Shannon Dininny / AP

Tasty asparagus can have the surprising effect of leaving a distinct aroma in the urine of an unwary diner. Scientists have spent years figuring out why that's so.

Many of you -- maybe three-quarters of our readers here -- are about to learn a small bathroom secret that the rest of us rarely, if ever, mention.

Sometimes our pee smells funny.

Specifically, after eating asparagus, about one in five people detects a distinct scent in their urine that, depending on the person, carries a pungent bouquet that’s been compared to a vegetable garden, sulfur, cabbage soup -- or simply cooked asparagus.

Some folks don’t speak of it, possibly thinking they are utterly alone in this weird wing of the whiz world. (They are not).

Some folks, like 38-year-old Kathleen Lisson of Troy, N.Y., are bold enough to openly share their asparagus pee play-by-play.

“I smell asparagus in my urine after eating asparagus, especially freshly grilled asparagus,” says Lisson, an event planner. “I had always just assumed it was because my body did not digest the chemical compound that gives asparagus its smell. I always smile and giggle a little bit when I visit the restroom a few hours after eating asparagus. The smell reminds me to not take life so seriously.”

Lisson is correct about chemicals causing the aromatic effect. In 1975, California chemist R.H. White used a lab process called gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze urine supplied by 115 people after asparagus consumption. White learned that when humans digest 100 grams of the vegetable, their urine soon contains 2 milligrams to 5 milligrams of two specific chemical compounds (S-methyl thioacrylate and S-methyl 3-thiopropionate) and these “appear to be the odor-causing compounds.” His findings later were published in Science magazine.

The social consequences of the asparagus aroma can be funny, as Alyssa Phillips, an Atlanta physician's assistant with a degree in nutrition recalls. When she and her husband, Neil, were first dating, she made him fresh asparagus for dinner. After the meal, he headed for the bathroom -- and then emerged asking if Phillips was feeling OK. 

"When he peed and smelled the foul odor, he assumed his sweet, new girlfriend might have passed something along," says Phillips. 

That “hilarious conversation,” along with Phillips’ passion for nutrition, caused her, she says, to further research the phenomenon. Phillips learned that “all humans appear to produce the smelly compound, but only some humans -- 22 percent -- have the ability to detect the smell.”

Indeed, a 1994 book titled “The RE/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids,” by Paul Spinrad, cites that 22 percent stat and reports that it was calculated through a survey of asparagus eaters.

Now it's official: the other 78 percent of you are privy to our private pee party.

Scientists also theorize that we who notice the aroma carry a little something extra in our DNA that boosts our sense of that scent. The rest of you, well, let’s just call you smell-blind.

“We believe that the mystery behind asparagus detection in urine is genetic,” says Dr. Walter Gaman, a family practice physician and a partner at Executive Medicine of Texas, a clinic northwest of Dallas.

And before you write this topic off as simply more yellow journalism, be aware that asparagus pee colored several pages of one of the greatest works of modern literature: “Love in the Time of Cholera,” by Gabriel García Márquez.

As the author wrote in one passage: “Even when it was not the season for asparagus, it had to be found regardless of cost so that he could take pleasure in the vapors of his own fragrant urine.”

Clearly, García Márquez is part of the 22 percent club. 

More from The Body Odd:

• Smelly foods make you eat less
• Trick yourself into eating veggies
• Why the urge to pee ruins sleep 

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By Karen Rowan
MyHealthNewsDaily

Every time a young man watched pornography over two years, he experienced a headache so severe he had to stop watching, according to a report of his case.

The headache would develop gradually, beginning within the first five minutes of the video, and would reach its most severe point within eight to 10 minutes, according to the neurologists who treated the man, a 24-year-old bachelor in India.

There are two types of "primary headache associated with sexual activity," as the condition is properly called, and it sounds as if this man had the less common type, which progresses slowly along with heightening sexual arousal, Dr. Amy Gelfand, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, said after hearing about the case.

