My Body Is An Inspiration To Women In Their Twenties…

39 year old Valeria Levitin is a walking skeleton after years of anorexia reduced her weight to just 4 stone.

Valeria developed the eating disorder as a teenager after years of her mother weighing her as a child and being taunted at school about her weight. She said her mother was terrified of her growing up obese like her relatives and had to curtail her diet.

At 16, and weighing 10 stone, Valeria moved to Chicago with her parents. Desperate to fit in at a new school, she thought that if she lost weight, she would be accepted and liked. 

By the time she was 23, Valeria’s dress size had plummeted from a healthy size 12 to a tiny size 6. Deciding to become a model made the situation even worse, as she was told she was still too fat and can’t make it in the modelling industry. Out of desperation to be skinny, she restricted her diet even further, cutting out sugar or carbohydrates.

By the age of 24 and weighing just 6 stone, she was banned from dancing over concerns she would injure herself. Now having cut out certain foods for so long, her body is intolerant to them and can’t process them even if she wanted to.

Says she is horrified by the letters she receives from girls wanting weight loss tips.

According to The Sun, the 39 year old said, “I have received emails from young girls who want me to teach them how to be like me.

“All the letters I've had are from women, mainly in their twenties, who see me as some kind of inspiration.” Instead she desperately wants her emaciated figure to be a severe warning about the dangers of extreme dieting.

She says she wants to share her story to prevent other people falling victim to the same fate, saying anorexia has made her ‘lonely, unattractive and repulsive for the people around me.’

Single for a decade, she says relationships are difficult as she is unable to do the normal things that couples do, as going to restaurants. 

Born With Too Much Skin.

   Harlequin ichthyosis is a rare genetic disorder which is painful and incurable, and carries a constant threat of infection. Research shows that this genetic disorder makes sufferers grow more skin in one day than a healthy person does in two weeks has identified a mutation which may lead to development of new treatments. People with this condition have to painfully exfoliate twice a day and live in a sterile environment, while many sufferers die within days of birth.

However, research led by Professor David Kelsell of St Bartholomew and the Royal London Hospital School of Medicine and Dentistry has identified a mutation in a gene known as ABCA12 as a major cause of the disease. It is hoped that the discovery will lead to new treatment options and the possibility of prenatal screening. 

Mr Clive Betts’s daughters Lucy and Hannah have this rare condition. 

According to a documentary shown on channel 5, Lucy and Hannah’s father Clive tells of his shock at his daughters' appearance at birth, saying that they looked "like something from space - like an alien", and admitting that he did not expect them to live. Their pediatrician  Professor John Harper, feels similarly, saying that “sufferers of the rare condition are just not compatible with living."

But with constant exfoliation of the skin and sterilization of the environment, children with this rare condition are turning into beautiful teenagers.

The Hermaphrodite With The Werewolf Syndrome

Anything is possible they say, but according to Vivian Wheeler who was born a hermaphrodite, with both male and female reproductive organs and had hypertrichosis also known as the Werewolf syndrome, some things can’t be possible.

At birth, Wheeler’s facial fuzz appeared with an inch and a half of light hair covering her cheeks and chin. She says her mother wanted a daughter, and the doctors were instructed to remove the male parts, so she had to grow up as a girl. Wheeler claimed her father was humiliated by his bearded little girl, but it didn't prevent him from capitalizing on her condition. She began working in side shows at an early age, earning money to send home to her family.

Between tours, she would return home and reach for a razor. “My dad said I should shave because people wouldn't understand why I had facial hair, saying, “This is what you’ll have to do to fit into the society,”” Wheeler told AOL News. As she grew older, she would shave sometimes to placate the men she dated, "because of their low self-esteem. It didn't bother me." Wheeler stopped shaving her beard entirely in 1990 shortly after the death of her mother. "I let it grow back to be myself," she said. "Without my beard, I'm not me. I'm pretending to be someone I'm not." 

As an adult, Wheeler of Illinois was blessed with having the longest beard for a female, with the longest hair in her beard measuring 11 inches - 27.9 cm. She held The Guinness World Record for the Longest Female Beard Ever, had appeared on popular TV shows and featured in American Sideshow.

According to Wheeler, doctors examining her for Guinness World Record said she had a male bone structure. With half her hormones being male, doctors thought it would be impossible for her to give birth, but she became pregnant, and baby Richard was delivered by cesarean section in 1977. For Wheeler, a Seventh - day Adventist, it was a miracle.

Her joy was short lived as the father of her baby, a carnival ride operator she had met in Nebraska, snatched the baby away from their family home and who later abandoned the baby in a motel, aged just three. Since then, she mourned the loss of her only son. 

Richard Lorenc an adopted child had always wondered who his biological mother is and at some point he fantasied that  Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane was his mum. After a back injury that led to multiple medical exams and many questions about his family medical history, he decided it was time to start digging. Six weeks later, he received a letter from the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services saying they had the identity of his mother. 

Finally he found out that his mother was more than what he imagined. She was Vivian Wheeler, a hermaphrodite, a Side Show Star and a Guinness World record holder with the Werewolf syndrome.  And he said she was better than what he ever imagined.

62 year old Vivian Wheeler was blessed in her old age as she unites with her lost son who has been missing for 30 years.