For one young man, the most terrifying part of being on a roller coaster happened two weeks after his ride. That's when the 22-year-old African American started having some weird symptoms.

He had headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and trouble walking, according to a case report in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. After two days of feeling miserable, he headed to the emergency room.

The doctors who saw this previously healthy guy noticed that he was walking like he was drunk and his eyes had an up-and-down movement. It was clear his problems weren't alcohol-related and a scan showed swelling on the right side of his brain.

An MRI found that his vertebral artery, one of the main arteries in the neck, had a flap-like tear in its inner wall, says Dr. Davi Sa Leitao, the case study's lead author. This injury to his neck artery caused a clot to form, and the clot dislodged and clogged a smaller blood vessel feeding the cerebellum.

In other words, he had suffered a stroke in a region of the brain responsible for balance, equilibrium, and coordination.

The most likely culprits for a stroke in a young adult are high blood pressure, which the guy didn't have; a genetic abnormality that weakens the blood vessels, or some type of trauma, meaning a physical injury.

Upon questioning, the man mentioned riding a roller coaster two weeks before his symptoms began.

"We believe the roller coaster ride triggered the tear in the blood vessel in his neck and the subsequent stroke," says Sa Leitao, an internal medicine physician at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. "When you ride a roller coaster, your full body is restrained but your neck is still free to move in all directions," he points out.

Although rare, a roller coaster's speeding up and slowing down, and abrupt changes in direction may apply force to the neck and injure one of its blood vessels.

"It's the same rationale when you have a rear-end motor vehicle accident. Your neck goes forward and backwards, what we call the whiplash mechanism," explains Sa Leitao

As for the two-week lag between the ride and the start of symptoms, Sa Leitao suspects the tear in the man's neck artery was small, so it took more time for the clot to develop. This clot eventually clogged the artery causing a stroke.

The guy made a full recovery, but his roller-coaster riding days are behind him.

It's hard to know who may be at risk for developing complications from riding a roller coaster, and they're generally considered safe. But if you have symptoms -- dizziness, nausea, vomiting, trouble walking, neck pain, or vision problems -- after riding one that don't go away, seek immediate medical attention, recommends Sa Leitao.

Readers: Share your roller coaster horror story or tell us why you love them.

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Hiccups are annoying, especially when they just won't quit. If they last more than two days, nonstop hiccups may occasionally be a sign of a medical problem, as they were for one 68-year-old man.

In an extremely rare and highly unusual case, constant hiccups turned out to be the man's only symptom of a heart attack. Cases like this are so few and far between that it was last known to occur more than 50 years ago.

The gentleman went to the emergency room because he had been hiccuping every 4 to 6 seconds for four days. No matter what he tried, his hiccups hadn't let up, according to the case study in the January issue of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

The man had no other health complaints. His blood pressure was a little high and doctors did a chest X-ray to look for a possible tumor, but found none. So they gave him a muscle relaxant and another drug known to ease "singultus," the medical term for hiccups.

Neither of the drugs helped the hiccups, but doctors assured him they would go away on their own.

Two days later, he was back in the emergency room still hiccuping. Since he was an older man with several risk factors for heart disease -- diabetes, smoking, and high blood pressure -- he was given an electrocardiogram (EKG), that showed several heart rhythm abnormalities. Blood tests revealed a high level of a protein released when the heart muscle has recently been damaged, confirming his diagnosis of a small heart attack.

There had been little reason for doctors to suspect a heart attack since the patient had no chest pain, no difficulty breathing, no discomfort, and no nausea, dizziness, or sweating -- just constant hiccups. But as soon he was put on heart medications, his hiccups were gone.

Dr. Joshua Davenport, an emergency physician at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City and the case study's lead author says he honestly doesn't know why the man had none of the traditional heart attack warning signs. "But many people, especially diabetics, can have unusual presentations for heart problems," he explains.

Davenport is quick to point out that hiccups are not typically caused by something severe like a heart attack without a person having other concerning symptoms. "Our case was an exception and very rare," he admits.

As for why a heart problem might have triggered hiccups, Davenport says that when the heart is not getting enough oxygen because less blood is flowing through a diseased artery, this can irritate the nerves of the diaphragm, the breathing muscle underneath the heart.