"The more common type is a sudden and severe headache that occurs at orgasm," Gelfand said. The seeming commonness of that headache may simply be due to the fact that people are more likely to bring them to medical attention, frightened by their timing, she added.

Regardless of the type, primary sex headaches are a mystery, Gelfand said  — no one really knows what causes them. Some have speculated that muscle contractions in the neck and jaw during sex may somehow trigger the headaches, while others have suggested they occur because blood vessels in the head are abnormally reactive to sexual activity.

The researchers who treated the man in India suggested his case was caused by changes in the pain-sensing nerves in the face and jaw, along with increased pain sensitivity due to "a heightened emotional state associated with viewing pornography."

Primary sex headaches strike 1 percent of the population at some point in life, and are more common in men, Gelfand said. About half of people who have them also have migraines, but it's not known whether having migraines raises the likelihood of having sex headaches, or vice versa  – or whether other untold factors are behind both.

The patient in India — an otherwise healthy man who worked as a software professional — had no history of migraines or tension headaches in general, and he reported no previous headaches linked with sexual activity, including masturbation. He'd had no head injuries or meningitis infections, the researchers said.

Previous studies have not suggested any link between the headaches and specific sexual behaviors, the researchers said.

Story: Allergic to orgasm? Man's sad story has happy ending

The results of the man's physical and neurological exams were reportedly normal. Gelfand said that is often with the case in people with primary sex headaches. (In fact, if an exam revealed a physical cause of the headaches, then by definition, the person would be instead diagnosed with a "secondary sex headache," she said.)

The man was advised to take a combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen half an hour before watching porn, and he reported the drugs significantly relieved his pain.

In most people, the headaches occur over a period of a few months, rather than years, Gelfand said. Patients are often treated with a drug called indomethacin, which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug available by prescription in the U.S., and is also used to treat other types of headaches.

The case report was published online June 14 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. 

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Buda Mendes/Stf / Getty Images Contributor

All that sun can take a toll on a surfer's eyes.

Some surfers may shred more than gnarly waves on their boards. Years and years of sun exposure from the sport might take its toll on their eyes.

Dubbed "surfer's eye," this condition results when sun damages the thin membrane covering the surface of the eye. The surfer gets a visible, triangular-shaped growth in the white part of the eye. In more advanced stages, the tip of the triangle actually touches the cornea.

The eye will look red and feel scratchy like something is in it, says Dr. Kathryn Colby, a cornea surgeon at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. The scientific name for surfer's eye is "pterygium" (pronounced tur-ij-ee-um), and Colby says it's a very common condition in the Caribbean or Mexico, places closer to the equator where the sun is much stronger.

Still, Colby sees her fair share of pterygium cases in Boston, even in people who never stepped foot on a board but have spent lots of time in the sun. People who like to fish, sail, water ski, canoe, kayak, or live in tropical climates are all potentially at risk if they tend to not wear sunglasses when outdoors. 

The problem comes from a combination of UV light exposure (from the sun and reflective glare of light off water), wind, and dust from sand that can make surfers' eyes more vulnerable, suggests Colby.

Plus, it's hard for surfers to shield their eyes from these elements while on their boards. Although protective eyewear for surfers is available, some choose not to wear it in the water because the glasses may fog up from ocean spray or fly off in a wipeout. 

In the earliest stages of surfer's eye, the condition is called pinguecula, and it doesn't involve the cornea, the eyeball's outermost portion that covers the pupil and iris. No treatment is needed other than using drops of artificial tears to relieve any discomfort and reducing UV light exposure.

Both pinguecula and pterygium are non-cancerous growths that can occur in one or both eyes. But if the triangular-shaped growth gets larger, becomes more irritating and blurs vision, it can be removed by surgery.

"Pterygium is an annoyance, but there are other more serious and vision-threatening problems that come from the sun," points out Colby. Having these benign growths does not cause a person to get cancer on the surface of the eye, she adds.

