Courtesy of University of Virgin

Sultan Kosen, the world's tallest man according to the Guiness book of records, received treatment at the University of Virginia Medical Center. Dr. Jason Sheehan (far right) performed radiosurgery to a tumor in Kosen's pituitary gland to stop his excess production of growth hormone. His endocrinologist, Mary Lee Vance, on Kosen's right, placed him on a new medication to help stop his growth.

For three years in a row, Sultan Kosen has been named the world's tallest living man by Guinness World Records. Interestingly, he's earned this lofty distinction at three different heights. Even more fascinating, in the last three months, the 29-year-old Turkish man has only recently stopped growing thanks to receiving state-of-the-art treatment in the U.S.

Kosen first entered the record books at 8 feet 1 inch; at his next measurement, he was listed as 8 feet 2 inches, and now he's achieved his ultimate adult height at 8 feet 3 inches. He's also in the record books for having the largest hands (11.22 inches) and largest feet (14.4 inches).

Kosen's extraordinary stature is a result of gigantism. He developed a pituitary tumor as a child, which caused his pituitary gland to produce an excessive amount of growth hormone.

"That tumor is not cancerous and it is not a brain tumor," says Dr. Mary Lee Vance, an endocrinologist at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville, Va. "A spontaneous mutation causes the tumor, and it's not hereditary," she explains. Kosen's parents and siblings are all average height.

Vance first learned of Kosen's case and first saw him as a patient in the spring of 2010. The Discovery Channel was doing a show on Kosen as the "World's Tallest Man," and Vance, as an expert in pituitary tumors, was asked to appear on it.

She put Kosen on a new medication (he was already taking two others) to try to bring down his growth hormone levels to a normal range. But medication alone would not be enough, so Vance consulted with a neurosurgeon to explore other options.

Although his pituitary tumor was diagnosed when Kosen was 10 years old, efforts in his native Turkey and elsewhere in Europe to stop the tumor's growth were unsuccessful. He had three prior surgeries attempting to remove the tumor as well as radiation treatment, but Kosen kept growing and growing. 

Slideshow: Guinness World Records 2012

"As he was growing taller and taller, he kept getting sicker and sicker," says Dr. Jason Sheehan, a neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia Health System, who also treated Kosen. "He had a very aggressive tumor involving the base of his skull and brain that was in a very difficult location to remove," he explains.

It seems being this tall comes at a steep price. "The human body and heart is not well designed for a person who is 8 (feet) tall," points out Sheehan.

As a result, Kosen's skeletal frame was so big that his joints, bones and muscles were weak in relation to his height. He has joint problems and can't walk without crutches. He had visual problems because the pituitary tumor got so big it was pressing on the nerves of his eyes.  

In August of 2010, Dr. Sheehan performed gamma knife radiosurgery. This procedure uses focused beams of gamma rays, which deliver high-energy radiation, and is guided by MRI to targeted points in Kosen's brain.

"Every step of the way, we had to do accommodations for Sultan's height," says Sheehan. In the operating room and during his recovery they had to put two normal-sized hospital beds together. They needed to buy a specialized frame for Sultan's large head size to map out where the gamma rays would go.

Although Kosen did not speak English and had an interpreter with him, Sheehan described him as "a gentle giant," who "knows how to charm people." Kosen also wanted to get his medical condition under control because he wanted to enjoy life more and hopefully get married one day.

But the gamma knife surgery is not an instant fix, points out Sheehan, and "it takes one to two years for the full effects of surgery to be realized."

Just three months ago, Dr. Vance and Dr. Sheehan learned that Kosen's height had finally stabilized and he had stopped growing. The tumor has also stopped growing as has the overproduction of growth hormone. 

Although the surgery does not make Kosen shorter and he is still at risk for some health problems because of his towering height, Sheehan says the surgery at least limited any additional risk. 

Related: 

• Surgery saves man from hearing his own eyeball move
• Small wonder: 18-year-old named world's shortest man
• Real-life Irish giants traced to 18th century street performer
• How do blind people dream?

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Over a two-year period, Toby Spencer traipsed from doctor to doctor describing his weird collection of symptoms -- all of them involving his left ear.

"One of the first, and probably most disturbing symptoms I had was hearing my left eye movements in my head," says Spencer. "In a quiet room it was so distracting that I would often resort to running a fan or some other white noise to attempt to mask it.

"My voice and breathing were also very magnified in that ear," he explains.

Courtesy of Toby Spencer

Toby Spencer, who's 41 and lives in Skowhegan, Maine, had a strange condition that caused him to, among other things, hear his own eyeball move.

There were other strange signs: "If I turned my head too quickly, especially to the left, I felt like I was falling sideways," Spencer recalls. "Loud noises would also make me feel like I was losing my balance."

The doctors he saw offered various explanations for his hearing and balance problems: From tumors and aneurysms to a jaw disorder or a lack of equilibrium in his blood pressure.

But it wasn't until Spencer, a 41-year-old IT professional from Skowhegan, Maine, stumbled upon an online forum in which a person was describing almost his exact same symptoms that he learned about a rare condition known as superior canal dehiscence syndrome.

Dehiscence (pronounced dee-hiss-ence) is a fancy word for an opening or a hole. As he eventually learned from specialists in this disorder, Spencer's symptoms were caused by a small hole -- often not much larger than a pinhead -- in the bone covering the superior semicircular canal in the inner ear.

Discovered in 1998 by Dr. Lloyd Minor, a physician from Johns Hopkins, superior canal dehiscence syndrome (SCDS) can cause hearing difficulties, balance issues, or both.

One of the more unusual and bizarre complaints described by those with SCDS is hearing their eyeballs moving in their sockets, which supposedly sounds like sandpaper rubbing on wood. (Last week, the BBC ran an article about a British man with SCDS, who like Spencer, also described feeling his eyeballs moving.)

"What makes this condition very interesting and its symptoms sometimes difficult to believe is how a tiny hole [in an inner ear bone] can cause so many problems," says Dr. Daniel Lee, an ear and skull base surgeon at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, who specializes in SCDS and treated Spencer for it.

The tiny hole is caused by a thinning of the bones of the head and people are likely born this way, suggests Lee. This opening causes balance canals in the inner ear to be abnormally activated, and they respond to loud sounds and to pressure in the ear.

Besides the peculiar symptom of hearing your own eye movements, Lee says his patients also report hearing other noises unusually loud through the affected ear or ears. This may include the crunching sound of their own footsteps, their heart beating, the echo of their own speaking voice, or disturbingly loud reverberations when brushing their hair or shaving.

Sufferers may complain of dizziness or their eyes bouncing up and down from a loud noise, or feeling as if their ear is blocked.

Surgery is not needed simply because there is a teeny hole in the inner ear and the majority of patients do nothing at all after they are diagnosed, explains Lee.

But in April, Spencer had an operation -- a middle fossa craniotomy to plug the hole -- because he felt his symptoms were degrading his quality of life.

"My biggest nightmare was going two years without knowing what was wrong with me," admits Spencer. Now that his symptoms are gone, he "feels great, has more energy, and can enjoy things more."

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