Lizzie Velasquez, in a lot of ways, is one of the luckiest people. Born at 2 pounds 10 ounces, the 21-year-old from Austin, Texas, wasn’t expected to even make it past birth, yet obviously she’s still here. Unfortunately, she suffers from a medical condition so unusual that doctors have struggled to classify it: she has to eat every 15 minutes or else she might die. Even though she eats anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 calories every day, Lizzie Velasquez cannot gain any weight.
The medical marvel has her own website, where you can see images of Lizzie with friends and family, doing the things every 21-year-old does with her days. She attends college as a communications major, but most importantly, she is at the center of genetic research being done by professor/doctor Abhimanyu Garg at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He believes Lizzie has a form of Neonatal Progeroid Syndrome, or NPS, which is akin to the aging disease (despite the fact that Lizzie is aging normally and has completely healthy 21-year-old bones, teeth, and organs)
Tags: weird medical news, unusual medical conditions, Lizzie Velasquez, girl must eat every 15 minutes or die, Neonatal Progeroid Syndrome, NPS, unusual diseases, genetics, girl must eat every 15 minutes, size triple-zero, girl has never weighed over 62 pounds