Hiccups are caused by a spasmodic contraction of the diaphragm, typically on the left side, says Dr. David Johnson, a professor of medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. The more common reasons why nerves running to the diaphragm get irritated and cause hiccups are a distended stomach, drinking alcohol or lots of soda, chewing gum or smoking, explains Johnson, a past president of the American College of Gastroenterology.

From time to time, he'll see cases of nonstop hiccups that may be triggered by acid reflux. Ongoing hiccups can also be due to a tumor in the head, neck, or lungs, or infections in the brain or ear, because nerves that go to the diaphragm may begin in the brain or neck.
The good news is that most hiccups don't last long and are easy to treat. His favorite remedy? A spoonful of sugar.

What's the worst case of hiccups you've ever had? What'd you do to get rid of them? Tell us on Facebook.

More from Body Odd:

Man with two hearts survives double-sized attack

'Bad juju' can foretell heart attacks

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Moving in sync makes people think alike too

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plos.org

A patient shows the scarring scabs attributed to the odd skin disease Morgellons, in which victims say fibers and other material extrudes from sores on their skin.

A strange disease in which sufferers say they find fibers, fuzz and other debris sprouting from sores on their skin is not contagious and has no clear cause, the largest-ever study of the condition called Morgellons has found.

Government health officials on Wednesday released the results of a four-year, nearly $600,000 review that found no infectious or environmental link to Morgellons, which reportedly plagues thousands of people in the United States and other countries.

“It’s a negative, but it really limits and narrows down the field of possibilities,” said Mark L. Eberhard, director of the division of parasitic diseases and malaria at the Centers for Disease Control and Infection. “By removing a couple of the big players -- infections and the environment -- that still leaves some wide-open territory about what could be the causes.”

The new study should reassure sufferers who worried about infecting family and friends, he added.

Researchers studied 115 people who reported Morgellons-like symptoms from the Kaiser Permanente health system in Northern California from July 2006 to June 2008, amounting to a rate of 3.6 cases of the disorder per 100,000 people. They conducted extensive interviews, tested patients' blood and urine, and studied biopsies of skin samples. It’s considered the first detailed, population-based analysis of “unexplained dermopathy,” which is how researchers describe Morgellons.

The CDC and Kaiser Permanente initiated the study in January 2008, after CDC officials received hundreds of calls and e-mails about an odd, fiber-sprouting skin disease. By the time the study was launched, the agency had heard from some 1,200 people. The mysterious disorder was dubbed Morgellons in 2002 by a Pennsylvania mother of a toddler who reportedly suffered from the disorder first identified in 17^th century France.

But scientists writing in the journal PLoS ONE also found nothing remarkable about the threads and fuzzballs patients reported emerging from lesions on their skin, which laboratory analysis showed were cotton or other fibers, possibly from clothing. They also couldn’t explain the creepy-crawling, tingling or pins-and-needles feeling that many sufferers said they experienced before rashes, sores and ulcers emerged. No parasites or mycobacteria were detected.

The scientists suggested that Morgellons victims may suffer from a condition similar to “delusional infestation,” in which people imagine bugs or other critters invading their bodies.

“No common underlying medical condition or infectious source was identified,” wrote Eberhard and his colleagues.

But people who believe they suffer from Morgellons said that was exactly the result they expected from a government agency trying to cover up a larger problem.

“I’m pretty sure they’ll say we’re all delusional,” said Jan Smith, 62, a Concord, N.H. woman who runs the website “Morgellons Exposed,”which details her 15-year battle with the perplexing disorder. Her theories include fears that Morgellons is caused by alien beings implanting nano-technology in humans.

“There’s so much more to this than a medical condition,” Smith said. “There’s something being hidden.”

Betsy Curry, 65, of Palm Bay, Fla., said she has endured sores and scabs all over her body for eight years, lesions that she said have extruded threads or fluff.  She didn’t expect the government report to offer any more help than the dermatologists and other doctors who dismissed her complaints.

“I’ve had years of doctors telling me something was wrong with me, I was crazy, I was too fat,” said Curry, whose condition was described on Inspire, an online support community.

“After eight years, it’s just something I accept.”

Morgellons sufferers were mostly white, middle-aged women, more than half of whom reported they were in poor health, the study showed. Like Curry, about 70 percent of the victims also suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and more than 60 percent reported ongoing bodily aches and pains.

