.
Most of the time a material oozed from the pores, forming layers of skin-like material. The layers dried, and became powdery, and new layers were deposited on top of them. The filaments, however, were formed as a liquid was extruded through the pore. The material was forced out, under pressure.
I don’t know exactly what the compound was comprised of, but these filaments were just as strong as hairs. I suppose that sebum, dead skin cells, various enzymes, bacteria, fungi, and lymph fluid were among its many components.
Tall Cotton
That’s an idea, that it might be linked to relatively poor eyesight in a tiny fraction of middle-aged females.
Imagine all of the other things playing a role in this. There are a lot, and there is nothing wrong in addressing them.
Women possibly using more lotions? Well, yes, that’s for sure.
Also, go back to the beginning, to the root cause of the so-called disease, and how the mass-movement was created.
Naturally this whole ordeal is more problematic than that simple statement I just made, but you can read the history of the birth of it in several past news articles on the web. It’s no secret what happened.
So,imagine the numerous causes of inteference with the integrity of the epidermal layer, creating a loss of the skin’s natural immune properties.
Now, that’s speaking in the simplest of
layman’s terms, and who could refute that as a starting point for discussion?
Answer: You only get one guess who can!
“I have seen many of these hair-like fibers jettison out of my skin. They were not like the tiny vellus hairs, but were roughly 100 microns in diamenter and as long as 5 inches.”
Sounds like hair to me. Hair is commonly about 100 microns in diameter.
Michael wrote:
“People professing “Morgellons” are usually middle aged white women.
Why could this be?”
Indeed, it has been observed that females are more susceptible to ‘sympathetic’ but imaginary delusions. Google the search terms-
Mass sociogenic psychogenic illness:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=mass+sociogenic+psychogenic+illness&btnG=Search
and you will find many articles about this. Related topics include “conversion disorders”.
This article speaks specifically about the preponderance among females:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03E2D7133BF931A35755C0A9649C8B63&sec=health&pagewanted=1
and not to disrespect women, men are also subject to perhaps even more ridiculous illusory maladies, google “Koro” to see one.
Jay Reynolds
sorry, that new york Times article can be accessed by googling keywords-
“Hysteria Hysteria”
I like this from that article:
“Public health people are going to be extremely hesitant about labeling an illness as psychogenic. Because as soon as you say that aloud, people are telling you, ‘You’re not taking it seriously, you don’t believe us, you missed something, you’re covering something up.’ It makes people really, really mad to hear that diagnosis. So a lot of times when mass psychogenic illness occurs, you don’t hear about it as such. Public health people will continue to say, ‘We’re looking at all the possibilities and not finding anything, and we’re waiting for the final results.’ And privately, they sort of just hope it goes away and people stop asking about it.”
”
You just can’t explain to a delusion person that what they have is a delusion – they just shut you out.
Anonymous, yes, it “sounds like hair”. I had this weird and unusual phenomenon occuring to me, for a couple of months several years ago, and I can state to you, with absolute certainty, quite a few of the things I experenced shooting out of me, and fighting to get back in, (hehe), and succeeding to (oh, boy), also, were indeed, hair.
Morgie believers don’t want any logical mentionings of anything, to try helping them come to terms with what is the matter with them, from anybody. They perceive EVERYTHING as an attack! They refuse to take the right measures to restore their health. They don’t know how to, they don’t want to.
Heavens, the majority of them don’t even know of, or try to develop, any strategic new ways to try to communicate effectively to any new, or different, doctors they go to, always repeating the same things. That is pathetic!
Hypothetically, if any of them had a desire to try to let go of their problem(s), far too many of them won’t, since their reigning queen gave them a cause to fight for. Now there’s a “real study”, right there, eh? And, Doc Schwartz was no dummy, seeing an easy way to hop onboard to get rich quick, too. It’s obvious where the founder of this group’s heart lies, and what is really going on.
Well, anyway, they all say that no one has a right to say anything to them unless they’ve had it, so that you know what they’re going through.
The ones of us who have been-there-done-that have no right to say anything either, though, and they then say, (oh, and this is quite rich), that any such persons, such as myself, are insane.
One can’t be too careful, dealing with how they approach them. There is no easy, or acceptable, way under the sun.
