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There is such a special girl, she eats every 15 minutes, and her daily energy intake is 3-4 times that of ordinary people, but her greatest desire is to gain weight.
Do you envy this kind of physique that eats blindly and does not fat? After reading her life story, you may not think so.
Lizzie S. Velásquez as a child and now (Photo: www.facebook.com/LizzieVelasquez)
The girl's name is Lizzie Velásquez, from Texas, USA. You can tell how different she is from her appearance.
She was the first child of her parents. Although everything was normal at the prenatal examination and the ultrasound did not reveal anything unusual, at birth, doctors told her that the child had no amniotic fluid at all, and they had never seen such a child before. In order not to scare the mother, the doctor also specially chose a photo of the baby who did not look very clear to show her.
Lizzie and her mother (left) (Image: www.instagram.com/littlelizziev)
To find out what the child had, her parents sought medical advice. The doctor couple initially suspected she had De Bas syndrome and warned Lizzie's parents that the child would never be able to speak or walk.
Eventually, she walked the talk, graduated from Texas State University, published several books, and her TED motivational talk has been viewed 11 million times to date. This indicates that she does not have a learning disability and that a diagnosis of Debass syndrome has not been established.
In 2013, Lizzie gave a TED Talk. (Image source: Braveheart: The story of Lizzie Velázquez)
Although her intelligence is no different from that of ordinary people, her physique is very light.
Most people worry about easy weight gain, but Lizzie worries about not being able to gain weight.
When Lizzie was born (Image: Braveheart: The Story of Lizzie Velázquez)
She can say that she has never been fat in her life. When she was born, she was only 40 centimeters long and weighed only 1190 grams. As an adult, she is 157.5 centimeters tall, weighs only 26.4 kilograms, and has a body mass index (BMI) of only 10.6, well below the World Health Organization's (WHO) warning value of 18.5. When she was in college, she always carried a large bag of high-sugar, high-fat, high-calorie snacks with her, and every 15 minutes she had to take out snacks for a feast of teeth. She eats 60 times a day, adding up to 5,000-8,000 calories, which is 3-4 times that of a normal person. If calories are not replenished in time, she will develop hypoglycemia.
Lizzie's teen (Image: Braveheart: The Story of Lizzie Velázquez)
So she can eat junk food all the time without gaining weight. She said she never weighed more than 29 kilograms in her life and her clothes were always size 0.
Envy her figure? In fact, Lizzie suffers from a variety of ailments and has undergone various surgeries, large and small, from the inside out.
For example, at the age of 16, her colon was removed. She developed an ectopic lens in her left eye and had it removed at the age of 17.
(Image source: Braveheart: The story of Lizzie Velázquez)
Her red blood cells can't replicate properly, so she needs frequent blood transfusions.
Due to abnormal bone development, she also underwent large and minor orthodontic surgeries.
It can be said that Lizzie is more familiar with the hospital than her own home.
This unique case has also attracted the attention of many researchers. Atul Chopra of Baylor College of Medicine and Abhimanyu Garg of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center studied her.
However, the doctor couple did not find out what disease she had until 2014.
At the age of 25, she was finally diagnosed.
(Image Credit: Braveheart: The Story of Lizzie Velázquez)
In 2014, Abhimanyu Garg and colleagues published Lizzie's case in the American Journal of Medical Genetics.
Humans have about 20,000 genes. The researchers examined all of Lizzie's genes and found something wrong with one of her genes: exon 65 in her FBN1 gene, which was nonsense (zero variation).
The nonsense mutation meant that the mutation in Lizzie's body completely eliminated the function of the FBN1 gene, but neither her parents nor her siblings had the mutation.
So what is the function of the FBN1 gene?
Generally, FBN1 gene mutations can cause Marfan syndrome, and we have also popularized science before (click me to see).
Spanish actor Javier Botette has starred in several horror movies due to Marfan syndrome (Image: BBC)
The most important external feature of Marfan syndrome is that the body is very thin, similar to Japanese manga. But defects in the FBN1 gene can affect the health of the eyes, heart and bones, making people with Marfan syndrome prone to blood vessel bursting and death.
While people with Marfan syndrome generally have less flesh and skin, it is rare for Lizzie to be born with a lack of subcutaneous fat. Of course, the mutation in Lizzie is more "toxic".
Garg diagnosed her with Progeria Syndrome. In addition to stopping subcutaneous fat growth, the disease can also lead to premature aging. In 2015, there were only 4-5 patients worldwide with the same condition as Lizzie.
People who lack subcutaneous fat tend to have a strong metabolism and eat a lot of food every day, which may explain why Lizzie eats three or four times more than the average person.
In 2010, German researchers reported a case of a girl similar to Lizzie. German girls also had mutations in the FBN1 gene, but at exon 64.
The girl, like Lizzie, was born without subcutaneous fat and suffered from congenital systemic lipodystrophy. She looked lighter than Lizzie and had more flesh on her thighs.
However, like Lizzie, she had sunken cheeks due to a lack of facial fat, so at the age of 24, she used autologous fat to fill her limited fat in her thighs.
The German girl looks like 10 years old (Source: doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.a.33690)
The German girl also had a great appetite, but not as much as Lizzie. Researchers report that her metabolic rate is only 30 percent higher than the average person.
It's worth noting that Lizzie looks skinny, but actually a third of her body weight is fat.
Garg noted in the paper that Lizzie's body fat percentage reached a surprising 28.4% relative to her appearance, which is in the range of normal women.
From this perspective, Lizzie's fat is not distributed under the skin, but elsewhere.
Because of her "fat" genes, Lizzie's social life suffered. From the first day of school, reality hit her hard. Other kids treated the 5-year-old like a monster. At the age of 17, someone uploaded a video of her on YouTube titled "The Ugliest Woman in the World", which reached 4 million views and gave her a nervous breakdown.
At the age of 17, Lizzie was publicly humiliated. (Image Credit: Braveheart: The Story of Lizzie Velázquez)
Although it took researchers 25 years to discover the small mutation, it could take a lifetime for the girl to receive his genetic material.
"Eating not fat" is a talent for others, but a trauma for oneself.
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