About 60 percent showed problems with cognitive functioning. About half had evidence of drugs in their system, including drugs to control pain, and nearly 80 percent reported exposure to solvents, the study showed. About 40 percent had skin lesions or abrasions that appeared to be caused by self-inflicted rubbing or scraping, researchers found.

But the study shouldn’t be interpreted to conclude that the problem is all in sufferers' heads, Eberhard stressed. Instead, it should be a baseline for future research and encouragement for patients and their doctors to work together, harder, to find a cause.

“These people are definitely suffering from something,” Eberhard said. “It has impacted their lives greatly.”

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What do you think about Morgellons? Tell us on Facebook.

Courtesy of Dr. Giacomo Mugnai

The chest x-ray of an Italian man who has two hearts.

At first there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about the man who, in 2010, reported to a Verona, Italy emergency room. He was short of breath, sweating, and had low blood pressure – cardiovascular trouble, no doubt. E.R. doctors see similar symptoms all the time.

But this man was very different indeed. He had two hearts.

“We haven’t ever seen anything similar to this case before,” Dr. Giacomo Mugnai said in an email.

It turned out that a few years earlier, the man had undergone a procedure known as a heterotopic heart transplant. Unlike an orthotopic transplant, in which one organ is removed and another put in its place, a heterotopic transplant pairs a new organ with a diseased one.

“We see this in cardiac patients or kidney patients, sometimes,” explained Dr. Rade Vukmir, professor of emergency medicine at Temple University and a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. “Surgeons might leave a kidney in place if it’s too much trouble to take out, or if there is hope for recovery of a kidney, or a heart, after a period of time” of being helped by the new organ.

In the case of the ailing Italian, reported in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, the transplant team had mated his new heart with his malfunctioning old one. Chambers and blood vessels of the two hearts were married so that the new heart could support the old one.  

But there’s a risk, explained Vukmir. “You can develop two independent heart rhythms, especially in a scenario where one heart gets a little better,” he said.

That’s what happened to the 71-year-old Italian. At first doctors tried drug therapy to correct the dysrhythmia problem, but his blood pressure continued to drop and eventually his heart – actually his hearts – stopped, he lost consciousness, and stopped breathing. One jolt with a heart defibrillator brought him back. Surgeons then replaced his implanted pacemaker, and today he’s healthy, and still with two hearts.

Such patients are extremely rare these days, Vukmir explained. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, external machines called ventricular assist devices could be used to do the job the second heart in the Italian man was doing, but they were enormous, and enormously expensive. Putting in a second heart was a workable alternative. Today, though, the devices have shrunk to a manageable, portable size and heterotopic heart transplants are almost never done. Fortunately, Vukmir said, well-trained E.R. doctors are made aware that some people are still walking around with bodies that give new meaning to the term “a lotta heart.”    

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Adam Taylor / ABC

Ralph Macchio and Karina Smirnoff are in synch on Dancing with the Stars.

Whether it’s the couples gliding seamlessly across the floor in “Dancing with the Stars” or soldiers marching lock-step in parade, those kinds of synchronous movements can lead to a sort of unconscious mental harmony, two new studies show.

There’s something about moving in sync that makes us feel connected with others and leads us to want to think the way they do, says Scott Wiltermuth, an assistant professor of management and organization at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. He wrote two recently released studies on the effects of synchronicity.

And while that may initially sound like a good thing, the mental connection can have a dark side because it may override our natural inclinations and better judgment, Wiltermuth says.

"We feel more emotionally connected to one another when we’re moving in sync,” he explains. “And because of that we’re more likely to follow orders."

As examples of the dark side, Wiltermuth points to Nazi Germany and current day North Korea.

For one of the new studies, Wiltermuth asked 70 volunteer college students to walk behind an experimenter either matching stride for stride, or completely out of sync, or at whatever pace felt most comfortable.

After their spin around campus, the students were given questionnaires that asked them to rate on a 7-point scale how close they felt to the experimenter, how much they liked the experimenter, and how similar they felt to the experimenter, according to the report published in the journal Social Influence.

Sure enough, those who walked in sync saw themselves as more similar to the experimenter than those walking either purposely out of step or at whatever pace as they wished. The volunteers who walked in sync also felt closer to the experimenter.

In the second part of the study, volunteers were asked by the experimenter after their walk to funnel as many sow bugs -- also known as roly poly bugs -- as possible into a grinder labeled an “extermination machine.” In the end, the volunteers who had walked in sync with the experimenter “killed” the most pill bugs.