Her advice? To keep your eyes safe when outdoors, sunglasses are important both for children and adults.

And since surfers also spend a lot of time hanging out at the beach, they should slip on their UV-protective shades on the shore -- along with a hat.

More on The Body Odd:

• How a hypnotism show left teen girls in a trance
• Why does music 'wake' some coma patients?
• Why you can't get 'Call Me Maybe' out of your head

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Con Poulos

Photos of chocolate cake and other sugary treats made regions of the brain known to be involved in appetite control light up, according to a new study.

Just glancing at a photo of a rich and gooey chocolate cake can set your brain circuits sparking, switching on cravings and revving up your appetite, a new study shows.

The proof is in the brain scans. Researchers found that when people stare at sugary treats, regions of the brain known to be involved in appetite control and pleasure and reward light up, according to the study presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society.

The new study parallels earlier research in cocaine addicts. When addicts were shown anti-drug commercials that included crossed-out needles, the brain regions associated with pleasure fired up and the addicts reported increased craving. Contrary to public health officials’ plans, only the needles registered in the addicts’ brains, not the big red Xs crossing them out.

“We see parallels between substances of abuse, like cocaine, and highly palatable foods,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Kathleen Page, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California. “Some of the same brain regions light up.”

Page and her colleagues scanned 13 obese Hispanic women looking at images of alluring foods such as cupcakes, chocolate cake and chocolate chip cookies.

“What we saw was that the regions of the brain that are involved in reward and hunger lit up,” Page said.

The women, who were also asked to rate their appetite at the beginning and end of the experiment, reported greater hunger and desire for food after looking at the photos.

And in an intriguing second experiment, the researchers asked the women to each consume a sugary drink of approximately 200 calories. Then the researchers repeated the scans as before with the women looking at photos of tasty treats.

“Surprisingly, consumption of the sugar drink — which was essentially equivalent to a 16-ounce soda — actually increased the ratings of hunger and desire,” Page said. “We didn’t predict a hunger increase with the sugar drink. Apparently the brain saw it as an appetizer.”

It’s not clear how average people can protect themselves from photos of tempting treats, Page said. “It’s funny, but when I conducted the studies and looked at the pictures myself, I was thinking, ‘I could eat a piece of chocolate cake right now.’”

It is possible that there could be some sort of public health response, Page said. “You’re probably aware that Disney has said that in 2015 it will stop showing food and beverage ads on their children’s TV shows,” she said. “There have been behavioral studies showing that that the more children see these ads, the more they eat.”

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A group of 13- and 14-year old girls recently fell under a mass trance after attending a hypnotism act at their private high school in Quebec. The inexperienced 20-year-old hypnotist -- who claimed to have had about 14 hours of instruction -- had to call on his instructor to help snap the girls out of it, according to a CBC News report. 

The school principal later apologized to parents and students saying "they didn't know that 14-year-olds were more vulnerable to hypnosis than other people," and noted that all the girls are now fine, a Canadian press account reported.

But some of the girls complained of nausea and headaches shortly after the show, a sign that hypnosis shouldn’t be used as entertainment, says Dr. Joseph Zastrow, president of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and a family practitioner in Mooresville, N.C who teaches hypnosis and uses it in his medical practice.

"Stage hypnotists largely set a bad example to the public of what clinical hypnosis can do," says Zastrow. "We find it unethical to use hypnosis in a nonclinical fashion and certainly in the type of setting that it was provided in Canada," he adds. 

Zastrow says the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis provides hypnosis training but only to health professionals who have at least a master's degree  -- to psychologists, social workers, dentists, and doctors -- who will be using it as a tool in their practices. In addition to at least 60 hours of training, these practitioners also need to become board certified in hypnosis in their respective health field.

Using hypnosis as “fun and frolics,” is "like practicing medicine or psychology without a license,” Zastrow suggests, adding that doing hypnosis in groups is difficult to do properly.

