Described as the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia, dyscalculia is a little-known disorder that makes it extremely difficult to learn math. While dyslexics struggle with reading and interpreting words and letters, dyscalculics have a hard time with basic arithmetic and understanding the meaning and concepts of numbers.

Although often a forgotten stepchild to its well-known relative dyslexia, dyscalculia affects the same number of people -- an estimated 5 to 7 percent of the population, suggests new research in the May 27 issue of Science.

Often first discovered by low scores on math achievement tests, both children and adults who suffer from dyscalculia have trouble grasping the size of a number and its relative value. 

Unlike dyslexics, however, they don't reverse the order of numbers when reading them.  "Typically, dyscalculics don't have problems with the order of symbols, but anything with numbers could cause anxiety or even panic," says Brian Butterworth, an emeritus professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, and lead author of the Science review article.

While many people think they're bad at math or don't have a head for numbers, dyscalculics are slower and less accurate at estimating the number of sets of objects and selecting the larger of two numbers, explains Butterworth.

For example, if dyscalculics were shown two playing cards -- a 5 and an 8 -- and asked to say which card was larger, they would count all the symbols on each card. If asked to count down from 10, they would count up from 1 to 10, then 1 to 9, then 1 to 8, etc.

They might use their fingers to count and do simple addition, far beyond the age when it's normally done. And they are challenged by making change and handling money, and estimating the height of a room (they may say 200 feet). They also have trouble with concepts of time, like approximating how long a car trip will take.

Dyscalculia appears to be inherited, and scientists have begun to identify abnormalities in the brain that make learning math such a grind.

Even so, it's important for those affected to realize that "having a serious problem learning arithmetic does not mean you are stupid," says Butterworth.

In fact, the disability can affect people with normal intelligence and normal working memory, or be seen in those with other developmental difficulties, such as dyslexia and ADHD. Some adults with severe dyscalculia can even be very good at geometry and using statistical packages, and capable of doing college-level computer programming. So it doesn't affect all mathematical abilities or skills.

But it can be a lifelong liability if it's misdiagnosed, unrecognized by teachers or not properly treated.

The paper calls for greater attention and funding for the problem, and specialized teaching that strengthens the processing of numbers using concrete materials, such as beads and counters, supported by game-like software for learners. 

The important thing is to not go on to more advanced concepts until the basics have been mastered, says Butterworth.  

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Some folks seem to be magnets for mosquitoes, while others rarely get bitten. What makes the little buggers single you out and not the guy or gal you're standing next to at the Memorial Day backyard barbecue?

The two most important reasons a mosquito is attracted to you have to do with sight and smell, says Jonathan Day, a professor of medical entomology at the University of Florida in Vero Beach. Lab studies suggest that 20 percent of people are high attractor types, he says.

Mosquitoes are highly visual, especially later in the afternoon, and their first mode of search for humans is through vision, explains Day. People dressed in dark colors -- black, navy blue, red -- stand out and movement is another cue.

Once the mosquito keys in on a promising visual target, she (and it's always "she" -- only the ladies bite) then picks up on smell. The main attractor is your rate of carbon dioxide production with every exhale you take. 

Those with higher metabolic rates produce more carbon dioxide, as do larger people and pregnant women. Although carbon dioxide is the primary attractant, other secondary smells coming from your skin or breath mark you as a good landing spot.

Lactic acid (given off while exercising), acetone (a chemical released in your breath), and estradiol (a breakdown product of estrogen) can all be released at varying concentrations and lure in mosquitoes, says Day. Your body temperature, or warmth, can also make a difference. Mosquitoes may flock to pregnant women because of their extra body heat.

But with more than 350 compounds isolated from odors produced by human skin, researchers have barely scratched the surface behind a mosquito's preference for certain people, says Joseph Conlon, a medical entomologist and the technical advisor to the American Mosquito Control Association.

Although it may all boil down to human odor and genetics -- studies of twins have revealed they tend to be attractive or repellant to mosquitoes in the same measure -- it's more complicated than that, suggests Conlon.

He says the latest thinking is that it might not be about what makes people more attractive to mosquitoes, but what makes them not as repellant. It could be that individuals who get less bites produce chemicals on their skin that make them more repellant and cover up smells that mosquitoes find attractive.

Mosquitoes don't bite you for food, since they feed off plant nectar, Conlon explains. Females suck your blood to get a protein needed to develop their eggs, which can then send more pesky insects into the world to annoy you.

But keep this in mind when you're outdoors this summer: Mosquitoes are more attracted to people after they drink a 12-ounce beer. It could be that people breathe a little harder after a cold one or their skin is a little warmer, suggests Conlon. But that won't stop him from having a brewski, even though he considers himself a mosquito magnet.

Here are more fun facts about mosquitoes and bites provided by our experts:

• Eating bananas will not attract mosquitoes and taking vitamin B-12 will not repel them; these are old wives' tales.
• Some mosquito species are leg and ankle biters; they cue into the stinky smell of bacteria on your feet.
• Other species prefer the head, neck and arms perhaps because of the warmth, smells emitted by your skin, and closeness to carbon dioxide released by your mouth. 
• The size of a mosquito bite welt has nothing to do with the amount of blood taken and everything to do with how your immune system responds to the saliva introduced by the mosquito into your skin.
• The more times you get bitten by a particular species of mosquito, the less most people react to that species over time. The bad news? There's more than 3,000 species worldwide.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Andrew G Hobbs / Getty Images file

Without cigarette smoke in bars and restaurants, we can smell stale beer, bad cologne and body odor, the likes of which these revelers are surely emitting.

By Jennifer Worick

Smoking bans are increasingly found in bars and nightclubs around the world. But as the smell of cigarette smoke slowly fades from your favorite hotspot, new, not-always-pleasing odors rear their stinky head. Body odor, cologne that should have been left in the 80s, stale beer -- what’s a barfly or club kid to do?

This is the question researchers in the Netherlands decided needed a scientific answer. They dispensed three different scents — orange, peppermint, and seawater — in three dance clubs. About 850 20-somethings weighed in about their evening in da scented club.

“We started the study because unwanted smells came up as a problem for many bars and nightclubs after the smoking ban,” said Dr. Hendrik Schifferstein from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, one of the researchers conducting the study. “Entrepreneurs were looking for a solution to this problem.”

The study included pre- and post-measurements of no-scent control conditions. Respondents filled out a short questionnaire, asking them to rate the quality of the evening, the music, and the club, as well as their feelings. The results showed that the addition of scent enhanced dancing activity and improved their evaluation of the evening, music, and mood. (The type of scent didn’t make any significant difference in pairs of feet on the dance floor.)