Wiltermuth is quick to point out that no actual critters were harmed in the experiment -- there was a trap door that shuttled them off to safety.

In his second study, 156 volunteers were divided into teams of three and trained to move plastic cups in a specific sequence in rhythm with music that was played through headphones. In some groups the music was the same, which led teams to move their cups in sync. In other groups the music was different, leading teams to move their cups out of sync.

When each group was finished they were told they could pick the music the next group would listen to. Teams that moved in sync once again felt closer to those in their group and were more likely to choose to blast unpleasant music to the next team at the request of a teammate (who happened to be an experimenter).

Wiltermuth doesn’t think there’s anything people can do about the sinister aspects of moving in sync, other than just being aware of its effects.

“Such synchronized activity might lead us to do things we might not otherwise do," he cautions.

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By Andrew Daniels
Men's Health

The mystery of skinny jeans and thick-rimmed glasses may never be cracked, but at least it appears that researchers have solved one piece of the hipster puzzle.

In a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a Harvard University team found that when your friends start liking the same indie bands as you, you’re more likely to stop liking those bands.

Researchers examined 200 college students’ Facebook pages over a four-year period and discovered that students who shared similar tastes in music bonded, instead of those students passing on tastes to each other. So while two hip dudes might strike up a conversation after noticing each other’s well-worn Fleet Foxes t-shirt, it’s much rarer that they’d actually adopt each other’s tastes.

How to Date a Hipster

Kevin Lewis, lead study researcher and a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Harvard, explains the science of why you’re a hipster: “The meaning of an indie/alternative taste rests not just in the taste itself—but also in being the only one among one’s friendship circle that expresses it,” he says. “If I like The Decemberists, and suddenly my friends start liking them too, suddenly I’m no longer socially distinctive. So this taste loses much of its appeal and I will run off in search of some new band to express my ‘hip’ identity.”

Well, it’s a shame that your silly, trendchasing friends are stealing your favorite bands away from you, but don’t worry: You can always find new, even moreobscure acts that your buddies won’t catch wind of for at least a couple months. Here are 3 innovative services you can use to find your new favorite band, courtesy of Eliot Van Buskirk, editor in chief of Evolver.fm, a site that covers digital music apps.

The Nine Best Apps for Men

Pitchify
Use Pitchify to receive instant access to the best and buzziest new albums. The site aggregates every new release that receives a score of 8 or more (out of 10) from Pitchfork and Drowned in Sound—two of the most tastemaking blogs on the net—and automatically queues them up to stream in Spotify. (You’ll need to sign up for a free Spotify account first.) “Most of us can’t sit around and patrol Pitchfork all day looking for music, so this takes all of about 10 seconds to start listening to an amazing new album,” says Van Buskirk.

We Are Hunted
We Are Hunted is a free online music chart that tracks the biggest emerging songs that people are buzzing about on social media, blogs, message boards, and P2P networks. “It’s very much oriented toward new music,” Van Buskirk says, “and it’s so simple that a two-year-old can use it.” He’s right: Whereas aggregating sites like The Hype Machine are tailored for people who know how to scour the net for music, We Are Hunted utilizes a scrolling wall with big, bright band photos and easy-to-stream mp3s.

Discovr
Discovr for iOS ($2) operates like Pandora on the idea that if you dig a certain band, you’ll probably dig bands that sound just like them. Search for an artist, and Discovr will “map” that artist, establishing a web-like constellation of similar bands that you can immediately hear with the slide of a finger. “There are millions of bands on this app, and it’s a really neat way to browse around finding them all,” says Van Buskirk.

Take one part Tumblr, two parts inspiration, and you get The Cortex

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 In June 2010, the Swedish-born Chairman of BP Carl-Henric Svanberg touched off a firestorm of controversy with his remarks about his company's reaction to the Gulf oil spill.

"... we care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care. But that is not the case in BP. We care about the small people."

The twice used reference to "small people" hit a raw nerve with residents of the Gulf in the wake of the manmade disaster. Svanberg was quickly forced to apologize and admit "he spoke clumsily."

From that condescending comment grew the germ for a recently published paper about whether powerful people misperceive their height compared to others.

The study, published in Psychological Science, looked at whether the psychological perception of power may cause people to feel taller than they truly are.