There’s no magic to putting someone in a hypnotic state because a trance is a "natural extension of focus and attention," says Zastrow. Many of us are in a form of a trance when we daydream, or drive past our exit on the highway, or when professional athletes compete without being distracted by the crowd. 

By some estimates 5 to 10 percent of people are easily hypnotized and a roughly similar percentage are resistant to trance. The rest of us fall somewhere in between. Young people between the ages of 10 to 18 are at a prime age for responding to hypnotic suggestions and using these skills, says Zastrow.

Medical hypnosis has been most effective for pain control, such as for cancer-related pain, dental procedure pain, or the pain of childbirth, says Zastrow. Studies indicate it can ease symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, and is effective for about 20 percent of people hoping to quit smoking.

When poorly trained entertainers – the types who make people quack like a duck or sing like Elvis – put teen girls into long deep trances, Zastrow believes "it besmirches the good deeds done every day by professionals using clinical hypnosis." 

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After suffering a brain hemorrhage, 7-year-old Charlotte Neve slipped into a coma. The British girl was unconscious for several days and doctors feared she wouldn’t recover. Her mother, Leila Neve, was at her bedside when Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” started playing on the radio. Leila and Charlotte often sang the song together and Leila began singing along.

Then something remarkable happened: Charlotte smiled. Within two days, she could speak and get out of bed. Why does music seem to help "awaken" some people from their comas?

“It was a salient stimulus, something that she is familiar with, like [her] name,” says Dr. Emery Neal Brown, professor of anesthesia at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and professor of computational neuroscience at MIT.

Brown suspects Charlotte recovered some brain functioning prior to hearing the Adele song, but it was imperceptible. When she heard the song, she smiled and eventually woke because it held meaning for her (that's the salient stimulus part).  

“Maybe people have function recovered and we don’t know how to communicate with them,” he says, explaining a salient stimulus varies by person.

“Whenever memories have an emotional context to them, they tend to hold much more power in the brain and tend to be processed differently,” says Dr. Javier Provencio, director of the Neurological Critical Care Unit at Cleveland Clinic.

Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees woke from his coma when his family played music for him — music for a professional musician who sang with his brothers would have deep meaningful connections in the brain, sparking a reaction. But for someone who plays tennis or rides horses, a song might not encourage a response. 

But sometimes, music causes a reaction because the brain processes songs differently than spoken language. In these cases, the region of the brain responsible for song might be working better while the language lags behind.

“We clearly process music and tonal things differently than language. There are patients [who had strokes] who cannot talk but can still sing,” says Provencio.

The left cerebral hemisphere controls language, while the right processes song and music. Patients who have damage in the left might respond better to song.

“They lose the ability to talk and understand. Music therapy is really useful because it is used in the non-dominate hemisphere,” says Dr. James Bernat, professor of neurology and medicine at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.

Music therapists such as Lee Anna Rasar at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire often use music to try to evoke responses from comatose patients. She notes that songs are most effective “if the music is something they knew before that already had meaning.”

All the physicians agree that doctors still have limited understanding of whether someone will recover from a coma, but if Charlotte wasn’t already healing, she wouldn’t have smiled at the song.

“Even in a coma, it’s quite common that these people improve spontaneously,” says Bernat. “They wake up and start responding. It isn’t outside the range of what is expected that there would be improvement over time.”

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Reuters file photo

Singer Carly Rae Jepsen just met you. And this is crazy. But here she is singing at the MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto on Sunday, so call her, maybe?

It seems impossible to hide from Carly Rae Jepsen's “Call Me Maybe.” Someone auto-tuned videos of President Obama so he performs it; The Roots and Jimmy Fallon played it with toy musical instruments; the Harvard baseball team, the Southern Methodist University women’s rowing team, and the Miami Dolphin cheerleaders all danced to the ditty; and the bubble gum pop song has taken over all the airwaves.