The findings were published online this month in the journal Chemosensory Perception.

Any scent other than cigarette smoke certainly lifts Darin Sanone’s spirits when he hits the club. A bartender for nine years at Rage, a gay nightclub in West Hollywood, is all for a little aromatherapy/air freshener. “One of the DJs last week burned incense,” said Sanone, “and it traveled all the way through the bar and even masked a horrible smell coming from a corner of the club.”

Is fragrance the new wave of the future? Dr. Schifferstein thinks so. “I have heard that fragrance machines are very popular ever since the smoking ban. So I do expect more and more clubs to use them. In addition, I know that there are club owners who hire specialized aroma DJs to produce fragrances that match the music played,” he said.

Until that time when sandalwood or China rain is being pumped into your favorite watering hole, savor the cigarette-free scent and flavor of a good cocktail. “The only big change I have noticed is people drinking more refined drinks, perhaps because the subtle flavors are not masked by heavy cigarette smoke,” said Miles Thomas, a former Seattle bartender and owner of Scrappy’s Bitters. And that’s nothing to sniff at.

Jennifer Worick is a freelance writer and author in Seattle. Find her at jenniferworick.com.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Warner Bros.

We know, Ed Helms. We're shocked, too!

By Bill Briggs

We’re all grown-ups here.

Kind of.

So why have so many “Bridesmaids” viewers cringed with laughter while watching the bride (Maya Rudolph) and her girlfriends -- bedecked in designer dresses -- suddenly erupt in a food-poisoning-induced storm of vomit and diarrhea? (Pity that poor -- once-white -- wedding gown).

Why, in "The Hangover Part 2," will packs of theatergoers today simultaneously grimace and grin at the glimpse of a young man’s severed ring finger -- still wearing a Stanford class ring?

And why, in 2007's “Knocked Up,” did some of us wince and giggle when we saw a baby’s head crown from Katherine Heigl’s ladyparts as she screamed, “Get out!” to a horrified dude who had peeked into her birthing room?

Those scenes put the gag in -- well -- gag. But many of us roared despite our repulsion. What are we, like, 8 years old?

Why do disgusting or shocking movie moments still make some of us cackle till we cry?

According to two experts -- one a researcher, one a comic -- there’s psychology behind that crude comedy.

“Humor is elicited by the perception of something that seems to be unsettling, threatening, wrong, scary or anger-inducing,” said Peter McGraw, assistant professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “There’s a wonderful quote by Mark Twain that sums it up nicely: ‘The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.’ ”

Last August, McGraw co-authored a study examining why we laugh at images we consider to be morally wrong. By asking his test subjects to read offensive scenarios -- then tweaking those descriptions to see if the subjects still found them humorous -- the researchers developed their “benign violation theory.”

“Of course, things that are wrong usually make us upset. So at the same time that something is seen as a violation, it also has to be seen as benign -- that it is, in some way, OK or acceptable,” McGraw said.

That benign aspect is fueled, McGraw said, because the situation has “psychological distance” -- it’s happening to someone else, or it happened a long time ago, or that it’s so absurd, it seems obviously contrived. (This is where the old saying, "Tragedy plus time equals comedy," applies.)

Is there a demographic that seems most immune to insult and who, therefore, laughs harder at the raunchiest material?

“Young men seem to be pretty impossible to offend,” McGraw said. “As a result, a lot of things that everybody finds to be violations, they find to be benign violations.”

“It’s the frat humor,” agreed comedian Alonzo Bodden. “It all goes back to ‘Animal House’ and ‘Stripes.’

“When it’s done well, it’s funny,” Bodden said. “It’s funny because it’s so totally inappropriate.”

Bodden agrees with McGraw’s “benign violation theory.” But as a man who stands alone on stage seeking laughter, he also understands that what’s hilarious to one person, can just seem stupid to another.

“When it’s predictable or too over-the-top,” Bodden said, “when the (filmmaker or comedian feels they) have to make it so much wilder and more ridiculous, now it’s not funny anymore.”

To help draw his scientific conclusions, McGraw and his co-author, Caleb Warren, asked 36 participants to read the description of a violation. Some were aghast at the passage. But most were amused – because, to them, it seemed benign. 

The scene? A man rubs his genitals against a kitten -- which "purrs and seems to enjoy the contact."

See. Made you laugh. Well, some of you.

What's your favorite gross-out scene from a movie? Or -- can you think of a movie that went a little too far? Leave a comment telling us the movie and the scene.

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.”

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Daniel Kish is blind. But he navigates the world by issuing a stream of clicks from his mouth and then listening as the sound of the clicks echoes off buildings, objects, even landscaping to create a mental map in his head. In other words, Kish uses echolocation, much like a dolphin, or a bat.

Blind since the age of 13 months, when retinoblastoma forced doctors to remove his eyes, Kish, a 43-year-old psychologist living in Long Beach, Calif., has become a minor celebrity via You Tube and TV news reports showing him riding a bike and performing other feats considered impossible for a blind man.

Now researchers at the University of Western Ontario think they’ve partly figured out how his brain has created a work-around for his blindness. In the journal PLoS One, the researchers, led by Lore Thaler in the school’s department of psychology, report that as far as Kish’s brain is concerned, he really is “seeing” the world.

Thaler and colleagues recorded Kish and another blind echolocator outdoors. Both men could distinguish a flag pole, a tree, a car and a building. When tested inside a special non-echoing chamber that eliminates any unintentional sound, the blind men were able to sense the location of a pole within a few degrees and its angle of lean. They were able to distinguish a concave surface (actually a construction worker’s hard hat turned so the inside faced them) from a flat surface (a cube), and moving versus stationary objects.

Then Thaler played recordings of these tests while the men’s brains were imaged with a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine to map which brain regions were activated when the men heard echoes.  

Surprisingly, their auditory cortices were no more active when they heard echoes than when they heard echo-less ambient sounds. But once they heard echoes, the calcarine cortex, otherwise known as the visual cortex, lit up. Two sighted male control subjects showed no increase in visual cortex activity when exposed to echoes.

According to Thaler, “at this point the reason for the [unique] brain activity is unknown. We have to investigate this in future studies.”

Kish speculates that echoes are like individual words with minute differences between the echo from a brick wall, or a tree, or a hard hat. Each “word” is first processed in the brain’s auditory system and then sent to the visual cortex to create a corresponding image.