In one experiment, researchers first measured the height of 68 people. One-third of the people were then asked to write about a time when they had power over someone else;  another third recalled a time when someone else had power over them; and a control group recalled what happened to them the day before.

Then all the volunteers were asked to estimate their size in relation to a pole that was set at 20 inches taller than their true height. 

Men and women who had recalled a high-power incident tended to judge the pole to be shorter than their own height compared to those recalling a low-power situation.

"People perceived themselves as taller when they occupied a more powerful position," write the researchers.

In two other experiments involving nearly 200 volunteers, power was also shown to affect a person's judgments of their own stature.

The study suggests that people not only feel powerful in their minds, they also physically experience it in their bodies by overestimating their own height.

"Having power not only influences how others view individuals but it also influences how individuals view themselves physically," says study author Michelle Duguid, Ph.D. She is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis.

The frequent metaphoric use of height to connote power in terms such as "big man on campus" and "people look up to them," may achieve a physical reality of its own, suggests Duguid.

Other studies have found that taller people are more likely to gain power: They typically earn higher salaries, have higher-status jobs, are often in leadership positions, and tend to win presidential elections.

But this is the first study to show that the powerful may actually feel taller than a measurement would indicate.

The researchers conclude that their results suggest why the beleaguered chairman of BP "may have inadvertently provided a window into the physical experience of power."

More like this:

Deep-voiced dudes don't have macho sperm

Mmm, beer. Why we get a buzz from booze

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Leave it to science to take the mystery out of the “I just love you so much, man,” beer buzz.  But their findings may lead to better treatment for alcoholics, according to a study in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Although researchers have known for decades that alcohol affects the brain, it remained unclear as to exactly how the hooch makes humans feel so darn happy. “We have three decades of animal data, but this study is the first direct evidence of how alcohol makes people feel good,” says lead author Jennifer Mitchell, PhD, clinical project director at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

The research team found that found that drinking alcohol releases a flood of endorphins, the so-called “feel good” brain chemicals, in two very specific brain areas: the nucleus accumbens, which is linked to addictive behaviors, and the orbitofrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making.

Using positron emission tomography, or PET imaging, the team looked at the immediate effects of alcohol in the brains of 13 heavy drinkers, defined in the study as having two or three drinks every day, and 12 matched “control” subjects, who were not heavy drinkers. 

Before imbibing a special cocktail of alcohol used for research purposes, along with a little orange juice, the subjects were given injections of a radioactive drug that binds to the brain’s opioid receptors, a place where endorphins also bind.  The researchers then mapped the receptor sites that “lit up” on the PET image.

The subjects were then each given one minute to drink the special cocktail, a second injection of the radioactive drug, and another PET scan. 

By comparing areas of radioactivity in the first and second PET images, the researchers were able to map the exact brain locations where endorphins were released in response to drinking.

In all of the subjects, alcohol led to endorphin release, but there were some differences between the control group and the heavy drinkers.

Although all participants reported feeling a greater sense of pleasure when more endorphins were released in the nucleus accumbens, heavy drinkers reported feeling more intoxicated than the control group when a greater number of endorphins were released in the orbitofrontal cortex.

“Heavy drinkers got more of a reward, more of a high,” says Mitchell. “Their brains are changed in a way that makes drinking extremely pleasurable.”

The study also found that endorphins released after drinking bind to the Mu receptor, the target of narcotics like morphine and heroin. 

That finding could lead to “reverse engineering,” the drug naltrexone, which makes drinking and drugs like heroin less pleasurable by preventing binding at non-specific opioid receptor sites. Compliance, however, is low, because of side effects.

“People say they don’t like how the drug makes them feel, but now that we know that alcohol releases endorphins, we believe that we can make a better naltrexone, and it could be something that people who need help would want to take,” says Mitchell.

Related:

• What makes someone an angry drunk?
• Blame it on the alcohol? Maybe not, study suggests
• Post-booze blackout, how people fill in the blanks

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We ask a lot of weird questions here at The Body Odd. But so do you! Here's our answer to one of your latest queries. Got an inquiring mind? Head over to our Facebook page and ask us your oddest health, medical or human behavior question. We may answer it in an upcoming post.

Today's question: Why is cracking my knuckles so addictive?

