High school teacher Joe Colacioppo is bright enough to calculate the odds that his lone Mega Millions ticket today will turn him into a $640-million-dollar man.

In fact, he took time to do the math: “There’s a greater chance of me winning the Nobel Peace Prize -- or of monkeys flying out of my butt, to quote ‘Wayne’s World.’ ”

So why did the social studies instructor at Smoky Hill High in Aurora, Colo. slap a dollar down on a lottery ticket for the first time in years, especially when the mathematical probability of his winning is 1-in-175 million?

AP

“It’s the same reason I bought ‘The Hunger Games’ -- I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. To say I’m a skeptic, that’s an understatement. But it’s fun to have a horse in the race,” Colacioppo added. “Unless it’s a record (jackpot), I never do it. I think most people who regularly don’t play the lottery but who are playing this time just think: Oh, it’s a buck and everybody’s in it, and isn’t it exciting?”

So from a psychological view, what’s the tipping point that finally tempts folks who rarely jump into the lottery pool to take flying a leap? It is $300 million, $400 million, $500 million? Or, like Colacioppo said, is it when the jackpot hits a new record and the lottery becomes national news, becomes trendy?

“Your question is a good one. But alas, I am not aware of any study that actually tries to quantify the tipping point,” said Romel Mostafa, assistant professor of business, economics, and public policy at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario.

But Mostafa, co-author of a 2008 study on low-income people who routinely purchase lottery tickets, did acknowledge that when those giant, flashing lotto-dollar signs gain more zeroes and more media coverage, many consumers just can’t help themselves.

“Usually, the larger the rewards and the lower the cost of buying lotteries, the greater the participation -- however the lower the winning probability,” Mostafa said.

“When the jackpots reach these insane amounts, the feeling becomes: I don't want to regret not having given myself the opportunity,” agreed Issamar Ginzberg, a Brooklyn-based strategy adviser to entrepreneurs. For the first time in his life, he bought not one ticket but 10.

Then again, Ginzberg -- a Hasidic rabbi -- also injects a bit of faith into the gambling equation: “You have to give God the ability to give you money in a natural manner,” he said. “What good is praying for money if you don’t enable (God) to give it to you? You have to buy a ticket to be in the game!”

Here’s one of the funny things about we humans: We don’t naturally calculate probabilities, said June Foley, professor of behavioral and social sciences at Clinton Community College in Plattsburgh, N.Y.

“We calculate the odds through a very strange mechanism called the availability heuristic,” she said. “You guess the likelihood that something is going to happen based on how easy it is to think of an example of that thing happening.”

In other words, the quicker you’re able picture an event occurring, the more likely you are to believe it can. This is why -- despite the low odds on aircraft crashes and high number of vehicle accidents -- some people just refuse to fly and only drive from place to place. 

Lotteries do, generally, attract large quantities of low-income ticket buyers. The best psychological explanation, Foley said, is that when people lose all their belief in social mobility, even the remote odds of the lottery seem like a worthwhile wager of their few bucks.

“They think: ‘If there’s no chance that I can really get rich through my own means, the only mechanism I have is the lottery,’ ” Foley said.

Of course, many of the lottery newbies are well-paid, well-off people -- or at least have enough education to grasp their true odds.

And then there are those folks who are highly schooled yet can’t quite get their heads around this whole Mega Millions thing.

Alicia Gay moved to New York City a few years ago and now works for the American Civil Liberties Union. As the possible lottery payoff loomed, she was mulling a ticket buy.

"Having an east coast liberal elitist moment,” Gay posted on Facebook Thursday afternoon. “I want to purchase a Mega Millions ticket but don't really know what this means or how to do so. #shame.”

Five hours later, Gay had figured it out. 

"Actually," she revealed via email, "on my way to get it now (nervous!)"

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

Related: 

• Loud talkers: Why do some voices seem to be set at top volume?
• That urge to jump off a bridge, explained
• Copy-cat coughers: Why it's 'contagious'

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

featurepics.com

From Starbucks to spoiled milk to freshly baked snickerdoodles, most of us take our sense of smell -- and the world's good, bad and ugly odors -- for granted. For people born with isolated congenital anosmia (ICA), though, the world smells as bland as a soggy soda cracker.

"I don't know what it is to smell," says Martin Angel, a 48-year-old urban planner from Santa Ana, Calif. "People try to describe it to me and I'm like, 'That's like trying to describe the sun to a blind man.'"

While Angel says he doesn't miss his sense of smell because "when you've never had something, there's nothing to miss," a new study published in the Public Library of Science's journal PLoS ONE has found that ICA can impact people in a number of ways, causing everything from enhanced social insecurity to an increased risk of household accidents.

"The sense of smell is one of the oldest sensory systems and provides a lot of important information influencing human behavior," says lead researcher Ilona Croy of the Smell and Taste Clinic at the University of Dresden Medical School in Germany. "Olfactory cues can transport emotional information, are critical for detecting edible food and help to prevent microbial threats. We were curious how people who are not able to smell lead their lives."

To find out, Croy and her colleagues interviewed 32 people with ICA along with 36 age-matched "controls" (people who could smell just fine). Questions ranged from how often they scorched food to how often they showered to the number of sexual partners they'd had in their lifetime. After tallying the results, researchers found people with ICA had a slight increase in social insecurity (i.e., they worried more about social situations and their own body odor), an increased risk for depressive symptoms and an increased risk for household accidents, such as eating spoiled food or burning clothes while ironing.

Julie Solo, a 45-year-old international health worker from Durham, N.C., who was born without a sense of smell, says she read about the study's findings but doesn't believe she suffers from either depressive symptoms or an increase in social anxiety.

"The only down side is worrying about not smelling a fire," she says. "Although I did once have a boyfriend who told me my feet smelled. He was just joking around, though."

On the other hand, ICA sufferer Carol Tedesco, a 53-year-old historic shipwreck professional from Key West, Florida, says some of the findings definitely ring true for her.

"I live in the tropics and I'm very active and I usually shower three times a day," she says. "I'm always concerned I might not be fresh. Plus I'm more dedicated to emptying the cat box and keeping it clean. You don't want someone to walk into your house and have it not smell good and not know it."

While approximately one-fifth of the population have an impaired sense of smell,  ICA affects only about 1 in 5,000 to 10,000 people, says Croy.

"In most ICA patients, there is no olfactory bulb, meaning they are missing the most significant part of the olfactory system in the brain," she says.

While people with ICA can still taste, Croy says they won't "perceive flavors as they are perceived via the sense of smell."

The inability to smell may also affect their sex life. The new study found people with ICA had about half the number of sexual partners as those with no smell impairment.

"This might be related to the enhanced social insecurity," says Croy. "However, it could also be that they are less responsive to odorous sexual stimuli."

While Croy's research points to the downfalls of ICA, those without a sense of smell quickly point to the upside of their condition.

"I can go into places that most people won't go into, like Porta-Potties," says Angel. "People will come out gagging, but I'm okay."

Solo, who does a lot of work in developing countries, says her inability to smell is actually a boon.

"A friend came to visit me once and we went to a slum in Nairobi where they were doing garbage cleanup," she says. "I guess the smell of a large garbage dump in a slum in Nairobi was pretty awful. My friend was dying, but I was just fine."

Tedesco, too, has found that her ICA has certain benefits.