And maybe your brainwaves -- does it seem like “Call Me Maybe” is on repeat in your head? You’re not alone; you have an earworm. Earworms, or involuntary imagery of music, burrow their way into the subconscious, making a home in the brain. And "Call Me Maybe" is arguably the earwormiest song in recent memory. 

“Earworms is a colloquial name for a phenomena in music psychology—an experience when you get a song or a piece of song such as chorus [stuck in your head] without a willing attempt to experience a musical memory,” says Lassi A. Liikkanen, who published two papers about earworms recently in the journals Psychology of Music and Musicae Scientiae.   

People frequently experience earworms after hearing a new songs and recognizing a few snippets of lyrics and melody.  

“Involuntary imagery of music is based on our skill to remember music, but for some reason feels out of control. But is perfectly normal,” explains, Liikkanen, a researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT in Finland.

Songs such as “Call Me Maybe” or fun's “We Are Young” seem to pop into our brains against our will. Seeing an album cover or recalling a memory associated with a song can induce an earworm. Liikkanen, who surveyed more than 12,000 Finish Internet users about earworms, found that nearly 90 percent of people experience involuntary imagery of music.

“Some times these involuntary music experiences are tied to a life experience and it is congruent with mood,” he says. “Even if you haven’t heard a song for weeks, months, decades [hearing the song sparks] a key memory.”

He discovered that women catch earworms more than men and younger generations have the bug more frequently than older folks. While there is little evidence about why these differences occur, Liikkanen has a few theories.

Women might be more attuned to their mental lives, possibly connecting songs with meaningful moments more frequently. When it comes to earworms and older people, it seems that older folks listen to music less and might not have as great of memory retention as they once had.

In general, people who play or write music hear earworms more than those simple music listeners.

“A lot of the great composers claim they were hearing the music in their heads … it happens with the not so [great] composers,” Liikkanen says. While the more musical education one has the more involuntary imagery of music occurs at some point it evens out—people with the highest levels of music education reported fewer recurrent earworms.

Those with a form of OCD might hear earworms an excessive amount and people suffering auditory hallucinations sometimes also hear snippets of songs repeatedly. In these cases, Liikkanen says people should consult a psychiatrist for treatment.

“People consider [earworms] entertaining and fun occasions when they emerge,” he says. “Music is wonderfully complicated in human psychology.”  

Dying to extract "Call Me Maybe" from your brain? It's not so simple. Liikkanen suggests avoiding all music and cues connected with the song. Cues can be as seemingly insignificant as hearing the title of the song or the artist's name -- so you'll need a moratorium on anything beginning with the words "call me." Good luck with that. 

You can enable the Earworm Clinic application on Facebook to learn more about your earworms and provide information for Liikkanen. 

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“I know only two tunes: one of them is ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and the other isn’t,” quipped Ulysses S. Grant. Grant famously disdained military music and many speculate that the 18th President of the United States suffered from tone-deafness or amusia.

“Amusia is a general term that applies to a group of musical deficits,” says Daniel J. Levitin, James McGill Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal. 

Tone-deafness and amusia remain misunderstood. Bad singers could be one of four types—people unable to hear pitch; people who can’t capture rhythm; people who sing in a monotone; and people with voices that others don’t prefer, says Levitin. He peppers his explanation with song, singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” monotonically then performing it as if he is Bob Dylan (he does a pretty passable impression!).   

 “[Dylan] actually hits all the pitches, he is very precise; he has an unusual voice,” Levitin says. Critics call Dylan tone deaf simply because they dislike his voice.

Being a bad vocalist does not mean one is truly amusic. Being amusic means a person lacks musical ability; she might not be able to distinguish pitch or create different sounds.

“Normal people have some musical ability—if I play you a piece of music and I miss a note, you would know something wrong with that. Amusics can’t [tell],” says Psyche Loui, a neurology instructor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “The main compliant is that they cannot sing in tune.”