Whatever the mechanism, Kish thinks the revelation could be a boon to the blind. He has traveled the world as president of World Access for the Blind training other blind people to use echolocation. But the system has never been scientifically validated, leading to concerns that Kish was unique or that echolocation was a kind of trick. With this study, Kish said, “maybe we can assist the brain in its imaging. Maybe we can create better training. And with hard science maybe we can get more funding.”

It’s possible we all have latent echolocation ability. Rodents use a system of high pitched sounds to help them “see” the world and Thaler believes that “we probably all could learn to do it, some much better than others.”

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Samantha Motion / Whakatane Beacon via AP

In this photo taken on May 21 and made available by AP today, truck driver Steven McCormack gets treatment at Whakatane Hospital after an accident with an air hose in Whakatane, New Zealand.

Today, another reminder that real life is not like a cartoon: A New Zealand truck driver says his body blew up "like a balloon" after he fell onto a compressed air hose, which pierced his buttock and forced air into his body, in a situation that was surely much more horrifying than when this sort of thing happens to Wile E. Coyote.

From the AP report:

Steven McCormack was standing on his truck's foot plate Saturday when he slipped and fell, breaking a compressed air hose off an air reservoir that powered the truck's brakes.

He fell hard onto the brass fitting, which pierced his left buttock and started pumping air into his body.

"I felt the air rush into my body and I felt like it was going to explode from my foot," he told local media from his hospital bed in the town of Whakatane, on North Island's east coast.

Today, McCormack is OK after being treated at a hospital, where doctors determined that the air forcing its way into his body at 100 pounds a square inch did not enter his blood stream, but it did divide his muscle from fat.

Take a closer look at the image of McCormack recovering in the New Zealand hospital -- and more of the day's top pictures -- from our friends at Photoblog.

Follow Melissa Dahl on Twitter: @melissadahl.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

When people hear a man talk and guess he’s gay, they’re really listening to how he says his vowels, suggests new research.

In past studies, researchers have recorded homosexual and heterosexual men speaking long passages from texts of plays, and test subjects were pretty accurate in picking out the gay voices among them.

But Eric Tracy, a psychologist at Ohio State University, wanted to see just how little information people needed before they made up their mind about if a speaker was gay. He recorded a group of 36 gay and straight men speaking single syllable words, like “mass” and “soap,” and played it back to a test group of men and women.

The test subjects − volunteer college students — ranked each speaker on a scale from 1 to 7, to represent their guess about the speaker’s sexual orientation: gay (7 points) or not (1 point). The gay speakers received a score of 4.42 compared to the heterosexual speakers, who received an average score of 3.45.

Once Tracy found that his test subjects tended to perceive gay speech differently based on short words, he decided to look closer, to zero in on which part of the word was the trigger for the decision. “The thinking after that was: If they could do this for a single word, could they do it from a single letter sound from the word,” Tracy explained.

In the next round, listeners just listened to sections of the word. When they heard a combination of a consonant and a vowel for a word, such as "ma," the listeners were fairly certain in their guess, even when they were responding to an incomplete word. “When the vowel hit, people were pretty sure,” said Nicholas Sentario, a co-author on the study.

By Tracy's description, vowels spoken by gay men sounded longer, and louder.

The one sound that threw the listeners for a loop was the letter "s." When the subjects they heard the "s" sound, whose lisping is part of the stereotyped portrayal of gay speech, they seemed more likely to rank the person as gay. So, while they picked out the gay speakers correctly, they also tended to incorrectly pick the straight speakers.

Drew Rendall, a psychologist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, warns that the study makes the assumption that there is such a thing as “gay speech,” and that the test subjects were responding to traces of the flamboyant dialogue that has become the generalization and stereotype for how gay men talk.

This is one of the issues that Tracy plans to address in possible future studies. He hopes to pick test subjects and speakers from varying backgrounds, broadening the scope of this initial experiment, whose participants were mostly college students. 

Even if it does represent a small subsection of gay people, Tracy says his study might find application in places like automated voice recognition software, which could use a few tweaks when it comes to recognizing flavors and accents of male speech.

Tracy and Sentario presented their study on Monday at the conference of the Acoustical Society of America in Seattle.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Courtesty of Jessica Tracy

Here's a composite of images used in the new study. Sorry, smiling dude in the white T-shirt -- the women in this study did not find you sexually attractive.

A note to single dudes: If you're looking to pick up a woman at a bar, whatever you do -- don't smile at her.

Women are actually less sexually attracted to smiley, happy men, suggests a new University of British Columbia study, published online today in the journal Emotion. If that's surprising to you -- it was surprising to lead researcher Jessica Tracy, too. "I wouldn’t have believed it if we didn’t go out and replicate it three times," says Tracy, an assistant psychology professor at UBC.

Researchers asked more than 1,000 volunteers to rate the sexual attractiveness of hundreds of images of the opposite sex. (All were heterosexual, ages 17 to 49 years, with a median age of 21. Fifty-two percent of participants were Asian, and 48 percent were Caucasian.) In the images, the men and women pictured were demonstrating one of three emotions: happiness, pride or shame -- plus a "neutral" image thrown in there, too. They found that women ranked the smiling guys as less attractive -- but they were into the prideful and ashamed men. But the male participants were most attracted to the smiling women, and least attracted to the ones who seemed proud.

More research is needed to determine why this might be, but Tracy has a few hunches. Past research has shown that smiling increases perception of femininity, so that might be one reason smiles worked on women, but not on men. Also, "smiling indicates availability, or interest. For men, that's a really important thing to know about a woman, so it makes sense that men would find smiling really attractive," Tracy says. "For women, that's not as important. There's the general assumption that men are more generally receptive."

But the fact that women find shame more attractive may also help explain the attractiveness of the "bad boy" -- the one who seems like he can be turned around. "The bad boy who feels shame, women have always found that attractive -- that’s the James Dean look. He’s the bad boy, but he wants to change," Tracy says.

One thing to keep in mind: The study measured just sexual attractiveness, not whether women are interested in carrying on a relationship with a sullen, unsmiling dude. But Tracy adds, "If a (man's) sole aim is to be as sexually attractive as possible, smiling may not be his best bet."

Follw Melissa Dahl on Twitter: @melissadahl.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

Bye, Oprah. We'll miss you. (Some of us more than others, suggests a recent study.)

If you're one of the zillions who is tearful over the thought of life without "The Oprah Winfrey Show," now you have a scientific excuse for your sadness. (You get a scientific excuse! And you get a scientific excuse! And -- OK, that's enough.)