"I can drive by where a skunk has been run over and not even notice," she says. "And my partner says I'm great to live with because I can't smell when he breaks wind. To me, it's just a sound."

Related: 

Sniff test: Living without a sense of smell

Phantom smells may be a sign of trouble

Your cilantro love -- or hate -- may be genetic

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

Getty Images stock

A quick glimpse of the color green appears to get a person's creative juices flowing, suggests a new study.

German researchers found that when people glanced at the color green for two seconds before doing a creative task, it boosted their creative output compared to briefly looking at other colors, including white, grey, red, and blue.

In the study, which is published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, scientists gave 69 men and women two minutes to write down as many uses as possible for a tin can. Then a coder rated each idea for its creativity and cleverness.

Before beginning the creativity test, half were shown a green rectangle and the other half saw a white rectangle.

Participants who saw green before the task produced more creative ideas than those who saw white. The "green effect" as the researchers dubbed it, was also observed in creativity challenges that pitted the color against those seeing a quick flash of grey, red, or blue.

Does seeing green fuel creativity because it reminds starving artists, musicians, and writers of cash and the need to pay their bills, so the wheels in their head start turning?

That's not how study author Dr. Stephanie Lichtenfeld explains it. She suggests the link between green and creativity is that it's a signal of growth. Not only physical growth as in growing plants, but also psychological growth.

"Green may serve as a cue that evokes the motivation to strive for improvement and task mastery, which in turn may facilitate growth," says Lichtenfeld, an assistant professor of psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany.

So, if a writer has writer's block should that person fix their eyes on something green for a few seconds, and then get back to work? "The effect seems to be subtle," points out Lichtenfeld. The intentional use of green as a means of being creative remains an open question, she explains.

The green shown in the experiments matched the shade seen in nature, in growing plants or in a meadow. Since this was the first study to find a link between green and creativity, it's unclear whether lime green or blue-green, for instance, may also fuel inventiveness.

And it's not yet known if seeing green for a longer time than two seconds makes the creativity boost stronger or weaker.

For now, studies have shown that other colors have been linked with psychological function. Red has been suggestive of romance, caution, and anger, while blue has been connected with calmness. 

Perhaps a quick flash of green reminds the brain to "go" or suggests success in our minds.

"Even very subtle stimuli, such as color, can influence our motivation, cognition, and behavior," says Lichtenfeld. 

Related:

Watching Jon Stewart might make you more creative

Creative types are full of themselves

That weird urge to jump off a bridge, explained

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

Eric Niiler
Discovery Channel

Will Dick Cheney's new heart make him a gentler, mellower guy? Some medical experts think it's possible.

The 71-year-old former vice president has been recovering after Sunday's heart transplant at a hospital in Northern Virginia. News reports say he's been able to stand and is receiving support from his family. Cheney has had five heart attacks, the first at age 37, and has been on the transplant list for 20 months.

Cheney is also a feisty political figure who political observers say reshaped the power of the vice president's office during his two terms as President George W. Bush's second-in-command. Medical experts say that heart transplant patients often undergo a change of philosophy, personality and values once they recover.

World's first synthetic organ transplant

"There are experiences where patients who undergo the procedure, just because it is such an existential procedure, have a different appreciation of the small things in life, and a certain sensitivity they haven't had before," said Mario Deng, medical director of UCLA Medical Center's heart transplant program.

Deng recalled one patient, a "type-A" personality and corporate litigation attorney at one of the top law firms in the nation -- who changed big-time after his heart attack and transplant.

"He was always bottom-lining his agenda and other team members," Deng said. Afterward "he realized there are so many more value systems than this one that he is living. Not only does it impact his relationship to his wife and kids, but switches gears and puts his expertise to other causes, more altruistic ones."

Deng says that the heart is a special organ, one that has tremendous cultural, symbolic and psychological meaning. As for changes to Cheney's personality, "you cannot predict what is going to happen," Deng said.

In fact, one expert says its possible that personality traits of the heart donor -- his or her musical tastes, food preferences or other memories -- could actually resurface in Cheney. This theory of "cellular memory" was developed by Gary E. Schwarz, professor of psychology at the University of Arizona.

Are gut bacteria in charge?

In 2000, Schwarz studied 10 such cases and published a paper on the subject in the journal Integrative Medicine. While the sample size was small, Schwartz says the unusual examples of donor's preferences, memories and tastes being revived in the recipient "cannot be explained as being the side effects of the medication or the stress of surgery. They also cannot be explained by recipients getting information about the donors from other sources."

Over the years, there have been well-known cases of this kind of transplant transferrance. In 2008, 47-year-old Claire Sylvia wrote about her intense cravings for beer, Snickers and fried chicken -- things she had never liked -- after receiving the heart of an 18-year-old motorcycle accident victim in her book "Change of Heart."

Still, Schwarz, who has drawn some criticism for his work with mediums, has one caution for those hoping for a kinder, gentler Cheney. He says most of who undergo these personality changes "are open to receiving that information and acting on it."

"I can't speak to whether Mr. Cheney would have that or not,” Schwarz said. “But is it scientifically possible? Absolutely."

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

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

Big bites lead to big bellies, researchers say, and they might have a solution: People take smaller bites of food when it's accompanied by stronger aromas, so infusing foods with strong aromas could get people to eat less.

We take bigger bites of foods we are familiar with and smaller bites of those that require more chewing. Those small bites are a good thing, as they actually make your stomach feel fuller faster, reducing the amount of food eaten and calories taken in, the researchers note.

To see how the smell of a food changes bite size, the researchers designed an interesting eating contraption to separate smell from other factors that affect how big of a bite participants take.

Participants were fed vanilla custard through a tube while "vanilla-custard" smells were delivered directly into the backs of their noses. They controlled the amount of custard fed into their mouth by pressing a button to stop the flow. The researchers weighed the custard cup before and after each "bite" to measure its size. Participants ate about the amount of a normal-size desert. [ 10 Tips for Sticking to Healthy Portions ]

The "back of the nose" presentation mimics the aroma during real eating, said Rene de Wijk, a senior researcher at the Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands: "[these] presentations resemble the situation of normal eating whereby aromas travel from the food in the mouth," he said. "We cannot say whether smells in the room or on the plate have the same effect because we have not tested it."

The researchers found that when food was associated with strong aromas, even of the pleasant natural cream flavoring the researchers used, people took smaller bites.

"Our aroma was a pleasant smelling cream aroma presented at low levels of intensity," de Wijk said. "We have not tested other smells, but believe that effects can be expected when the aroma 'fits' the food, i.e., unusual combinations may not work."

The researchers think this is a feedback loop: when a strong smell is presented in the nose, the participants pared their eating to reduce the amount of flavor they experienced.

The researchers suggest that infusing foods with stronger smells could be used to control portion size: manipulating the odor of food so that it was more fragrant could result in a 5- to 10-percent decrease in food intake per bite. Combining aroma control with portion control could fool the body into thinking it was full with a smaller amount of food, aiding weight loss.

"Aromas added at relatively low levels to the foods may already have the effect," de Wijk said, though they didn't study directly if the individuals actually ate less of the custard in the end.

The study was published Wednesday in the journal Flavour.