Anywhere from 4 to 9 percent of the population suffers from amusia. It’s difficult to obtain solid estimates because people dubbed tone-deaf earn the distinction because of terrible singing, not because they have been tested for amusia. (And these are real tests, including this one from the Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory, where Loui works http://musicianbrain.com/pitchtest/).

Loui says experts remain unsure about what causes amusia, but most believe a combination of environmental and genetic factors lead to disruptions in the brain, contributing to “unawareness and poor memory for sounds, especially pitches.”

Being amusic makes life tricky (and not just for those who suffer through a screeching rendition of “Call Me Maybe” at karaoke).

Many Asian and African languages are tonal and one word possesses different meanings based on how it’s pronounced. Loui, whose native language is Cantonese, provides an example. If she says ‘ma’ one way it means mother, if she says it with different inflection it means horse. Amusics who speak tonal languages are often unfairly pegged as having learning disabilities.

“If you cannot perceive tone, you can’t produce it,” says Loui.

In most languages, being unable to understand inflection or pitch can lead to misunderstandings, says Levitin. “A lot of emotion and intention is conveyed by tone,” he says.

People understand sarcasm because they hear the tone. For a person unable to discern such nuances, a conversation can be confusing.  

“[Amusia] is definitely a real phenomena and has neural underpinnings,” says Loui.

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TODAY

A Justin Bieber fan gets hysterical at the concert.

They’d been camping on the streets of New York City for three days -- throngs of teen and tween girls, who had gone without showers (except for the ones that fell from the sky) in the hopes of getting a front row glimpse of their favorite teenage heartthrob.

And when everyone’s imaginary “Boyfriend” Justin Bieber took the stage this morning to play a mini-concert for TODAY, these super-fans did what teen groupies have done for eternity: they screamed, they cried, they quivered. 

So what's behind all the shrieking and sobbing, the shaking and swooning? Is there a physiological explanation for this fan-demonium or is it simply tween and teen girls gone wild?

"It's basically a group response set off by emotions and hormones," says Dr. Sarah Pitts, a specialist in adolescent medicine at Boston Children's Hospital.

TODAY

The crowd surrounds The Biebs.

A lot has to do with what's happening in the heads of tweens and teens. In those early adolescent years from 10 to 14, kids are searching for new people to love outside of their family and they might glom on to a celebrity crush, suggests Pitts.

In addition, being around groups of young people may also make this behavior more "contagious" during a phase when peer pressure rules. For the 15- and 16-year old Bieber fans in the audience, there's also the growing interest in forming relationships and sexual attraction that fuels the emotional excitement of seeing your teen idol.

"The teen brain is still significantly changing and not yet in its final form," points out Pitts. "And that affects how teens respond to the world around them."

Young girls are especially prone to getting emotional and when they get excited, they cry "happy tears."

"I don't know that there's a scientific basis for that," admits Pitts. "It comes down to the chemistry in our brains and nerves."

As for keeling over, Pitts says fainting is really common in teens, more so in females.

If a young Bieber fan has been standing outside for hours, and they're sleep deprived and very excited, and perhaps also hungry and cold, then passing out is a possibility. It's more of an emotional faint, in which falling over is actually protective allowing blood to quickly shunt back to the brain.

Of course, this generation is not the first to weep, screech, and faint at its teenage heartthrobs. These behaviors go way back. If it wasn't the Biebs who was bringing on the waterworks and hysteria, it was the Jonas Brothers, or ‘N Sync; the Jackson 5, the Beatles or Elvis.

So why don't young boys scream and swoon at a Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez concert? "Boy's brains and hormones are wired differently," says Pitts. And while it's culturally OK for girls to cry, that's not the behavioral norm for guys.

Then again, maybe it's just that chicks are the bigger Bieber "believers." 