The pop! pop! pop! of each cracked knuckle is so sweetly satisfying to you. But it's slowly driving everyone around you completely nuts. You don't remember when you started it, but you can't seem to make yourself stop. Why? "There’s not any hard science to explain why it’s so addictive, but certainly people speculate it’s one of these activities that releases nervous energy," says Dr. Rachel Vreeman, assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine and co-author of "Don't Cross Your Eyes ... They'll Get Stuck That Way!"

Some people twirl their hair, some people jiggle their foot up and down -- and some people pop their knuckles. "Many people who do it believe that it feels good," Vreeman says. "They find it to feel good or comfortable, or it even gives them some physical release."

We should note that when you "crack" your knuckles -- you're not actually cracking anything. "That sound you hear is synovial fluid vapor cavities -- or gas bubbles -- in the fluid around your joints. With certain amounts of pressure you can make those bubbles burst." She's making it sound like popping bubble wrap -- no wonder both activities are equally satisfying. 

And, no, cracking your knuckles won't give you arthritis, despite wild rumors you may read on the Internet. Vreeman says in studies of hand function in adults both with and without arthritis, those with arthritis weren't any likelier to be knuckle-crackers. In other words, she says "It doesn’t seem like you’re likely to get arthritis because of your annoying knuckle cracking."

Still, habitual knuckle-popping might lead to some hand discomfort, including swelling, reduced hand strength and even some finger or joint injuries. So, how do you knock it off? 

"Certain things that make you more likely to break your bad habit: coming up with a clear plan. Having some accountability. Telling other people about it," Vreeman says. "From weight loss literature we find that people do better with modifying their eating habits by keeping records -- so keep some record throughout the day how many times a day you did it.

"We also know from sort of the science of habits that it takes ... 28 days to form a habit," Vreeman explains, "so to form an opposite habit probably takes at least that long."

Is there a bad habit you're trying to break in 2012? Let us know how it's going on our Facebook page.

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You’d think somebody repeatedly sticking a needle in your penis would be a little off-putting, but the 21-year-old Iranian apparently thought it would be a grand idea to have Persian script reading borow be salaamat (good luck on your journeys), and the first initial of his girlfriend’s last name (“M”) tattooed onto his little gentleman.

He was left with a permanent semi-erection as a reminder of just how good the idea was. 

His case raises a number of questions, not least whether the wish for good luck is directed to the penis or to the man, and if it’s to the penis, where, exactly, is it going? But, medically speaking, how could getting penis ink give make the organ go haywire?

The answer rests in the traditional technique the man subjected himself to. “Handheld needles are used and there is no control of the depth of the needle,” Iranian urologists reported in the most recent Journal of Sexual Medicine. “Henna, ash, and other natural pigments are used by traditional tattooists. They first use their needles to penetrate the skin. Then they apply the coloring material on the perforated skin surface.”

Naturally, this proved painful. After several days, the pain subsided. Soon after it did, though, the man noticed that his nighttime woodies were lasting a long time. A week later, he had a 24/7 priapic erection.

As erectile dysfunction pill commercials constantly remind us, non-sex-related erections lasting longer than four hours are dangerous for penises. The lack of fresh blood flow can starve the spongy tissues of oxygen, destroying them and resulting in impotence.

There are two types of priapism, ischemic and non-ischemic, according to UCLA urologist Dr. Jeffrey Bassett. In a normal erection, blood flows into the penis via arteries, and as pressure builds, the veins leading out are temporarily blocked. In ischemic priapism, the veins don’t open up again.

In non-ischemic priapism, the veins allow blood out of the penile tissue, but too much blood is flowing in via the arteries and the veins can’t keep up. So blood pressure builds. This isn’t as dangerous since fresh blood is coming in all the time, but it can be pretty inconvenient. If it doesn’t resolve, either on its own or with treatment, it can cause damage in some cases.

Bassett once treated a 24-year-old skateboarder who’d traumatized his pelvic area in a skate accident. It tuned out that the injury caused a blood vessel fistula that interfered with normal flow into and out of the penis.

According to the Iranian doctors, this is what happened to the young man. The tattooist punctured too-deep holes that damaged vessels in the penis, resulting in fistulas, and then a pseudoaneurysm, a pooling of blood outside a vessel wall. They recommended he see a specialist to have the blood removed, but he rejected that idea and saw another doctor to have a shunt procedure performed. It didn’t work.

Since the fellow is still able to have sex, and achieve a more-or-less normal erection, he’s rejected any more treatments, even the one his urologists recommended in the first place.