More from The Body Odd:

• Can you get addicted to ice cream? Maybe, study shows
• Better fuzzy brain cure: Sip some water
• Can eating too much make your stomach burst

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

Don Farrall / Getty Images stock

People with water-caused hives can drink liquids because the allergic reaction occurs only when the outer skin contacts water.

A few years ago, Dr. Alan Baptist, associate program director for allergy and immunology at the University of Michigan, faced one of the toughest allergy cases imaginable.

A young woman came to seek his help with migraine-like pain. Every time she came into contact with water she suffered headaches, along with reddish welts on her skin.

It turned out she was allergic. To water.

If you were allergic to water, how could you bathe? Or swim? A walk in the rain could turn into a painful afternoon. Yet some people truly are allergic to water, suffering with a condition known as aquagenic urticaria, or water-caused hives. The severity of the allergy varies widely, from barely noticeable to severe.

Aquagenic urticaria, first described in 1964, is very rare, although Baptist thinks it may be seriously underdiagnosed. “If a person showers every day and has urticaria every day, their doctor would think they just have chronic urticaria. Even many allergists aren’t going to be familiar with it.”

The body’s rejection of water is wildly counterproductive, mainly because we are made up mostly of water, our cells are filled with it and we can’t live without it. However, in almost all cases, the allergic reaction is ignited only when the outer skin contacts water. That’s how people with aquagenic urticaria can drink liquids and don't have an adverse reaction to their own cells.

But they can be allergic to their tears if they cry, and even their own sweat, Baptist explained. Fortunately, sweat typically doesn’t cause nearly as strong a reaction as diving into a pool.

Patients can be allergic to saliva, too. While a simple peck on the cheek or lips shouldn’t be much of a problem since symptoms generally depend on dose, you could pay a high price for very passionate kissing.

“Bathing is the biggest thing,” Baptist said. “Our patient tried to take very short showers and then dry off very quickly, but she still got the headaches, so she began showering only once every three days.”

It’s unclear what causes aquagenic urticaria and its source hasn’t been pinpointed. Because an outbreak releases large amounts of histamine, the mast cells involved in the body’s inflammatory response seem to be activated. How they are activated is still a mystery. The neurotransmitter acetylcholine is also released, so the nervous system must be perversely triggered, Baptist said.

Those facts point to treatment. While some have tried desensitization therapy – similar to how allergists sometimes treat kids allergic to peanuts -- results have been mixed. Baptist used a tool chest of drugs, including antihistamines and anti-cholinergic medications. Those didn’t suppress the patient’s headaches, so he added SSRI drugs typically used against depression.

“That got the headaches under control,” he said. “And we got the skin under control.”

She wasn’t cured of the allergy, but at least she can shower when she wants.

Do you have an unusual allergy? Share with us on Facebook

Related stories:
Allergic to cold? Gene detectives find new clues     

Pork-cat syndrome a rare (but real!) allergy     

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

“R.N.” was 57 when she came to see Paul McGeoch and V.S. Ramachandran at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California San Diego. She had a constant burning sensation in her right hand.

But she hadn’t had a right hand for nearly 40 years, not since it had been amputated after an auto accident at age 18. And even before that, her right hand consisted of a normal-looking little finger, the bud of a thumb, and very short, immobile, ring and middle fingers. She had no index finger. Now, though, she was experiencing feeling in all five fingers, though they did not exist, and though her index finger had never existed because she’d been born with congenital phocomelia, a condition often linked to use of the drug thalidomide in pregnancy in the 1950s and 1960s, in which bones may be shortened or absent. 

Before the amputation, she did not have the phantom pain, nor did she experience the sensation of having five fingers. After the amputation, her brain filled in five fingers -- though her phantom index finger was about half the length of her normal left hand index finger -- and the pain.

She came to Ramachandran’s lab because he’s became famous for using a simple technique to trick the brain into seeing normal limbs where none exist as a way to ease phantom limb pain in amputees. Using mirrors, subjects see the reflection of their normal limb. The brain interprets the reflection as being that of the missing or damaged limb.

Because such patients often sense that their missing limb is trapped in an uncomfortable position from which it can’t escape, the pain persists. But with the mirror system, they appear to have control over the missing limb and can retrain their brain to believe it can move the phantom limb.

While the therapy has its doubters, McGeoch and Ramachandran reported that it worked on R.N. But what explains the appearance of R.N.’s phantom fingers where none existed in the first place?

Ramachandran sees the phenomenon in terms of nature and nurture. The nurture part refers to the way we perceive our own bodies. For example, he pointed out, people suffering from untreated leprosy can suffer the gradual loss of fingers, a whole hand, even part of a forearm. But they rarely experience phantom pain or sense a phantom limb, Ramachandran believes, because their brain has time to create a new brain map of their body. Amputees are faced with a sudden loss, and no map. So the brain fills in what was once there.  

This mapping of nurture, however, is laid down "on top of preexisting templates of body imagery," Ramachandran explained, created in utero as our brains were developing, following genetic instructions. He believes that map is permanent.

R.N. was born with this permanent map in her brain, he suggested. It was overridden by the one she created as she grew up with her malformed hand. When her hand was later amputated, however, the inhibition of the congenital map was removed, and it replaced the one she’d created through life.  

After two weeks of 30-minute daily training with the mirror apparatus, R.N. reported she’d gained more control over her phantom hand and fingers -- which now seemed almost completely normal -- and her pain was significantly reduced.

The case report is published in a recent issue of the journal Neurocase.

Brian Alexander is the author, with neuroscientist Larry Young, of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction," coming in September. 

Related:

• 'Toe Suck Fairy' arrested: Foot fetishes explained
• Cracking the code: Why yuor barin can raed tihs
• Brain stimulation may improve sense of direction

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

Related: 

• Why yuor barin can raed tihs
• Teen can say any word backward. How?!
• Girl has tongue surgery to speak Korean

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

By Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience

Women may not need a guy, a vibrator, or any other direct sexual stimulation to have an orgasm, finds a new study on exercise-induced orgasms and sexual pleasure.

The findings add qualitative and quantitative data to a field that has been largely unstudied, according to researcher Debby Herbenick, co-director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University. For instance, Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues first reported the phenomenon in 1953, saying that about 5 percent of women they had interviewed mentioned orgasm linked to physical exercise. However, they couldn't know the actual prevalence because most of these women volunteered the information without being directly asked.

Since then, reports of so-called "coregasms," named because of their seeming link to exercises for core abdominal muscles, have circulated in the media for years, according to the researchers.

"Despite attention in the popular media, little is known scientifically about exercise-induced orgasms," the researchers write in a special issue of the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy released in print this month. [5 Myths About Women's Bodies] 

Herbenick and her colleagues used online surveys to gather their data, which included answers from 124 women who had experienced exercise-induced orgasms and 246 women who reported exercise-induced sexual pleasure. Most of the women, ages 18 to 63 and an average age of 30, were in a relationship or married and 69 percent said they were heterosexual.

The researchers found that about 40 percent of both groups of women had experienced exercise-induced pleasure or orgasm on more than 11 occasions in their lives. Most of the women in the "orgasm" group said they felt some level of embarrassment when exercising in public places.

The "orgasm" group mostly said during the experiences they weren't having a sexual fantasy or thinking about someone they were attracted to.

