Chris strokes gay

Following a stroke, Chris Birch's personality and sexuality altered dramatically. Now he is trying to rediscover who he is and why these changes may have happened. Looking at past pictures of himself, year-old Chris Birch struggles to remember or identify with his old self.

Chris Strokes Gay The Straight Pornstar Chriscriss

He used to be a stone, beer-swilling, party-loving rugby fan from the Welsh valleys, the life and soul of a party. He worked in a bank and loved sport and motorbikes. After a freak gay inhe says he underwent a big change to his personality. He believes that he has gone from being straight to gay. It was from there, while I was recovering, that I realised I'd changed," says Birch, from Caerphilly.

I came to the realisation that the stroke had turned me gay. A stroke occurs when the blood, and therefore, oxygen supply to the brain gay disrupted. Without oxygen, any part of the brain can be destroyed as brain cells die, leaving the brain to make new connections, which can affect how a person thinks, moves or feels.

Chris Birch does not recognise himself in photographs that were taken before the accident. He still has regular brain scans and cannot remember much of his life before the accident. He has also noticed stroke changes to his body, for instance when he is tired, his left eye droops. When Birch's story hit the headlines last year it sparked a media frenzy and the story went viral.

However, some - including media organisations and those close to Birch - questioned whether a stroke could alter a person's sexual orientation. There are few known cases of a stroke turning a straight person gay, and major personality changes in stroke sufferers are rare. Even Jak Powell, Birch's fiance, believes his partner may always have been stroke.

Yet Birch disagrees and is convinced that, neurologically, it was the stroke that altered his sense of self. The moment he realised his feelings towards men had changed was a scary period in his life. It was a time I was afraid to chris anybody because that wasn't who I used to be, so it shouldn't be who I am now," he says.

A change in sexual orientation in a stroke sufferer is a controversial issue that can divide scientific opinion. Dr Qazi Rahman of Queen Mary, University of London, an expert in human sexual orientation, has researched the neurological differences between gay and straight men and women.

He has tested hundreds of lesbian, gay and straight volunteers and discovered certain key patterns which reveal if a person might have been born gay or straight. Rahman says the brains of gay men could be organised differently to those of straight men. He invited Birch, who has swapped banking for hairdressing, to undergo the computer-based tests to see if he may, indeed, have been born gay.

On half of the tests, Birch performed in the "expected direction" for a gay man, and for the other half was within the range of a straight man. Yet consultant neuro-psychiatrist Dr Sudad Jawad has worked with young people who have had strokes and has come across a similar case in his practice of a man whose chris changed from homosexual to heterosexual.

Birch's case brings to mind other examples of those whose personality has radically altered after a change in their medical history.