A recent study showed that when a favorite TV show goes off the air -- even temporarily -- its absence can leave the show's most fanatical viewers feeling lonelier. In 'Oprah's' case, we're thinking the rather emotive women featured on the blog Faces of the Last Season of Oprah will be among those having the hardest time dealing with the loss of the show, which ends its 25th and final season on Wednesday.

If you're blue over losing Oprah -- or the characters from shows-gone-by like "Lost" or "Arrested Development" -- that feeling can be explained by a term coined in the 1950s by a pair of psychiatrists: You've developed a "parasocial," or one-sided, relationship with the people that live inside your TV (or inside your computer screen, if Hulu is more your thing).

"We develop these relationships with certain characters -- and it doesn't have to be a fictional character; it could be a TV personality, like Oprah," says Emily Moyer-Guse, an assistant professor of communications at Ohio State University. She's the lead author of the new study, which was published in the journal Mass Communication and Society.

Related: Oprah's 10 most memorable moments

"We develop them over time -- it's actually part of the normal way we watch and enjoy TV," says Moyer-Guse. "We watch these shows, and we start to think of them like a friend." Not to say many of us actually believe we're friends with Oprah or other TV personalities; but the people in the media we choose to spend our time with likely have qualities we'd seek out in friendships. "It’s kind of the same things that drive real relationships with people," she explains.

Back to Moyer-Guse's new study: Remember the TV writers' strike in 2007 and 2008? Moyer-Guse was missing her favorite show, "Lost," and wondered how others were handling the temporary loss of their favorite programs. So in the spring of 2008, she and former Ohio State graduate student Julie Lather rounded up 403 undergrads to answer an online questionnaire, all about TV.

They asked the volunteers about their "relationship" with their favorite TV characters, instructing the students to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 how much they agreed with the sentence, "My favorite character makes me feel comfortable, as if I am with a friend." Other questions were meant to suss out how much the show meant to the students, by rating from 1 to 5 how much they agreed with a statement like this one: "Now that my favorite television show is off the air, I feel more lonely."

Related: Imagining a world without Oprah

They were also asked why they watched TV -- for companionship? To relax? To escape? Finally, the students were asked what they did with their newfound free time, now that their shows were off the air.

People who said they had deeper "friendships" with their favorite TV characters also said they felt lonelier in the characters' absence. And the students who said they watched TV for companionship reported the most distress related to their shows' temporary absences. And, no, people didn't use this break in the TV season to do crazy things like exercise, garden or read -- most said they just watched reruns, or surfed the Internet.

Moyer-Guse's research didn't look at any shows that have been on the air as long as Oprah's has, but it's clear that the longer a person has been watching a show, the stronger their parasocial bond with the program and its characters will be.

"Part of what drives it is the predictability, and the knowing that this is someone that is always going to be there, and you know what to expect from this individual," Moyer-Guse says. "For a whole generation of the population, it’s something that’s always been on, every day."

Is there a TV show you're still mourning? Leave a comment telling us what it is, and why you miss it.

Follow Melissa Dahl on Twitter @melissadahl.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Seeing a needle in a medical setting is enough to make even the toughest of us faint. 

People who are terrified of needles get the same heart racing, shallow breathing and nerve jangling reactions seen in other intense fears. But the tendency to faint is what sets some medical phobias apart from, say, being petrified of heights or spiders.

"The possibility of fainting is the most pronounced difference. You don't see that very often in other phobias," says Martin Antony, a psychology professor at Ryerson University in Toronto and co-author of the book "Overcoming Medical Phobias."

By one estimate, more than half the people with a full-blown needle phobia and nearly three-quarters of folks with an extreme aversion to blood have a history of passing out in these situations. 

A fear of needles and injections may involve the thought, sight, smells surrounding or pain from getting them. It can range from a mild dread to a moderate case of the heebie-jeebies to a full-blown phobia in which people refuse to have their blood drawn or avoid medical care entirely.  

 As medical phobias go, being afraid of needles or disgusted by them is fairly common.

However, needle-phobes aren't keeling over because they're wimps or scardey-cats. "They've inherited a genetic predisposition to fainting combined with a negative experience that triggers the fear," explains Antony.

 A majority of needle-phobes have a parent, sibling or child with the condition, and many have inherited what's called a vasovagal reflex in response to fear. When they see a needle or get a shot, this triggers the vagus nerve, which widens blood vessels, slows heart rate, and drops blood pressure. Ultimately, they may lose consciousness often for a couple of seconds.

Both needle phobia and the vasovagal reflex tend to run in families. But a fear of needles is also brought on by a negative experience in a doctor or dentist's office usually before the age of 10. 

 What's also tricky about needle phobia is that it can affect your health or be life threatening if needed medical tests, insulin injections, immunizations, surgery or doctor's visits are avoided.

 Psychological treatment for needle phobia tends to be brief, but it's also unpleasant because you're exposed to the source of your fear, explains Antony. You might begin by talking about needles with a therapist, then looking at photos of them, and then watching videos of people getting their shots or being hooked up to IVs. Gradually, you work your way up to the real thing.

 For those prone to fainting, they are first taught a technique called "applied tension," where they learn to tense the muscles in the body to increase blood pressure and avoid swooning. After practicing and becoming successful at this exercise, they then move on to gradual exposure. 

 Besides a psychological approach, some needle-phobes seek out pain patches or topical numbing agents before getting a shot or medical procedure. Others turn to tranquilizers, although these drugs may not be a good idea for those who faint.

 Have you tried to overcome a fear of needles? What's worked? 

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Jason Merritt / Getty Images

Hey, Arnold: We seeeee you.

If you haven't been able to tear your eyes away from all the Sperminator stories this week, new research suggests a reason why: When you've heard negative things about a person, his face is more likely to catch your eye. Finally, science provides an excuse for all the time you waste on celebrity gossip sites.

"What we know about someone influences not only how we feel and think about them, but also whether or not we see them in the first place," write the study authors, led by Lisa Barrett, a Northeastern University psychologist. Most of us believe that what we see influences what we feel -- but in this case, what the volunteers felt about a person's face influenced whether they saw it at all.

Here's how they did it: Researchers showed participants two pictures, one in each eye. "To understand the experiments, you’ll need a little background information: When I show you two pictures, one in each eye, you will see only one of them. That's just the way the brain works," Barret explains. "It might flip back and forth, but you will only see one at a time. It’s involuntary."

They showed participants an image of a neutral, androgynous face in one eye, and an image of a house in the other. If they'd told the volunteers something negative about the face -- for example, that the person threw a chair at a classmate -- the volunteers were more likely to focus on the face than if they hadn't been told any gossip. "There is something special about this negative information -- you’ll be more conscious of a face when you know something bad about it," Barrett says. "So gossip has an effect on how your visual system works."