Of the women who had orgasms during exercise, about 45 percent said their first experience was linked to abdominal exercises; 19 percent linked to biking/spinning; 9.3 percent linked to climbing poles or ropes; 7 percent reported a connection with weight lifting; 7 percent running;  the rest of the first-time experiences included various exercises, such as yoga, swimming, elliptical machines, aerobics and others. Exercise-induced sexual pleasure was linked with more types of exercises than the orgasm phenomenon.

Answers to open-ended questions in the survey revealed some interesting details, the researchers found. For instance, the abdominal exercises tied to orgasms seemed to be particularly associated with the exercise in which a person supports their weight on their forearms on a so-called captain's chair with padded arm rests and then lifts their knees toward their chest.

The open-ended questions also revealed the orgasms tended to occur after multiple sets of crunches or some other abdominal exercise rather than after just a couple repetitions; they also seemed to happen after the woman had really exerted herself.

"Many of these women talked about it happening even as children," Herbenick said during a telephone interview, adding that some indicated an experience at age 7 or 8.

"We had at least one woman in the study who was a virgin, and she really loved that she could have these experiences at the gym," Herbenick said. [10 Surprising Sex Statistics]

The researchers aren't sure why certain exercises lead to orgasm or sexual pleasure, though Herbenick hopes to tease out the trigger in ongoing research.

"It may be that exercise, which is already known to have significant benefits to health and well-being, has the potential to enhance women's sexual lives as well," Herbenick said, adding that it isn't clear whether these exercises could actually enhance women's sexual experiences.

The research has various implications regarding women's sexuality. For one, orgasm and sexual desire have topped women's list of sex concerns, with around one out of four women not reaching orgasm during sex. The researchers suggest "it may be that physical exercise has been overlooked in clinical approaches to women's orgasm."

Second, scientists have long debated the evolutionary context of the female orgasm and its link to sexuality and reproduction. However, if many women are experiencing orgasm during exercises not related to sex, then exercise-induced orgasm may reveal what orgasm does and does not have to do with sex or reproduction, the researchers note. [G-Spot: Science Can't Find It]

In addition, exercise-induced orgasms may be one way for scientists, and women themselves, to learn about the process of orgasm. "It may be one way for women to learn more about how their bodies work in that regard," Herbenick said.

As for how other scientists may react to the finding: "I think from having talked with colleagues, while some people have heard of these [exercise-induced orgasms], many of our colleagues haven't either," Herbenick told LiveScience. "So I think that's going to be interesting," seeing the reaction. She added that some might question, "'Is this a tooth fairy type of thing or does it really happen?' I have no doubt that it happens."

More from LiveScience:

• 6 (Other) Great Things Sex Can Do For You
• The Sex Quiz: Myths, Taboos and Bizarre Facts
• 5 Reasons Being a Woman Is Good For Your Health

More from The Body Odd:

• Mind-blowing sex can actually wipe memory clean
• Penis tattoo gives guy permanent erection
• Too much of a good thing: The 4-hour erection

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

Nick Koudis / Getty Images stock

By Molly Raisch
Prevention

If you want to know what your risk of dementia and stroke will be down the line, new research finds that surprisingly simple tests today could give you the answer. 

The handshake test
How’s your grip? Not only is a firm handshake a sign of confidence, but doctors say it may be a barometer of your health, too. Researchers followed nearly 2,500 men and women for more than a decade, according to new research presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 64th Annual Meeting, and linked the risk of dementia and stroke to how strong their handshakes were at the beginning of the study. Having a stronger grip was associated with a 42 percent lower risk of stroke in people over age 65 compared with other study participants with flimsier grasps.

What’s the connection? “Vascular problems in the brain manifest themselves in a wide variety of ways,” says study author Erica Camargo, MD, of the Boston Medical Center. The suspicion is that if your grip is particularly weak, it could be a sign that your overall cardiovascular health isn’t in the best shape, she says. 

Boost Brain Power 24 Hours A Day 

The walking report
Are you a speed demon or more of a stroller? If people think you're a New Yorker simply by the speed of your stride, you're in luck. The same study found that those who walked at a brisk clip had a much lower risk of developing dementia than their tortoise-paced counterparts. Those with a slower walking speed in middle age were one and a half times more likely to develop dementia.

“Walking speed can be a great test of general frailty, and since walking is not exactly simple (you have to look where you’re going and plan ahead) the time it takes you to process this information can be a measurement of how damaged the brain is,” says Dr. Camargo. 

Sneaky Stroke Symptoms

The sleeping quiz
Snooze with one eye open? You could be at risk for memory problems later on. According to a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, people who wake up more than five times per hour are more likely to have amyloid plaque build up in their brain, which is thought to be a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease.

Even if you think you get in a full eight hours every night, don’t be so sure: Although most study participants were physically in bed for eight hours, the average amount of sleep people actually got was closer to six and a half hours—and 25 percent of the participants had evidence of amyloid plaques. 

More from Prevention:

• The 10 Best Walking Shoes
• Why You Can’t Sleep
• Brain Games To Keep Your Mind Sharp
• 9 Ways to Never Have a Stroke

Read the latest from The Body Odd:

• Did a sinus infection cause Ashley Judd's puffy face?
• After a stroke, the faces of her family looked 'ugly'
• Loud talkers: Why do some voices seem to be set at top volume?
• World's tallest man finally stops growing at 8 feet 3 inches

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

Dario Cantatore / Getty Images

Ashley Judd attends an event at the United Nations on Wednesday in New York City.

While Ashley Judd is busily writing about AIDS, proffering bracketing tips and promoting her new TV series, "Missing," the celebrity's reps and gossip mags are in a heated debate as to what's going on with her weirdly puffy face.

RadarOnline.com threw out the first salvo with a March 13 story that declared the actress's newly chubby cheeks were caused by some type of over-the-top plastic surgery. One of Judd's representatives quickly countered with an alternative explanation. The actress has been "battling an ongoing, serious sinus infection and flu," they told E! News.

Medication, they claimed, had caused the facial puffiness.

Dr. Vincent Chan, a Seattle ear, nose and throat doctor specializing in sinus disease, says steroids (commonly used for sinus infections) can cause puffiness, but only when used long term.

"Generally, when steroids are given for sinus infection, they're given for 10 days to two weeks," he says. "Usually those types of regimens - steroids for sinusitis - don't cause that sort of problem."

Chan says that when he prescribes steroids such as prednisone to his patients for sinusitis, he never counsels them about possible facial puffiness.

"It takes several weeks to a month to get that kind of puffiness," he says. "And it will be accompanied by generalized water retention. You'll be puffy everywhere."

As it happens, though, Judd has talked (well, tweeted) about her sinus infection -- and the weight gain she's suffered, thanks to the steroids her doctors are using to treat it.

"Steroids r dramatic," the actress tweeted to a fan who'd written Judd about her own prednisone-related weight gain. "My clothes don't fit right, hard on a girl's self esteem, so lots of positive self talk & love."

Other sinus-related tweets from Judd talk about how long the infection's been around (three weeks) and how she's had "2 rounds" of the drugs.

According to plastic surgeon Dr. Anthony Youn, Judd's explanation regarding her puffy puss could certainly be true.

"If she says she started taking [steroids] five days ago and that's why she's puffy, that doesn't sound likely," he says. "But if she says 'I've been on steroids [for a while] and gained weight, I think that's a very reasonable explanation."

