The 41-year-old suffers from an extreme case of
Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that has weakened his skin.
In most cases the disorder weakens people's joints and blood
vessels and affects around one in 10,000 people. Mr Turner's strain is very
rare.
He told ABC News: If you 'look at your own skin cells under
a microscope, they'd be nice and round and lock in many places. But my skin
cells tend to be more jagged, and don't fit together quite so well. The
best way to describe it is I'm built rather like a badly woven basket, if you
can imagine that, which will pull apart."
Luckily for Turner, his skin doesn't unravel when pulled — instead
it stretches far enough away from his body as to allow him to carry up to three
pints of beer at once on his belly flap.
Turner suffers from an extreme case of Ehlers-Danlos
syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that can severely weaken a person's joints,
blood vessels and in Turner's case, skin. The disorder, which most commonly
attacks a person's joints, affects about one in 10,000 people. However, the
odds of Turner's special variety of the disease are astronomical. Turner's
condition was obvious from the day he was born. "The midwife said that I
had very loose skin, and that was the only clue [my mother] remembers … I had
loose skin."
Growing up, Turner loved sports, but injuries were constant
until his condition was diagnosed at age 13.
"I used to get horrendous bruising when I used to take
a knock, and a blood vessel would burst," he said. "The blood would
just keep pumping and pumping, and there's no tension in the skin to hold the
bleeding. The physicians just thought I was a hemophiliac."
Turner actively promotes the Circus of Horrors on British
television, often accompanied by the circus ringmaster, who goes by the name
"Dr. Haze
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