I think that looking into this bizarre phenomenon, this ridiculous morgellons disease movement, and attempting to explain it, and DEBUNK THE MYTH, is so commendable, and I applaud you, Michael! Hopefully it will reach some people that still have the ability to rationalize for themselves.
Oh, I’d like to add that I’m a 49 yr old white female, and I wear corrective lenses for my vision.
With such a wide range of people who “think” they have this non-existent disease, perhaps, even some of them grasping to want-to-believe that they have it, anything is posible.
I say that, because if you read their message boards, how extremely absurd it is to see some of them say that they don’t have what some other ones describe, but maybe they “just aren’t looking hard enough to see it”. How about that, huh?
Unfortunately, seeing things like I did when I was ill for a couple of months, wasn’t simply due to trouble with my eyesight. It’s very difficult to come to terms with having experienced such a thing, but it certainly ceased when I restored my health. I knew that my unusual occurences were not normal, and I was very physically sick at the time. I live alone, and I needed to get well. I wanted to get well. I did get well.
Haha, but now, see? To them, I didn’t “have it”, because there is no cure. They’re all sick, with God only knows what. Physical ailments, affecting their minds; mental ailments, affecting them to do things, physically, to themselves.
Some believers have a psychological problem to start with. Afterall, look at what’s associated with morgellons, listed, on their site:
“Many have been or will be diagnosed as Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.”
People looking into microscopes all the time, alone, says a great deal about the whole thing. Many must have never seen anything through one before. Except, that sure doesn’t hold true for the “expert team” of investigators working for the foundation. (That nearly just makes me wanna puke.) I didn’t, and don’t, have a microscope, so maybe I wasn’t one of them. (Sorry, I gotta laff.)
If only what morgies have wrong with them didn’t make them the main focus in their lives. They take such offense at the mentioning of the word “obsession”, but just read about the destroyed lives they blame on this. The loved ones that they drive away. The chidren that they lose. How in the hell can they be so warped in their thinking as to place this thing above all else, and not see what they’ve done, and what they are doing?
Although I know it doesn’t seem to be this way to them, notice how believers almost appear to use suicides, and “the suffering of little children” to garner something for themselves in their effort to fight for the cause, too.
“How good is their eyesight?”
How good are their brains?
Everything that they have physically wrong with them is because of morgellons, because morgellons is what causes everything.
Now, you know there ain’t nothin’ wrong with a brain that thinks like that.
You mentioned that the Morgies continue to go to go to doctors, expecting to receive a diagnosis other than DOP. I’ve heard it said that one of the definitions of insanity is continuing to do things in the same way and expecting different results.
Well, people play the slots, even though they keep loosing. Maybe they just hope to strike it lucky. Maybe they actually become addicted to the process and its occasional small victories.
Hmm, interesting – perhaps Morgellons is a twisted form of gambling addiction.
Michael made a funny, hehe.
Tall Cotton, I think you’re right, that one of the definitions of insanity is continuing to do things in the same way and expecting different results.
Even my pets know their way around things better than that.
All the morgies prove, in the writings contained in their posts on the morgie boards, that they have serious mental problems, and they don’t even realize it. Once in a while, they’ll scold one for thinking they’ve taken their words too far, completely clueless in realizing that they do it themselves, too.
If a large portion of them have late stage lyme disease, heck, that causes neuropsychiatric problems.
If they don’t know that, they don’t know anything.
Whoops! I’m sorry.
The morgies are afraid to step out of their crazy little cult and come here and engage in a logical debate about their medical problems.
But they can’t. They just plain can’t carry on normal conversations. They feel threatened and persecuted. Something is so wrong, and they don’t even have a hint that their minds are to blame.
It’s so horrid, how some of them openly write on their message boards how they are letting their children go without medical attention, explicitly telling how their children suffer, and, at the same time, they pride themselves on their maternal skills, and back each other up.
So many of them have mentioned letting their pets die, without taking them to the veterinarian.
Those are criminal acts!!!
Dear God in Heaven, they blame it ALL on this freakin’ non-existent morgelllons disease!!!