Youn says if it's not steroid use, his best guess would be that Judd is suffering from something he and his plastic surgery colleagues call "pillow face."

"There's a new trend in plastic surgery in Hollywood to over-plump people's faces," he says. "If it's not steroids, my guess would be that Ashley Judd has plumped her cheeks with Sculptra injections, which have caused her to have a pillow face and caused her cheeks to look almost chipmunk-like."

Youn quickly adds that the steroid story could also be true.

"It's possible either way," he says. "My feeling is that obviously it looks like she has a pillow face, not a steroid face. But her story definitely has some potential credibility to it."

As for Judd's fans, most don't seem to care about the facial filler rumors circulating the web one whit.

"Ashley Judd is still the sexiest woman in Hollywood," tweeted one.

Related:

• Here's what a lightning strike can do to your skin
• Why not fix that receding hairline with some leg hair?
• Woman's breast implant disappears during Pilates

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

More from The Body Odd:

• Study explains the science behind your beer buzz
• What makes someone an angry drunk?
• I'll never drink again! Never mind. Cheers!

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

A Dutch woman recovering from a stroke had an unusual response to seeing her family:

The faces of her closest family members looked strange and distorted to her -- even repulsive.

But at the same time, strangers' faces seemed normal. In fact, she had much less trouble recognizing the faces of strangers and celebrities than she did her own flesh and blood.

This fascinating case of a 62-year-old woman referred to as JS is described in a recent issue of the journal Neurocase.

Hospitalized after having an ischemic stroke, JS was unable to recognize one of her daughters with whom she had regular contact. But she immediately recognized her other daughter, whom she hadn't seen in eight years.

When her grandchildren visited, she wouldn't let them sit on her lap because she thought they looked repulsive.

"Of course, JS felt bad and ashamed about not recognizing family members or perceiving them as ugly," says Dr. Joost Heutink, the lead author of the case study.

"As soon as we established that JS had a problem recognizing faces, we informed her family that a perceptual disorder prevented her from recognizing people she loved," he explains.

During neuropsychological testing, JS was given a facial recognition task. She was shown a series of photographs of her close family members, celebrities, and unfamiliar people and asked whether she recognized the person.

She correctly identified strangers 96 percent of the time and correctly identified a celebrity  -- whether it was Elvis, Albert Einstein, Oprah Winfrey, or Julia Roberts -- 76 percent of the time.

When shown photos of Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler, JS responded that these were pictures of "pathetic look-alikes who should have made more effort to look like the 'real' people." (They were the real people, though.)

While she found it easy to identify famous people and strangers, she had much more difficulty with her friends and family. She was the slowest and least accurate at placing familiar faces and correctly recognized them only 49% of the time.

When shown snapshots of her family, the facial proportions seemed distorted. She was even more critical of her grandkids' photos. To her, they appeared overweight and extremely tan.

"I have seen hundreds of cases with visual complaints after stroke in the posterior brain regions," says Heutink, an assistant professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. "Several had problems recognizing familiar faces but I never encountered anything like this."

"It's an extremely rare case," he admits. As for why it occurred, Heutink and his colleagues write that "mild prosopometamorphopsia might explain this unusual clinical picture."

This mouthful of a word --  prosopometamorphopsia -- refers to a difficulty recognizing faces because they look contorted or warped in some way.

Heutink suspects that the areas of JS's brain damaged by stroke made it difficult for her to process and interpret information about facial identity along with its emotional context and meaning.

As a result, her facial distortions seem to be limited to close family and other emotionally relevant people in her life  -- perhaps explaining her reaction to seeing bin Laden and Hitler's photos.  She also has trouble recognizing basic emotional expressions on faces.

JS continues to have problems recognizing faces, but she has been taught how to compensate for it.  "We teach patients how to recognize people by specific details, such as their hair, clothes, voice, or posture," Heutink explains.

They also trained JS's family to call minutes before arriving at her home. That way she knows exactly who is there when the doorbell rings. It works every time. 

Related:

• Woman's breast implant disappears during Pilates
• Swallowed pen still works 25 years later
• Man's image seen in ultrasound

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

Getty Images stock

BUT THIS IS MY INSIDE VOICE!!

If there were a "Saturday Night Live" skit that sums up Kevin Roberts' life, it would have to be The Loud Family.

"My family is full of loud talkers," says the 42-year-old author and educational consultant from Detroit. He jokes, "My mother sneezes so loudly that children in the neighborhood congregate around the house waiting for one.

"I do a lot of public speaking and don't use a microphone, even if I'm talking to 400 people. And whenever I get together with my brother, we're out of hand. Everybody shushes us. We just have booming voices."

Roberts' sister, on the other hand, has her volume set to low.

"My older sister compensates," he says. "She has a first grade subdued teacher voice. She's more of a soft talker."

While loud talkers and soft talkers may seem like the stuff of "Seinfeld," researchers have actually pinpointed why some of us are constantly shushed while others struggle to be heard.

"There are four different factors," says Dr. Amee Shah, director of the speech acoustics and perception laboratory at Cleveland State University. "There's a biological component, a pathological component, a personality component and a cultural component."

Sometimes, loud or soft voices are simply based on the way we're built, Shah explains.

"It can be mechanical," she says. "Everybody is born with a different size larynx and vocal cords within that. Also, some may have smaller lungs and can't generate enough airflow to have a louder voice."

Pathologically speaking, the volume of a person's voice can be due to changes in the tissue or vibration rate of the vocal cords.

"As we age, our tissue atrophies," says Shah. "The vocal cords don't vibrate as fast. Or there could be other things, such as the person is a lifelong smoker or they have vocal nodules or polyps. All those things can contribute to a softer voice."

Personality can play a part in the loud voice-soft voice smackdown, as well (just check out the difference between the "Super Bass" singing cousins Sophia Grace and Rosie in this viral video).

"Some people may be shy and withdrawn and inhibited," says Shah. "They may not be comfortable in a social situation, they may not be a good speaker. This is where some of the examples from 'Seinfeld' come in -- the low talkers or the people who like to mumble. Psychologically, they're not able to project their voices loud enough."

Even culture can affect how loudly (or softly) we talk, says Shah.

"Certain cultures prevent or inhibit loud talking, especially if you're a woman," she says. "There are pragmatic reasons why someone may not make direct eye contact and not project their voice loud enough."

As to whether loud talking is genetic, Shah says it's more about environment.

"At the family level, it's more of a mental influence," she says. "If it's a large family, everybody learns that to be heard, you have to speak up. It's more sociological."

But growing up around a bunch of loud talkers can have the opposite effect, she says, as with Roberts' soft-talking sister.

"Sometimes, if a father or older brother is louder, a sibling might tend to be more withdrawn," she says.

There is good news for soft talkers longing to be heard, though, says Shah.  

"You can definitely train yourself to talk louder," she says, pointing to various methods such as using the respiratory control more efficiently, learning to work your optimal pitch so you're not wasting air flow, taking deeper breaths, hydrating yourself more often, and doing yoga.

"All of these give you more projection," she says.

As for talking softer, Shah says that's much more difficult.

"Most of the time, people aren't aware they're doing it," she says. "They may not think they're loud unless somebody tells them. A lot of the time, people focus on content and don't think about delivery."

Are you naturally quiet -- or does your voice seem to be permanently set at the highest possible volume? Got any theories why you're that way? 