The findings also reveal some surprises about how our visual system works: Past research has suggested that it doesn't matter if you dislike -- that shouldn't influence whether you see it or not. But this study suggests the opposite.

Also, it tells us something surprising about how the visual system itself works.  Scientists have found that when you show separate images to the two eyes, as we did in these experiments, it is supposed to be a test only of the visual information available – what you know, or your prior experience, is supposed to have no influence at all.   If a picture is bright, or if it has high contrast (dark and light), you are more likely to see it.  Whether you dislike something is not supposed to influence whether you see it or not, but it does. 

It's a fun psych study -- but as for real-life implications, Barret suggests that this phenomenon may have evolved to protect us from liars and cheaters. "If we see them for longer, we can gather more information about their behavior," she says.

Follow Melissa Dahl on Twitter: @melissadahl.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

There's good news for germaphobes this graduation season: As you shake hands with a school official when receiving your diploma, you can do so with little fear of picking up any harmful bacteria in the process, suggests new research.

In this first-of-its-kind study, researchers looked at 14 elementary or high school principals and college deans in Maryland who would be giving out diplomas. Before the ceremony, both the left and right hands of participants were cultured for bacteria after they cleaned them with hand sanitizer.

Although school officials used only their right hand to grip a graduate's hands, both hands were again cultured for germs after graduation. The results appear in the June issue of the Journal of School Nursing.

In more than 5,200 handshakes given out during these May graduations, researchers found that only one school official had a disease-causing bacteria, methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) on the right hand before the ceremony. After the graduation, MSSA was found on a left hand and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was discovered on a right hand.

MRSA is a type of staph bacteria that can infect skin and other parts of the body and is resistant to some antibiotics.

"I was surprised to find anything growing on hands a minute after school officials used hand sanitizer," says lead author Dr. David Bishai, a professor in the department of population, family, and reproductive health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. "But 93% of the time, I could find bacteria growing on a hand that was just sanitized." He suspects that products designed to kill 99% of germs still leave thousands more remaining on the skin.

Based on their findings, the researchers estimate the chance of hand contamination at graduation is 1 in 5,209 handshakes. This rate is 100 times lower than a health worker's odds of contamination with MRSA when caring for hospitalized patients.

Bishai says seeing staph bacteria on hands, even the methicillin-resistant strain was expected, since it's present in the nostrils and in cuts and scrapes that are healing. Yet researchers hadn't anticipated seeing so few disease-causing bacteria overall and were also surprised they found no fecal bacteria, the kind seen when hands aren't washed after going to the bathroom.

As for why the left hand of one school official had staph bacteria even though it did not shake any graduate's hands, researchers suspect the hand likely picked it up by touching lecterns, diplomas and furniture during the event. 

What's Bishai advice to this year's crop of graduates and educators as well as politicians and clergy, whose job often finds them extending a hand?

"Shaking hands is probably not as dangerous as you think," he points out. While the risk of exposure to disease-causing germs is not huge, it makes sense to "keep your hands clean, but don't get neurotic about shaking hands."

In other words, get out there and grip-and-grin for the camera and enjoy the celebration.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Getty Images

Don't worry about these guys. You'll know what to do, thanks to the CDC.

It looks like the serious folks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found a whole new way to make disaster preparedness sexy: Cue the zombies.

A Monday post in the CDC’s typically ho-hum Public Health Matters blog blew up this week, making “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse” a hot topic, at least by government standards.

The quirky post by Dave Daigle, a longtime CDC spokesman, has drawn 23,000 hits since Monday, the highest-ever for a CDC blog, he said. For a while, it even crashed the site. More important, it was tagged as a Top Tweet by the folks at Twitter, an honor that seemed to delight Daigle, a 52-year-old father of four.

“I’ve never been accused of being hip,” said Daigle, the associate director for communications at the Public Health Preparedness and Response Center at CDC.

Daigle, one of several authors for the blog, said he was searching for a way to raise awareness about the need to prepare for the worst, particularly in the wake of recent tornados and on the eve of hurricane season.

“Essentially the kits and many of the messages are the same,” said Daigle. “We have had a hard time engaging people.”

It’s not yet clear whether the threat of zombies will compel people to stockpile food, hoard water and put together disaster kits, as the agency suggests. But if this PR strategy works, Daigle says we can expect more crazy antics from those jokesters at the CDC.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Graduation is a big step for any 22-year-old, but for Austin Whitney, it was huge: The UC Berkeley grad, a paraplegic since 2007, stood from his wheelchair and walked across stage at Saturday's commencement ceremony.

He did it using an "exoskeleton," a kind of robotic device that is worn on the legs, which look and act almost like a pair of leg braces. It was built by a team of UC Berkeley engineers. When Whitney reached the stage, he pressed a button on his walker that signaled the exoskeleton to step forward -- and the crowd burst into cheers.

“It was overpowering,” Whitney said at a news conference after the commencement ceremony. “I’ve stood in the [exoskeleton] machine a lot of times before, but I knew that it would be different up here (on stage), and it truly was.”

Whitney's life was changed forever the summer after high school: In July 2007, after a night of drinking with friends, he drove his car into a tree -- a crash that severed his spinal cord right above his hip.

He transferred to UC Berkeley as a sophomore, and in the fall of 2010 he began working with engineers at the university on his plans for his dramatic commencement ceremony walk. In fact, Homayoon Kazerooni, the professor of mechanical engineering who led the engineering team behind the exoskeleton, even named the device "Austin."

Follow Melissa Dahl on Twitter: @melissadahl.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

By Randy Dotinga

The 58-year-old woman had tried just about everything to quit cigarettes, but she kept on puffing away. Then she had a stroke. Suddenly, her urge to smoke disappeared.

This recent case out of Cleveland of a stroke actually helping someone's health -- if only amid a blizzard of nasty effects -- suggests that our addictive urges aren't only a matter of conscious choice.

"Clearly, some strokes give us an insight into the biological basis of our behavior," said Dr. Cathy Sila, a neurologist at University Hospitals Neurological Institute, where the patient was treated. "There's sometimes more to smoking than just 'I choose to do this.' It's telling us something that we've got to figure out to help people quit smoking."

The woman's medical saga began when her family noticed she was acting strangely and sought help. Doctors diagnosed a stroke. She underwent a procedure to reduce a blockage in a neck artery and later went home. 

A month after her stroke, the woman said she didn't care about smoking anymore and wasn't even tempted by being around other smokers. She also turned apathetic in general, a factor that could explain her lack of interest in cigs. 