Look at the extreme reduction in their cognition, and their own self-neglect and abuse (that they call self-treatment)…but to write things so openly about child neglect, and pet neglect, like it’s just nothing, and no BIG deal…
this is far worse than simple obsessive/compulsive disorder and DOP. I see the exhibition of some extreme personality disorders.
Something is so wrong.
“I see some extreme personality disorders”
So do I. Its seems to be coming from the fanatics that issue brain disorders to everyone on the web.
This post has been removed by the author.
Well, I haven’t seen any brain disorder issuances being done on the web, but it’s only due to not looking for it, I suppose.
On morgie message boards they issue their own self-diagnoses, thanks, of course, to Mary Leitao, and attribute every type of illness, perhaps with the one exception of brain disorders, (even though it’s included within the list of symptoms she comprised), to “morgellons disease”.
The terrible woman and her partners in crime are setting medicine back several hundred freakin’ years, for Christ sakes, and suckering these poor people into that bullshit of hers. In this day of modern medicine, she’s really got herself a perfect set of prey for her scheme. They’ve been convinced, and think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that others can fall for them having “something that you just won’t find anywhere in the medical texts”. Yes, they really think that any of us who don’t believe that are in denial, and we’re all just a bunch of fearful, un-enlightneed, close-minded fools.
I won’t deny the fact that they’re producing super-strains of bacteria on their own, without a cure, and that they, “perhaps”, haven’t the godgiven sense to know any better.
There is mental instability running all over the place on morgie boards! It’s like several fit into one category, then a few other types over here, a couple more, over there, and there’s some way out there, and over here’s some more to fit into the second group, there’s one or two in whole other category
…and it’s just the wildest, saddest, sickest, thing ever!!!
All of them do have the one thing in common, though, and that is, that they can’t think for themselves. They pull one another into each other’s webs of absurdities they call “theories” and “research”. They swap various “treatments” too, that never help them get better, but serve only to prolong their skin symptoms. Many take varieties of antibiotics that they purchase over the internet, obviously unaware (but then again, maybe not), that they are producing super-resistant strains of bacteria, themselves, and there are those who are poisoning themselves slowly, but surely, with insecticides,
parasiticides, and other various chemical agents, using them topically and internally.
And where’s Mary Leitao, “Saint Mary”, they all call her…
they somehow, absolutely, swear up and down that she cares about them all!! Well, where in the hell has her ass been, then, to try and stop the poisonings and self-mutilations among her beloveds??? Where is her ass when a mother can’t seek help for her child??? Where’s her ass been when people let their pets die??? Administration at these message boards don’t even care, because they’re screwed up too!!!
They’re all so ouchy and suspicious. You don’t dare try to communicate with any of them, because they’re filled with paranoia, claiming that it stems from the way doctors have made them feel, mostly.
They have their organization operating with several apparent appointees that act as “gatekeepers”, maximizing their behavioral disorders to their advantage to achieve cutting off any contact with persons outside of their group.
It’s really sad when a mother is flipping out and none of them can do anything to help her, and an outsider decides it’s time to step in and attempt to say something.
Administration deletes a large percentage of posts that could be of some help to people!!! They keep these poor souls trapped in their sense of dispair and abandonment on purpose.
That is NOT the way normal health support message boards do business, and yet they deny this.
The morgie people always demand to know “what are you doing here?”, and “what are you intentions?”, because they geniuinely can’t tell!! They can’t understand anything, but they’ve professed that they’re all very bright people. Well, they may have been at some point in their lives, but you can tell they aren’t now, and that quite a lot of them never were.
They fail to even be able to realize that there ARE some people in the world who CARE about them, the forgotten, or discarded, members of our society, and that we despise that they’ve fallen victims to a scam, and gotten themselves swept up inside a cult…especially to their own destruction and demise…and they don’t know it!!!
“Just go away, and leave us alone.” Yeah, and just look at what they have all their hopes pinned on. Class action lawsuits against the government and beaucoup medical malpractice suits for a disease that doesn’t exist.
“The chosen ones”, they call themselves. Yes, they sure were chosen all right.
Oh, the topic was “How Good Is Your Eyesight?”
Sorry. Well, I think it’s pretty good. I didn’t mean to fib about my age earlier, but oops, I’m 48…but who’s counting.