Related:

• Teen has tongue surgery to speak Korean. Huh?!
• 'Allo, guvnah! Mimicking accents may be innate
• Pahking the cah? Regional accents getting stronger

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

Courtesy of University of Virgin

Sultan Kosen, the world's tallest man according to the Guiness book of records, received treatment at the University of Virginia Medical Center. Dr. Jason Sheehan (far right) performed radiosurgery to a tumor in Kosen's pituitary gland to stop his excess production of growth hormone. His endocrinologist, Mary Lee Vance, on Kosen's right, placed him on a new medication to help stop his growth.

For three years in a row, Sultan Kosen has been named the world's tallest living man by Guinness World Records. Interestingly, he's earned this lofty distinction at three different heights. Even more fascinating, in the last three months, the 29-year-old Turkish man has only recently stopped growing thanks to receiving state-of-the-art treatment in the U.S.

Kosen first entered the record books at 8 feet 1 inch; at his next measurement, he was listed as 8 feet 2 inches, and now he's achieved his ultimate adult height at 8 feet 3 inches. He's also in the record books for having the largest hands (11.22 inches) and largest feet (14.4 inches).

Kosen's extraordinary stature is a result of gigantism. He developed a pituitary tumor as a child, which caused his pituitary gland to produce an excessive amount of growth hormone.

"That tumor is not cancerous and it is not a brain tumor," says Dr. Mary Lee Vance, an endocrinologist at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville, Va. "A spontaneous mutation causes the tumor, and it's not hereditary," she explains. Kosen's parents and siblings are all average height.

Vance first learned of Kosen's case and first saw him as a patient in the spring of 2010. The Discovery Channel was doing a show on Kosen as the "World's Tallest Man," and Vance, as an expert in pituitary tumors, was asked to appear on it.

She put Kosen on a new medication (he was already taking two others) to try to bring down his growth hormone levels to a normal range. But medication alone would not be enough, so Vance consulted with a neurosurgeon to explore other options.

Although his pituitary tumor was diagnosed when Kosen was 10 years old, efforts in his native Turkey and elsewhere in Europe to stop the tumor's growth were unsuccessful. He had three prior surgeries attempting to remove the tumor as well as radiation treatment, but Kosen kept growing and growing. 

Slideshow: Guinness World Records 2012

"As he was growing taller and taller, he kept getting sicker and sicker," says Dr. Jason Sheehan, a neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia Health System, who also treated Kosen. "He had a very aggressive tumor involving the base of his skull and brain that was in a very difficult location to remove," he explains.

It seems being this tall comes at a steep price. "The human body and heart is not well designed for a person who is 8 (feet) tall," points out Sheehan.

As a result, Kosen's skeletal frame was so big that his joints, bones and muscles were weak in relation to his height. He has joint problems and can't walk without crutches. He had visual problems because the pituitary tumor got so big it was pressing on the nerves of his eyes.  

In August of 2010, Dr. Sheehan performed gamma knife radiosurgery. This procedure uses focused beams of gamma rays, which deliver high-energy radiation, and is guided by MRI to targeted points in Kosen's brain.

"Every step of the way, we had to do accommodations for Sultan's height," says Sheehan. In the operating room and during his recovery they had to put two normal-sized hospital beds together. They needed to buy a specialized frame for Sultan's large head size to map out where the gamma rays would go.

Although Kosen did not speak English and had an interpreter with him, Sheehan described him as "a gentle giant," who "knows how to charm people." Kosen also wanted to get his medical condition under control because he wanted to enjoy life more and hopefully get married one day.

But the gamma knife surgery is not an instant fix, points out Sheehan, and "it takes one to two years for the full effects of surgery to be realized."

Just three months ago, Dr. Vance and Dr. Sheehan learned that Kosen's height had finally stabilized and he had stopped growing. The tumor has also stopped growing as has the overproduction of growth hormone. 

Although the surgery does not make Kosen shorter and he is still at risk for some health problems because of his towering height, Sheehan says the surgery at least limited any additional risk. 

Related: 

• Surgery saves man from hearing his own eyeball move
• Small wonder: 18-year-old named world's shortest man
• Real-life Irish giants traced to 18th century street performer
• How do blind people dream?

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

There you are, driving across a bridge spanning a deep ravine, when suddenly you sense an urge to drive off it. Yet you’ve no desire to kill yourself.

Believe or not, this feeling now has a name. In a research study published last month in the Journal of Affective Disorders, a team from Florida State University’s psychology department explored this freaky feeling and dubbed it high-place phenomenon.

“We were talking one day in a lab meeting and some of us had experienced it,” recalled psychology doctoral student Jennifer Hames. But when the lab searched the psychology literature, they could find no mention of it. “So we thought, What a great study!” 

It could, they thought, shine light on one of Freud’s ideas, that some people have a “death wish,” and that some suicides are purely impulsive, absent any sign of depression or even sadness.  

Hames and her colleagues surveyed 431 college students, asking them about urges to jump from high places and thoughts of suicide. They also assessed the students’ levels of depression, and their sensitivity to anxiety. That doesn’t mean how anxious they are; it means how sensitive they are to the physical effects -- faster heart beat and shortness of breath -- that accompanies anxiety. Those physical sensations can themselves be interpreted as dangerous.

About a third of the sample said they’d felt the urge to jump at least once. People who had thought of suicide were more likely to say yes, but over 50 percent of those who said they’d never considered suicide experienced the phenomenon, too.

When the results were correlated, the team arrived at the following, admittedly somewhat speculative, scenario: Imagine a person with high anxiety sensitivity. She leans over a ledge of the Grand Canyon. In super fast reaction to her physical sensation of anxiety, her survival instinct forces her away from the edge. Yet when she looks at the ledge, she sees it’s sturdy. There was never any danger. Her brain tries to process an answer to the question “Why did I back up if it was safe?” A logical answer is that she must have been tempted to jump.

In other words, Hames explained, people misinterpret the instinctual safety signal, and conclude they must have felt an urge to leap. Hence the study’s title: “An Urge to Jump Affirms to Urge to Live.”

Pauline Wallin, a psychologist in private practice in Camp Hill, Pa., thinks Hames might be onto something, but also suggests that we think about leaping from a high place for the same reason 13-year-girls like going to Halloween haunted houses -- for the thrill, and as practice “for not buckling under to fear.”

Hames is now planning further research to find out if "high place phenomenon" holds up. One starting strategy might be, she said, to take a bunch of students to the top of a high parking garage, have them lean over the edge, and measure their physical signs of anxiety.

Presumably extra credit will given. 

Do you ever get a strange urge to drive off a bridge, or jump off a cliff? Tell us about the last time you remember it happening. You can discuss this story -- and others like it -- on our Facebook page.

Related:

• Why do our eyelids get heavy when we're sleepy?
• How do blind people dream?
• 'Awake' may be fake, but these delusions are real

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

Getty Images stock

The fight begins.

Round One: Your field of vision -- maybe a laptop screen, maybe a TV screen -- slowly dissolves from bright and wide to dim and squinty. Your eyelids are drooping.

Round Two: Soft, steady blinks set in, like a referee counting you out. Your lids feel like slabs of cement. In a desperate push, you forcibly ram your bulbs open: a brief, final glare at the fading world.

Round Three: Your brave gaze promptly melts into a haze of lashes. The cement-laden lids now feel like they’re also carrying cement mixers.