Her stroke may not go down in the annals of medical research. But other strokes have taught scientists about the workings of the brain for a century, said Dr. Brett Kissela, a neurologist at the University of Cincinnati. "By seeing what functions are lost from many, many strokes, we can learn about what each part of the brain does. This is similar to taking out one piece of a car at a time and then testing to see what doesn't work."

So what happened to this patient? The stroke may have damaged the frontal lobe, the place that holds "your ability to plan in advance and multi-task," Sila said. Or it could have disrupted the pleasure circuit in the brain, eliminating the woman's ability to get a kick out of smoking.

Whatever the case, things could change: Within months of a stroke, many patients recover the skills that they've lost. Patients tend to settle into a permanent state -- with or without stroke-related problems -- after about a year, Sila said.

In some rare cases like this one, stroke-related changes can be for the better. Sila recalls the case of an older patient who underwent a drastic personalty change after his stroke. "He was described by his family as an SOB: really mean, angry and bossy, not a very loving and nurturing kind of man. When he had a stroke, he totally chilled. He required help, assistance and supervision, but they liked him a lot better."

Call it that most unusual of medical disorders: a stroke of luck.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Innies, outies, in-betweenies. We had such an overwhelming response to our recent post on a new study examining belly button bacteria (ew) that we decided we didn't know nearly enough about our navels, and must investigate further.

Our incredibly scientific reader poll showed that 88 percent of msnbc.com readers have innies. For those of you with outies or something in between, who are unhappy about it -- a plastic surgeon can "sculpt" a new navel for you with a little nip and tuck -- and at a cost of several grand. Belly button surgery, called umbilicoplasty, is not just for the rich and famous. And people willing to go under the knife aren't necessarily underwear models, belly dancers or strippers who regularly expose their navels.

"It's usually done for cosmetic reasons and it takes about 45 minutes," says Dr. Curtis Cetrulo, Jr., a plastic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The procedure can be done as part of a tummy tuck or in people who have had umbilical hernias and need to have a hole in the abdominal wall surgically repaired. It's often done on women whose skin hasn't bounced back after pregnancy.

Some people want to remodel their belly button simply because they loathe its look, whether it's the shape, size, or protruding skin. Perhaps a woman had an innie all her life, but after giving birth, it became more of an "in betweenie" because the tissue in the abdominal wall has stretched. Worse still (in some people's minds), it has become -- or always was -- an outie and sticks out. Heaven forbid!

Created by the snip of the umbilical cord at birth, your belly button gets its appearance when the stalk from the leftover cord dries up leaving an abdominal scar.

Whether you have an innie or an outie has nothing to do with the handiwork of the physician who delivered you, explains Cetrulo. It's related to the presence of space between the skin and the abdominal wall, he says.

If the soft tissue protrudes through, you've got an outie, which is much rarer in people than the more-desired innie. 

Cetrulo has never had a patient request an outie and says most people ask for "a vertical dime slot of a belly button that's small and thin."

Reconstructing a belly button is done under local anesthesia on an outpatient basis and results in a little pain from soreness afterwards.

Although many umbilicoplasties are done as part of a tummy tuck (and statistics for this are not kept separately), there were more than 2,100 reconstructions done in the US without a tummy tuck in 2005, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. (This is the last year the Society reported statistics for this procedure.) That figure in 2005 put the number of people having belly button surgery in a category comparable to those receiving butt implants.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Was traffic really that bad, or did he just leave late (again)? Did her phone battery truly die, or did she forget to call? And do you actually look as fat in those pants as you suspected?

Overly suspicious people, meet R. Edward Geiselman. He's a professor of psychology at UCLA -- and he's spent the last several years studying the best ways to catch a liar. Geiselman and three former UCLA undergrads believe that -- after analyzing 60 studies on detecting deceit and conducting their own research -- they've pinpointed the best ways to catch even the most fabulous of fabulists.

Their findings were published this week in the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry. Geiselman's work is tailored for law enforcement officers, but "anyone ... could use our techniques," he says. We spoke to the human lie detector about the best ways to spot the liars in your life. (Geiselman would like us to note here that these are all simply red flags, not surefire indicators that someone isn't telling the truth.)

They offer only the bare bones of a story. This is somewhat counterintuitive, Geiselman admits. (The lady doth protest too much, etc.) But as Geiselman explains, "Most liars do not like to tell you too much," in part, because they know they'll have to remember those fabrications later. And some liars fear that if they told an elaborate story, it would make the person listening assume they'd made it up, he explains.

They offer unsolicited details about the little they've shared.  If they tell you what they were wearing, or drinking, or driving, but you didn't ask -- you may be justified in raising an eyebrow.

They answer your question with a question. Question: "Where were you last night?" Answer: "Where was I last night?" Geiselman explains that other tells are starting to answer slowly, then speeding up their speech (once they've got their story straight in their own head). They also may hesitate, speak in sentence fragments, or stop and start repeatedly. "Either they're tired, or they're being deceptive," he says.

They press their lips together and look away. "Reliably, that indicates something going on," Geiselman explains. "It means they have to think really hard about the answer." Liars also tend to gesture inward -- as in, fiddling with their clothes or their hair.

What's the biggest lie you've ever told? Did you get away with it?

Follow Melissa Dahl on Twitter @melissadahl.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

All those years of playing an instrument, practicing scales, and rehearsing regularly can payoff in midlife and beyond, new research finds. The advantage musicians have may well be between their ears.

This study found that people with four or more decades of musical training appear to have sharper thinking and hearing skills than their less musically inclined peers. Better yet, these benefits seem to buffer against some age-related memory and auditory declines later in life.

In the experiment, published in the May 11 issue of PLoS One, scientists tested 18 musicians and 19 non-musicians (ages 45 to 65) who all had normal hearing. They measured their ability to pick up speech in a noisy place, which becomes harder as you get older, and is a skill that other research has shown to be improved in younger adults (ages 18 to 30) with musical experience.

 In addition, scientists evaluated participants auditory and visual working memory after they heard something or saw an image on a computer, and also measured their auditory temporal processing, or how quickly their ears could correctly detect a particular tone at different hearing levels.

Musicians were better able to hear in more challenging noise environments and also had significantly better auditory working memory. Non-musicians could only perform at similar levels in tests of visual working memory.

Researchers were surprised to find in musicians that "the effects on hearing speech in noise, working memory, and temporal processing were strong and not subtle," says neurobiologist Nina Kraus, PhD, director of the auditory neuroscience lab at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and the study's lead author.