In one of those statements you’d think nobody would actually have to make, the Iranian doctors wrote “based on our unique case, we discourage penile tattooing.”  

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• Spider venom better than Viagra?
• Too much of a good thing: the 4-hour erection

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No, you can't really "cough up a lung." But according to a new case report in the latest New England Journal of Medicine, it's possible to get uncomfortably close.

Two days of chest pain drove a 40-year-old woman to Good Hope Hospital in Birmingham, United Kingdom, for relief. The woman had asthma, and had been coughing especially hard for two weeks. When examining her, doctors noticed some cracking, popping sounds coming from her right midaxillary line -- or the right side of her torso. Further examination with the use of X-ray revealed that the woman had coughed so hard -- she'd herniated her lung. (You can see photos, if you must, here.)

"While she didn't technically cough up her lung, she coughed out her lung, through her ribs," explains Dr. Rachel Vreeman, and assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. Vreeman didn't treat this patient, but as the co-author of "Don't Cross Your Eyes ... They'll Get Stuck That Way!" she was more than willing to give her expert opinion on the strange case. "It's so unusual to have this happen that it would merit this case report -- unusual, but possible, apparently." 

The woman's lung tissue slipped through the space between two of her ribs -- the ninth intercostal space, to be exact. It's actually somewhat similar to a NEJM case study from last month, in which a woman's body "swallowed" one of her breast implants while she was doing Pilates -- in that case, the woman's implant slipped between two of her ribs and was sent into her pleural cavity, or the space between her lungs. (Maybe those two should form a support group.)

In the case of the herniated lung, it's possible that she had some sort of defect explaining why the area between her ribs was particularly vulnerable. But even so, "it really must have been some intense coughing," says Vreeman, adding that there are occasional reports of violent coughing fits causing similarly strange and terrible things. Whooping cough patients may hack so hard that a lung collapses, for example. But it gets worse.

"There are reports -- it's incredibly rare -- of people who have had their spleens ruptured because of coughing," Vreeman says. "There also are occasional reports of people who -- and this is a gross one as well -- some people are more prone to having their eyeballs coming out of their sockets -- there are a few reports of people having problems with that from bad vomiting or coughing." 

Surprisingly, Vreeman says in many of these cases, these people didn't have any underlying health problems that would explain these extreme happenings -- the ruptured spleens, the popped-out eyeballs. It's often simply a case of coughing way, way too hard, she says. 

"Coughing, in and of itself, is not bad -- it keeps the lungs clear by not allowing things to build up," whether it's phlegm or dust or whatever, Vreeman explains. "But it's when you're coughing in a really violent way -- you should, by all means, see a doctor." 

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By Wynne Parry
LiveScience 

A low-pitched voice in a man is associated with a litany of masculine traits: dominance, strength, greater physical size, more attractiveness to women, and so on. But new research strikes one trait off that list: virility.

An Australian study looked at male voice pitch, women's perceptions of it, and semen quality. Their first finding was no surprise: Women like deep voices and consider them masculine.

But contrary to expectations, they also found that these men aren't better off in the semen department. In fact, by one measure of sperm quality — sperm concentration in ejaculate — men with the attractive voices appeared to have a disadvantage.

This is a surprise because females, both humans and of other species, are believed to glean information about male virility through secondary sexual traits, such as facial hair and muscle mass in humans and other traits in other animals, such as colorful plumage in birds.

In the case of voice pitch, the researchers from the University of Western Australia suggest there may be a trade-off at work. In other words, traits associated with dominance and attractiveness, such as physical strength or a deep voice, may come at the cost of reduced sperm quality, they write in a study published Dec. 22 in the journal PLoS ONE.

For instance, higher testosterone levels are associated with a deeper voice, more masculine features, more dominant behavior and success in obtaining sexual partners. Although testosterone plays an important role in the formation of sperm, however, high levels of it can actually impair sperm production, they write.

To conduct the research, the team recruited 54 men to provide voice recordings and semen samples. Their recordings were analyzed by software and ranked by 30 female volunteers on attractiveness or masculinity.  

More from LiveScience:

• 5 Myths About the Male Body
• 6 (Other) Great Things Sex Can Do For You
• 10 Surprising Sex Statistics

More from Body Odd: 

• Mind-blowing sex actually can wipe memory clean
• Allergic to orgasms? Man's sad story has happy ending
• Brainy guy, better sperm? 

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