 Round Four: You’re out.

That nightly bout -- you versus Morpheus (or, if you’re not into Greek mythology, you versus the Sandman) -- is a simply the last moment of a war of attrition inside the muscles that power your eyelids, including the levator, the Mullers, and the frontalis. Those tiny fibers feel heavy after a day of watching, scanning, looking and gawking. It’s just a matter of muscle fatigue, no different than your biceps feeling spent after a set of curls in the gym.

“Reading – or, like I’ve been doing the past few days, working on the computer – really wears those muscles down like your legs would become tired from walking for a whole day,” says professor Mark A. W. Andrews, professor of physiology at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pa. (Before a phone interview with The Body Odd, Andrews had spent three straight days preparing exams for his students).

Your lids can feel extra hefty after days “when you have to concentrate and keep them open a certain amount, “Andrews adds. “It’s even worse when you’re working in a darker environment. Just like an f-stop on a camera (which regulates exposure), you have to make sure your eyes are fully widened, letting all the possible light in.”

This also explains your instinctive attempt to momentarily revive tired eyes -- gently rubbing them with your fingers.

“What feels good after you exercise certain muscles? A massage of sorts,” Andrews says. “That rubbing is going to increase the blood flow in the area and get rid of waste materials that are generated from fatigue. The rubbing washes the waste materials out and into the lymph system.”

What’s more, this is why tired eyes tend to look puffy, he adds: “When you’re using a muscle a lot, there’s a lot of vascular pressure, a lot of blood flowing through.”

In people with anatomically heavier eyelids, Andrews explains, their lid muscles can fatigue even faster than in people with thin lids. Sorry about that, Blake Lively. 

And as we age, many of us acquire “fat pads,” beneath our eyes. This extra tissue makes the heavy-lid sensation “more prevalent” when we're weary, Andrews says. Even worse, at that stage look just as tired as we feel.

Anyway, all this chatter about sleepy eyes is making my eyelidzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz … Oh no. Round One.

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

Related:

• How do blind people dream?
• Why is cracking my knuckles so addictive?
• Wait, haven't I read this before? The science of deja vu

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

One of the less-talked-about side effects of being blind: fielding many (many!) questions from us sighted folks -- enough questions, apparently, to program a YouTube channel. Tommy Edison, who is blind, hosts the popular YouTube series "The Tommy Edison Experience," where he answers viewer questions: How do blind people use an ATM? How do blind people use paper money?

In one of his latest videos, he posts his answer to a fascinating question: How do blind people dream? 

Edison explains that he's been blind since birth, so, no, he doesn't "see" in his dreams. "I think because I’ve never seen in real life, that my sub-conscious doesn’t know what it’d be like to see, either, so, no. I don’t see in my dreams,” Edison explains in the video.

 “I mean, the way it works for me, is just the way my life occurs, right? So it’s all smell, sound, taste and touch," he continues. "That’s all there is. Just like your life works. I mean, you see in your life, so, obviously, you’d see in your dreams."

To someone who's always been able to see, though, that description might be surprising. (Edison dreams in Smell-O-Vision?) Most sighted people remember the images and emotions from a dream -- but smells, sounds, tastes and touches, maybe not so much. 

"You guys, you’re visually driven," Edison said to me in a phone interview. "I don’t know, 'cause I’ve never seen, but I would think if there was something very prevalent -- like if there was a fire in your dream -- I would think you would remember the smell of it. Or take a bite of the hamburger, and it tastes like lobster -- that’s going to be a funny thing you'd remember." 

In the video, he explains a typical dream: “I mean, just like you guys, right? Weird things happen in dreams. I mean, so here I am, it’s the bottom of the ninth. Runners on second and third, two men away -- and all of a sudden, it’s my seventh birthday. Strange!”

And as it turns out, the question "How do blind people dream?" has been tackled a surprising number of times by academics. 

"One of the interesting things about this idea is people have actually studied it, specifically looking at what kind of content (blind) people have in their dreams," says Dr. Rachel Vreeman, assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, co-author of "Don't Cross Your Eyes ... They'll Get Stuck That Way!" and frequent answerer of some of our odder questions. 

"It shows in these studies that people who have been blind since birth or very early in childhood have no images in their dreams," although that seems to vary, Vreeman explains. Some studies report that if a person loses his or her sight before the age of 5 will almost never have images in dreams, but a few exceptions exist. For those who go blind in middle childhood, it seems dreams can go either way -- visual or non-visual. And, as it logically follows, those who become blind later in life continue to experience some images in their dreams -- but that can fade over time, Vreeman explains. 

She says at least one study suggests that transportation is a recurring theme in the dreams of many blind people -- perhaps because that's something that often gives them trouble in real life.

"The key with that is it’s your brain that’s making the dream ... It’s really what your brain has experienced and what your brain continues to experience," Vreeman says. "People who are blind tend to have a lot more smells, hearing, tactile (sensations), which people who have vision tend to not have many of those. I can’t remember a dream that I’ve ever had, and I feel like a lot of sighted people feel the same way, where there were lots of textures, lots of smells." 

Edison's videos are an offshoot of his main online presence as the Blind Film Critic -- he reviews movies from the perspective of a blind person. He says after he reviewed "Inception" -- which he says he found easier to follow than most sighted people seemed to -- his viewers started asking him the "how do blind people dream" question. (A question, incidentally, he parodied in "Sh-- Sighted People Say To Blind People," his take on the sh-- X says to Y meme that was everywhere a few months ago: "Hey, when you're dreaming, can you see?")

In each video, Edison cheerfully, charmingly, gives us sighted folks his take on what it's like to live life the way he does. 

"You see people -- they’re not sure what I can and cannot do. People raise their voice: 'HI, IT'S NICE TO MEET YOU.' People don’t know how to be, and that’s OK," he says. "People are curious. You don’t run into a lot of me in the world. Really, you don’t -- there’s not a lot of us, especially people who have been blind since birth."

Related:

• Why is cracking my knuckles so addictive?
• Wait, haven't I read this before? The science of deja vu
• Can you die from laughter?

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

More from The Body Odd:

Women spot snakes faster before their period

'Awake' may be fake, but these delusions are real

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

Brent Stirton / Getty Images file

If you are a woman, you'd spot this coral snake faster if you were about to get your period, a new study says.

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

Dwight Schrute would be jealous: A new study suggests that women can detect snakes faster during the premenstrual phase of their menstrual cycles.

The quirky character on the sitcom "The Office" has plenty of theories about both snakes and menstruation, including a color-coded chart for the cycles of his female co-workers, but even he didn't see this one coming. Study researchers say the idea makes sense, as fluctuating hormones can influence the amygdala, a brain region responsible for fear and anxiety.

During the luteal phase, or premenstrual portion, of the menstrual cycle, women are quicker at detecting photos of snakes, a threatening stimulus, than they are during the early and late follicular phase of the cycle, when the ovaries prepare to release an egg.

The luteal cycle begins with ovulation, the time of maximum fertility, suggesting that heightened anxiety might be adaptive in helping pregnant or potentially pregnant women stay safe, researchers report today (March 8) in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. The luteal phase is also the time when some women experience premenstrual syndrome, or PMS, an array of symptoms that can include everything from breast tenderness to irritability to anxiety.  