Although the musicians in this study played the piano, violin, cello, and various brass or woodwind instruments, Kraus suspects similar effects would be seen in those with other musical talents from electric guitar to drums.

"Music fine-tunes the nervous system," explains Kraus. In other words, musical training helps sharpen all the faculties involved with taking in sounds, holding them in memory, and relating to them physically. "Music experience has a profound effect on how we interact with the world through our hearing," she says.

That's good news for older adults with extensive musical backgrounds, whose nervous systems have been shaped by their lifelong experience in making music. It has formed more "sound-to-meaning connections," suggests Kraus, and that ultimately affects how our hearing works in everyday listening situations.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

So, what this attractive-yet-informative Saul Bass-style infographic from Medical Billing and Coding is saying is that I can wait for death standing up or sitting down. If I sit, I'll not only be more comfortable, I'll also have a shorter wait. Win-win!  

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

More on the annoying way we live now:

• You sitting down? Experts say it'll kill you
• Why your desk job is slowly killing you
• Creepy lip-syncing kids guilt moms off Facebook

Helen A.S. Popkin is a death-obsessive who enjoys reclining as well as animated motion picture title sequences by American graphic designers of the mid-century. Join her on Facebook and/or Twitter, won't you?

Reuters file

Osama bin Laden, seen here in a 1998 photo, has long been thought to have Marfan syndrome, a connective tissue disorder. The rumor is back following the terror leader's capture and killing.

Amid all the news about Osama bin Laden’s private life -- the home videos, the dyed beard, the reports of a medicine chest stocked with Avena syrup either to soothe a sour stomach or rev a flagging libido – comes a renewed rumor about the terror leader’s health.

Within days of the raid by Navy SEALS at a Pakistani compound, skeptics were resurfacing claims that it wasn’t actually a gunshot to the head last week that killed bin Laden at all. It was Marfan syndrome, a rare connective tissue disease that can cause disfigurement and sudden death.

That was the theory from Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a former state department official and apparent conspiracy theorist, who alleged years ago that bin Laden actually died in 2001 from the genetic disorder some claim affected Abraham Lincoln. His comments were broadcast last week on The Alex Jones syndicated radio show.

Back then, after the 9/11 terror attacks, medical experts weighed in on bin Laden’s tall, frame, lanky limbs and long face, all classic physical symptoms of Marfan syndrome. The disorder is also characterized by less visible problems such as severe nearsightedness, joint troubles and heart problems that can lead to the sudden rupture of the aorta.

“He is Marfanoid,” Dr. Richard Devereux was quoted as telling Salon.com nearly a decade ago. “He seems to have long fingers and long arms. His head appears to be elongated and his face narrow … It’s certainly conceivable that he has the Marfan syndrome and could be evaluated for it.”

Devereux, a New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center expert who treats patients with Marfan syndrome, doesn’t want to talk about bin Laden now, a hospital spokesman said.

Related: What was in medicine chests at bin Laden compound?

But Dr. Hal Dietz, a geneticist at  the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who first mapped Marfan mutations, said the theory isn’t any more valid now than it was then.

True, bin Laden had some physical characteristics linked to Marfan syndrome, which affects about 1 in 5,000 people.

“He was quite tall and he had a long, narrow face,” Dietz said.

But bin Laden didn’t have deep-set, downward-slanting eyes of those with Marfan syndrome. He had no skeletal deformities and no evidence of heart problems that might have resulted in an aortic tear or rupture. There seems to have been no sign of the dominant genetic disorder in his children, Dietz said.

In fact, Dietz – who is so familiar with the signs he often spots people with Marfan in public places like restaurants and theme parks – says he wouldn’t have flagged bin Laden as a potential patient at all.

“I think it’s pure speculation with minimal basis in fact,” Dietz said.

With bin Laden, however, it'll likely take more than mere facts to put this rumor -- or any other -- to rest.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

MARIO ANZUONI / Reuters

Johnny Depp poses at the premiere of "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., on May 7.

By Randy Dotinga

When it comes to watching his own "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie in three dimensions, actor Johnny Depp's vision isn't exactly shipshape. "I'm unable to see in 3-D. I can’t -- my eyes don't see in 3-D. I have a weird eye," Depp told "Access Hollywood."

That's certainly not the only weird thing about Depp, who usually seems to have more dimensions than he knows what to do with. However, he does share it with millions of Americans, many of whom have no idea they can't see like everyone else until they walk into a 3-D movie and get discombobulated big time.

Harvard Medical School neurobiology professor Dr. Margaret S. Livingstone, who studies vision, suspects that Depp suffers from stereoblindness, which means his eyes aren't aligned properly and can't fully see in three dimensions.

As many as 20 percent of the population may not be able to fully see in three dimensions, said Dr. Kenneth J. Ciuffreda, a professor of optometry at the New York's State College of Optometry. Some are cross-eyed or side-eyed: "You have a disconnect between where your eyes want to focus and where the two eyes together want to point," Ciuffreda said.

Related: Why watching 'Avatar' can feel like eating bad mushrooms

You might assume people would realize their vision is out of whack before they walk into a 3-D movie and can't see anything clearly except gaping plot holes. That's not the case: It may take an uncomfortable movie viewing to open their eyes. 

"They think everyone sees the same way as they do. They learn to compensate in many ways to adapt to their problem," said Dr. Brad Habermehl, president of an organization that promotes eye exercises as a treatment for certain vision conditions.

People with stereoblindness don't necessarily lose all perception of depth and three dimensions. Some famous people, like Babe Ruth and Rembrandt, were "wall eyed" -- one eye looked outward -- but they still managed just fine (and even better than fine) because their other eye took up the slack.

It's possible to develop stereoblindness as an adult, and that's absolutely noticeable. "It is much harder to navigate and reach for things," Harvard's Livingstone said. "My husband lost stereovision as an adult -- he lost vision in one eye --  and he trips on curbs and pours wine on the table."

What to do? Eye exercises ("vision therapy") and special eyeglasses may help in some cases, although some people don't need them unless they're doing something that requires sharp 3-D vision like threading needles or working with models.

If you absolutely, positively need to see a 3-D movie even though you're stereoblind -- perhaps due to an insistent spouse who wants your company no matter what -- there's an option just for you. You can buy special glasses for $10 that will convert the 3-D to 2-D. If you still get a headache, rest assured it probably has something to do with the bad acting, not your bad vision.

Want more weird health news? "Like" The Body Odd on Facebook.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

The way your significant other chews. Your co-worker's ringtone. People who spell "definitely" "definately." Videos that won't stop "buffering." Traffic. "Halfalogues."Farmville.

