What's up with the ear hair?

Aging can be cruel. You lose the hair where you want it, and gain it in all those other unsightly places.  Bushy eyebrows, excessive nasal hair, and hairy ears certainly don’t make you anxious to get older, do they?

Sometimes the excessive growth of hair on the ears is genetic and is linked to the Y chromosome, the sex chromosome found only in males, which explains why don’t see many hairy-eared females, except in The Lord of the Rings movies.

And what would this excess hair growth be without a competition?  The Guinness Book of World Records record for the longest ear hair was broken again in 2002.  A seventy year old from Tamil Nadu state in India, Anthony Victor, broke the record with his ear hair measuring 11.5 centimeters.

Excerpt from Why Do Men Have Nipples? by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg, M.D.

Is there really a medication that acts like a truth serum?

Action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger often find themselves faced with an interrogator who uses a truth serum to get the hero to reveal his secrets.  In the movies, our heroes are able to resist these potions and hid the truth.  Hiding the truth seems to also prepare action heroes for a successful career in politics.

They seem pure fiction, but truth serums do exist.  Barbiturates such as sodium amytal and sodium pentothal were first used as truth serums in the early twentieth century.  These drugs inhibit control of the central nervous system and were used by physicians to help patient recover forgotten memories or repressed feelings.  They are also used for patients with suspected conversion disorder, a condition in which psychological problems produce physical symptoms.

An “amytal interview” is performed by administering a small amount of this drug intravenously.  The drug produces a state of drowsiness, slurred speech, and relaxation.  This condition makes patients more susceptible to suggestion, allowing the potential to uncover repressed feelings or memories.

Today, these interviews are seldom performed.  The “truth serum” will not necessarily make you tell the truth.  Patients may lose inhibition but will not lose all self-control.  Therefore, they are still able to control their behavior and lie.  Studies have shown that during these “amytal interviews”, patients often demonstrate a distorted sense of time, who memory disturbances, and have difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy, so the line between fact and fiction becomes even more blurred.

Excerpt from Why Do Men Have Nipples? by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg, M.D.

Why do we sneeze?

Sneezing helps our body to get rid of potential irritants such as dust and pollen, and it
also helps to clear our breathing passages.

A sneeze happens when we feel a tickle behind the nostrils: then a nerve in the nose sends a message to the brain. The brain informs the muscles of the abdomen, chest, diaphragm, vocal cords, throat, and even eyelids to work together in just the right order to get rid of the irritants, through the amazing mechanism of the sneeze. Our chest muscles squeeze the chest with enough force to shoot air up from the lungs and out through the nose at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour.

Sometimes bright light can make us sneeze-about one out of every three people sneezes when exposed to bright light. These people are called “photic” sneezers (photic means light), and this trait is hereditary.

An excerpt from the book “Why you shouldnʼt eat your boogers” by Francesca Gould

Fun fact: Does it really take seven years to digest chewing gum?

What is it with seven years?  You break a mirror, seven years bad luck. Each dog year is seven human years.  Seven years to digest swallowed gum?  What if a dog broke a mirror and then swallowed a pack of gum?  Sounds like an algebra problem. 

Chewing gum is not digestible but it definitely doesn’t sit in your stomach for years.  Gum actually might help things move through the bowels faster: Sorbitol is sometimes used as a sweetener in gum and this can act as a laxative.  What does this mean?  Yes, if you look carefully, you should see it floating next to all of those lovely yellow corn kernels.

Excerpt from Why Do Men Have Nipples? by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg, M.D.