swimming pool in iloilo city

. after spending time in capiz, visitingthe fish ponds and observing the calm and relaxed nature of the province, i couldn't think of a lesslikely place for the aswang to live. i began to reflect on the informationi had obtained and why capiz is so attached to the myth.if we take a look at only the stories of the aswang that havebeen documented throughout the visayas there's nothing particularly damningabout capiz if we add stories documented in theentire philippines

it seems based on sightings alone,manila would be their likely home. so what happened that made capiz thecenter gossip regarding the aswang? the freedom fighters opposing thespanish? the babaylan? they were all over the philippines. whilei believe this contributes to why they were women it doesn't explain capiz as beingtheir home. looking at the locations of all the major upheavals against thespanish, it once again seems manila is the center of activity. although there was one revolution led by tapar, a babaylan

who some claim was a female shayman andothers believe was a man dressed as a woman i'm not saying the spanish are innocent, itis no coincidence that the aswang folklore is almost irrelevant in regions where the spanish were unableto successfully colonize .. father placencia documented the aswangas existing throughout the visayas which include several islands in thecentral philippines another curious factor is the manananggal

along with one quarter of the witcheshe spoke of came from catanduanes in the bicol region north that thevisayas, so why panay, and capiz in particular? my answer came in the most unlikelyof circumstances in the field i hadn't thought ofbefore. while in capiz, i became involved in relief efforts after typhoonfrank have devastated the small island barangay of olotayan i met a doctor who had recently attendedthe seminar by doctor lilian lee regarding an extremely rare

and thus far untreatable for of dystonia. xdp x-linked dystonia parkinsonism syndrome it used to be called dystonia of panay panay, in reference to panayisland in the philippines the whole spectrum is dystoniaand parkinsonism because they're also parkinson like syndromes these are involuntary repetitive small tremor movements.to be able to flex my hand so

my flexor muscles would need to contractbut at the same time my extensor muscles of thehand would need too relaxed so that my hand can flex. this is coordinated in the brain. patients with xdp would get repetitive twisting uncontrolled contractions of opposing muscle groups that's why the local name is also one ofthe local names is lubag

if you translated in english it means twisting muscle twisting, lubag. xdp is passed downgenetically this is how it works, in healthy parents the man would have an x and ychromosome. the female would have two x chromosomes if they were to have a son an xchromosome comes from the mother and that y comes from the father. ifthey were to have a daughter an x would come from the mother and theother from the father if the female is a carrier of xdp, sheis unaffected because the good x

chromosome balances out the defect in the other itis still possible for her to have a healthy son or daughter if the uneffective x chromosome ispassed on however if the affected gene is passedon their daughter would become a carrierand their son would have a physical manifestation of the disease usually appearing sometime in his late30's early 40's because the onset in xdp comes laterin life

it is common for an affected man to havea child before they began showing symptoms leaving his son unaffected but hisdaughter as a carrier. there are few cases where an affected male and female had a daughter, who receive thedefective gene from both parents and had the physical manifestationof the disease. how specific is it to panay? i think the 500 or so reported that cases worldwide all of them, i think can be

traced to to the philippines, and to panay island in particular. george viterbo i think he was one of the first to observethis dystonia among his patients here in panay. if i could just show yousome of the drawings of george viterbo of people that seems to be in atransforming motion or mood. i startedthinking that

that this disease occurring in thispopulation for 50 generations - that's what? thousand years could easily havecontributed to the aswang phenomenon people visiting these islands, foreignersspaniards, americans couldn't even also themselvesexplain you know this transforming person,when in fact the person is not is not really transforming but is afflicted with a certain disease that they just don'tknow of.

this particular patient came backto capiz to live with his family after being independent in manila forseveral years. because of this disease he lost his jobhis girlfriend and his nieces and nephews who he usedto play and joke with are now scared of him. before being afflicted, he would spendmuch of his spare time with friends playing basketball and now finds it frustrating thathis life is confined behind closed doors i learned the only time his musclesrelax

is when he is sleeping. it is also theonly time he can escape from his burden as he explained when he dreams he isunaffected i later learned that there weremany cases where families were shunned because this disease is misunderstood even one of my companions on thevisit a resident of capiz, was scared whilesitting near the patient. i couldn't help but be reminded of the aswang in the stage play luna an aswang romance. it is uncanny how similar the depictionis, yet it comes from someone who has

never seen an xdp patient i again saw this disturbinginterpretation of the aswang this time from the children capiz. which was very different from the aswang being imitated in manila. even patients themselves who are affected by xdp become ashamed of it of the disease thatthey have the disease or that a

because they'd won they don't want to bea burden to their families so there are cases where they haveresorted to just killing themselves because of the stigma, because ofthe burden because of the lack of social support perhaps.