You know what bugs you. But do you know why? In the new book "Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us," two science journalists attempt to answer exactly that. We spoke to Joe Palca, an NPR science correspondent, and Flora Lichtman, multimedia editor for NPR's Science Friday, to find out why certain things drive us nuts.

Q: What on earth inspired you guys to research the science of annoyance?
A:  You know, I'm one of these people that's sort of chronically annoyed. But I was riding (on the subway) from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and the guy next to me pulls out a nail clipper and just keeps at it for 10 stops. My blood pressure starts to rise, I'm sweating, I'm thinking, "Why am I having this enormous reaction to something so trivial?" But being trained in science journalism, there's this hope that science can explain everything, including our own weird behavior, and that's really where it started. -- FL

Q: Are there any universal annoyances -- things that bug all of us?
A: One of the ones we talk about in the book is fingernails on a chalkboard. A few researchers from Northwestern looked into this question by analyzing the frequency of a fingernail scraping sound. It resembles maybe a primate warning call, so we have this encoded, averse reaction to it.

One other example we looked at was skunk spray. This is kind of a super annoyance -- the suggestion that a smell is coming can ward off a 500-pound bear from a 15-pound little furball. All it has to do is give an indication that a smell is on the way, and these giant predators cower in fear. It's not like skunk spray is really dangerous; it's really just the stench. One theory is it mimics the sulfur smell you find in areas that have no oxygen. Smells seem universal, but we talked to people who actually like the smell of skunk, because it reminded them of being at a picnic or something. So it's quite hard to find something that's universally annoying to everyone. -- FL

We postulate that cell phones are a modern universal annoyance. An overheard conversation is really hard to ignore -- there actually is a little bit of scientific research on this, why we’re drawn into these conversations, and why we can’t ignore them. -- JP

Q: So what makes something annoying?
A: One of the key things about what's annoying is what it's not: It's not deadly, it's not lethal -- it's minor. There are three characteristics: Unpredictable, in the sense that you get on the subway and you can't know or even control that the guy next to you is going to pull out a nail clipper. The second thing is it's unpleasant. I can't tell you what's going to be unpleasant to you, but as long as it's unpleasant to you, it's potentially annoying. The third is an uncertain duration. There's this optimism of, it's gotta stop sometime, but it's the uncertainty of when. And then there's "terminal annoyance" -- you become annoyed with yourself for being annoyed. There are unconfirmed reports of heads exploding. -- JP

Q: Could there ever be an upside to irritation?
A: I talked to some emotion researchers that say there are no bad emotions. Maybe it prevents you from doing something that thwarts your goals. If you get really annoyed during traffic, it's probably to your benefit that you avoid driving in rush hour. We also looked at chemical irritants, these things that in small doses are not dangerous -- like wasabi, or onion juice in your eye -- so this feeling of being irritated keeps you from exposing yourself to too much of something (that might be harmful). -- FL

One example we use is a baby crying -- the baby wants to annoy you so you will attend to its need. -- JP

Q: Is there a personality type who is more prone to being annoyed?
A: What we found is that a lot of annoyance is about things being out of your control. So if you tend toward liking to have things managed in your life, maybe annoyances are more acute for you.  -- FL

There are some diseases that tend to make people more easily annoyed. With Huntington's, before you start developing the painful muscle problems that come with the disease, you seem to become more irritated. And people with depression are more prone to becoming more irritable. -- JP

Q: We have to ask: What’s your biggest pet peeve?
A: My biggest annoyance for sure is when I get annoyed with myself for being annoyed.  -- FL

Unexplained delays I really find infuriating. Somebody knows why this plane isn't taking off, but they're not telling me. I don't know if I'm going to be sitting here for five minutes or an hour. -- JP

Your turn: What bugs you, and why? (We're annoyed somebody had this book idea before we did.)

Follow Melissa Dahl on Twitter @melissadahl.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Fuse / Getty Images/Fuse

By Randy Dotinga:

Ear infections are the the bane of many childhoods, and they can cause problems ranging from vertigo and even deafness. Now, a new study from Australia hints that they may explain why so many kids down under seem to lack a full ability to properly taste food.

Whether ears have anything to do with them or not, taste disorders are common here in the U.S. too, and not just among kids. Millions of Americans suffer from a diminished sense of taste, smell or both.

You may be wishing that you had this problem, especially if you've been trying to get rid of those 15 extra pounds since the Reagan Administration. If food wasn't so darn delicious (I'm looking at you, Sara Lee) you might eat less of it, right?

Well, maybe. But you'd still get hungry and may even suffer from "phantom" tastes, like a phantom limb, that are unpleasant and hard to get rid of.

Taste problems pose another problem that might not have occurred to you: They rob people of the ability to savor food and everything that goes with it.

"It really interferes with their joy of eating with people at a table. You feel left out," said Marion Frank, a professor who studies taste and smell at the University of Connecticut. "They fear vulnerability to social isolation."

Those with taste problems may have medical problems that add to their sense of being alone. Head injuries can cause people to lose their sense of taste and also of smell, which plays a major role in how we detect the flavors of food. Flu, chemotherapy, thyroid problems, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders can rob a person of the ability to smell or taste too, said Dr. Robert Henkin, director of the Taste and Smell Clinic in Washington D.C.   

The Australian study raises the specter of another culprit -- those pesky and painful ear infections. Researchers found that 10-12 percent of kids studied (including native Aborigines) had taste disorders, and many couldn't detect sweetness. The lead author is quoted as saying middle-ear infections, which are especially common in Aboriginal kids, may be the cause.

"The nerve that goes to the front of the tongue for taste passes through the ear, and it can be destroyed if there's swelling and a lot of fluid in there when people are very young," the University of Connecticut's Frank said. "That's a very well-documented phenomenon."

The kids in Australia seem to be unusual: it's fairly rare for people to lose one kind of taste in particular. As you may remember from high school science class, we detect sour, salty, bitter, and sweet. There's one more whose addition to the list is fairly recent: it's umami, which is described as savory.

The good news is that you aren't necessarily doomed to a life of dull food if you lose the ability to taste or smell.

Treatments include hormones, magnetic stimulation of the brain, vitamins and surgery, Henkin said, adding that many patients don't actually have the severed nerves that their physicians assume causes their loss of taste. "We can help these people," he said. "These problems can be evaluated and treated."

Just remember: if your taste comes back, you may realize once again why you can't stand your mom's meatloaf. Luckily, it's a lot harder to lose the ability to pretend.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.