The study is preliminary, and women's cycles were calculated based on the dates participants gave for their last periods, not on direct hormone measurements, meaning further research is necessary to confirm the results.

In the study, Kyoto University Primate Institute researcher Nobuo Masataka and his colleague, Masahiro Shibasaki, asked 60 healthy, naturally cycling women ages 29 to 30 to look at grids of nine photos and to touch the photo in each grid that contained a snake. The other photos were of flowers, a neutral, non-scary image. In general, people are quicker to react to scary snakes than they are to pleasant flowers. [ 7 Shocking Snake Stories ]

Each woman completed the experiment twice over two to three months. Twenty women participated during the early follicular phase of their cycle, or the fifth day after the start of the menstrual period, and during the late follicular phase, or the 25th day of the cycle right before ovulation.

Another 20 participated during the early follicular phase and the luteal phase, day 13 of the cycle right around when ovulation occurs. A third group of 20 participated during the late follicular phase and the luteal phase.

The results revealed that women detected flowers equally as well throughout their cycles. But they were quicker to see snakes during the luteal phase compared with the late follicular and early follicular phases. On average it took about 1,128 to 1149 milliseconds to spot the snake during the luteal phase, which was about 200 milliseconds faster than the average snake-spotting speed during the follicular phases.

There was no difference in snake-detecting ability between the early and late follicular phases.

Citing other hormonal studies, the researchers speculate that heightened levels of the hormone progesterone could increase anxiety. This hormone is particularly high in the luteal phase of the cycle. Other hormones, including estradiol and cortisol, also vary with the menstrual cycle and could play a role in this increased awareness of danger, the researchers wrote.

5 Myths About Women's Bodies

Busted! 6 Gender Myths in the Bedroom & Beyond

What Really Scares People: Top 10 Phobias

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

NBC

Here's a scene from NBC's new show, "Awake," in which the protagonist, played by Jason Isaacs, experiences two alternate realities.

In the new TV series “Awake,” a detective, his wife, and son, suffer a severe car crash. The detective wakes up. But he seems to live in two realities: In one, his wife is dead and his son lives. In the other, his son is dead and his wife lives. Psychiatrists in each reality tell him the opposite existence is a dream. Yet clues from these parallel lives leak into crime investigations, helping the detective solve them.

Whoa.

But could any such thing happen in real life?

“My first suggestion is that the person who wrote this needs to get some counseling,” offered University of Florida neurologist Dr. Kenneth Heilman. 

That would be a “no.” But similar phenomenon do occur.

Heilman himself has a personal experience with something like it. When his mother was in the hospital after a severe heart attack that had restricted blood flow to her brain, she’d sometimes comment that she couldn’t tell if she was dreaming or was awake.

And he once had a patient with viral encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, who said the same thing. Dreaming and waking life had become conflated.

Of course, all of us experience this phenomenon when we sleep and dream. In many, maybe most, dreams, we think what we’re experiencing is real because, as Heilman likes to describe it, we’ve engaged the clutch when sleeping and disconnected our reasoning, centered in the frontal cortices.

“That’s why, in the middle of a dream, you don’t think ‘OK, I can’t be hanging on to the top of a double decker bus feeling quite excited but not afraid as the bus charges around Edinburgh,” explained University of Cambridge professor Sue Llewellyn.

We also can have “lucid dreams,” those dreams that occur, often just before we wake, when our reasoning centers in the frontal lobes began to reengage. We’re asleep, and dreaming, but slightly aware. Also, drugs like LSD can induce hallucinations that blur the boundaries between dream and reality.   

Damage to the centers of reasoning and sensory input can create a variety of delusions. Reduplicative paramnesia, for example, was named in 1975 (though it was known as early as 1903) when a doctor realized that a few patients insisted, incorrectly, that the hospital was actually located at another location. Today it’s the insistence by suffers that places, people or events have been duplicated. Parkinson’s disease and strokes can cause the frontal brain lesions that lead to this syndrome, but so can severe trauma.

Like a car accident.  

Related: 

• Alien hand syndrome: When one hand develops a mind of its own
• Engineer lived with a bullet in his head for eight decades
• Un-paralyzed by a crash? Doctors say it's unlikely

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

Read the latest from The Body Odd: 

• Should you really have that next cup of coffee?
• On the upside: When maladies carry surprising merits
• Get kids to believe you by pointing at something

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

Getty Images file Getty Images file

By Andrew Winner

Wondering if it’s time for another cup of coffee? Just take a look at your iPhone. A new software application from The Pennsylvania State University shows users the optimal time to consume caffeine and when to reach for the decaf.

Dr. Frank Ritter, who created the app along with Dr. Martin Yeh, isn’t trying beat the drum against the country’s coffee habit. Rather, he believes the application’s graphical output presents a novel way for individuals to conceptualize their caffeine consumption.

While it may not kill anyone, caffeine can be a nasty mistress if usage isn’t monitored correctly.

Nervousness and disrupted sleep patterns are just two of the negative consequences of caffeine, with users sometimes becoming so inured to the negative effects of caffeine they aren’t consciously aware of the worsening effects. Additionally, caffeine can have a cumulative effect—too much on Monday could lead to disrupted sleep and grogginess on Tuesday. People attempt to self-correct by increasing their intake on Tuesday, creating a cycle that dramatically affects sleep habits and quality of life.

Caffeine Zone helps individuals understand how long caffeine stays in the system, helping them to avoid such Catch-22s and achieve better sleep.

“Increased levels of caffeine can inhibit normal sleep—at least it does for me,” Ritter said in an e-mail. “A colleague of mine used to talk about using caffeine to fight sleep deprivation, and I think that many of us do that.”

“I have also used the app to avoid caffeine way before a talk so I could have a coffee to hand while giving a talk, and then be able to sleep normally,” Ritter added. “If I had not, I would have had a lot of coffee in anticipation of giving a talk in the afternoon, and would not have gotten rid of the caffeine before bedtime.”

The mobile application prompts users to input their caffeine consumption. Then, using preexisting models of caffeine half-lives, the estimated amount of caffeine in the body is shown on a graph. This allows users to review their caffeine level at a glance – information that could be very useful for those dealing with shift changes at work, for example, or our friends in the Armed Services.

Ritter, of Penn State’s Applied Cognitive Science Lab, was encouraged to study the effects of caffeine by Dr. Susan Chipman with the Office of Navy Research. As one might imagine, the working environment on a submarine lends itself to massive amounts of caffeine intake. Understanding one’s level of caffeine could increase mental acuity and improve quality of life of submariners at sea.

Additionally, the basic platform Ritter created can be extended to monitor different substances. Ritter is also hoping to make caffeine half-life a changeable parameter in the app to account for those who “caffeine” differently.

“This started as an experiment in understanding caffeine and how to deliver and work with mobile apps, but it has grown more than we thought it would,” Ritter said. “We have gotten numerous suggestions from this process and a lot of encouragement.”

With an estimated 80-90 percent of the North American population consuming some amount of caffeine daily and a per-capita usage rate of 280 milligrams for adults, it’s important for the general population to understand the effects of caffeine.

Ritter hopes the app will help educate the public on when a hit of caffeine can improve mental function—and when it can do more harm than good.

Related:

• Tank up on java, release your inner editor
• That coffee buzz is all in your head
• Sleepy people blame others for everything

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