More on Justin Bieber:

• Surviving a concert camp-out: 7 tips from Bieber fans
• Matt Lauer joins Twitter (with some help from Bieber)
• Video: Justin and 'Mrs. Bieber' chat with Matt Lauer
• Watch his TODAY performance

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• Yikes! Jet lag and exhaustion can make you vomit
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On Thursday evening in Bern, Switzerland, Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize award-winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, discontinued her press conference after 15 minutes. Suu Kyi paused the questioning as a sickened look crossed her face. She grabbed a bag and vomited into it. She left the conference apologizing for the sudden eruption, um, interruption.

She began the press conference by noting she felt exhausted and struggled to adjust to the time difference. Can fatigue -- plus a bad case of jet lag -- really make you throw up?    

“A combination of exhaustion and experiencing a big time difference could certainly lead someone to vomit. This may be even more true if they are very warm or under a great deal of stress,” says Dr. Rachel Vreeman via email. Vreeman is co-author of the book “Don’t Swallow your Gum!: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health” and an assistant professor of pediatrics in the Children's Health Services Research Program at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Exhaustion causes a variety of symptoms, some more common than others. People suffering from a lack of sleep might feel tremors, headache, concentration problems, elevated blood pressure, achy muscles and psychosis.

“Exhaustion can absolutely make someone feel nauseous and even lead to vomiting. Sometimes, the body responds to fatigue -- especially extreme fatigue -- with symptoms of nausea. Stomach upset, including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, can also be symptoms of jet lag,” says Vreeman.

Extreme fatigue sparks intervention from two opposing systems in the body -- the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system helps people in tough situations by triggering the flight or fight response, which throws the body into alert mode. The parasympathetic nervous system controls at-rest functions like digestion and salivation.  

“Depending on which system is reacting the most to the stress and fatigue -- your sympathetic system that creates a flight-or-fight response or your parasympathetic system, which causes you to do things like salivate and have relaxed bowels -- you might experience nausea and vomiting in a particular situation,” Vreeman says. 

According to an AP article, Suu Kyi experienced recent bouts of illness when traveling. The slight, 66-year-old political activist felt weak and threw up twice while campaigning for parliament.

Suu Kyi is not alone when it comes to public purging. When George H.W. Bush visited Japan in 1992, he famously spewed on the lap of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa during a state dinner. Bush claimed to be exhausted from an earlier tennis bout and perhaps afflicted by the flu.

Athletes frequently lose their lunches -- some more than others. Pete Sampras and Michael Jordon both spewed on the court, but it seems that former Philadelphia Eagle, Donovan McNabb made blowing chunks a habit. McNabb puked at the end of the fourth quarter during Super Bowl XXXIX. The quarterback said he felt nauseated all game, but teammates claimed McNabb threw up frequently during games and blamed it on exhaustion. 

Vreeman says if a person vomits once because of exhaustion, it doesn’t mean it will occur again. People can prevent the negative effects of exhaustion by sleeping more, staying hydrated, and wearing comfortable clothing. If it seems that jet lag is the problem, people can take sleep aids or melatonin to reduce the impact of time change.

Related:

• 'Tired' Suu Kyi vomits at news conference 

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With the school year winding down, students and teachers from coast-to-coast are letting out a huge sigh of relief. And whether you're feeling relief because you're retiring this June, found your misplaced cell phone, or got back a negative medical test result, the truth is scientists know surprisingly little about this common feeling.

Recently two researchers studied this emotion to help paint a clearer picture of it. But what exactly is relief -- aside from that phew-inducing feeling as if a heavy weight has been lifted off your shoulders?

"Relief involves a contrast between a good feeling right now and a bad feeling that either never happened or has ended," says lead author Kate Sweeny, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. "It's that sense that things are better right now than they could otherwise be."

In the study, published in the May issue of Psychological Science, researchers revealed that relief is not one simple emotion. It's actually more complex and takes on two distinct forms that affects us in different ways.

One form is near-miss relief, which is what you may feel when you narrowly avoid something terrible. It's the dodged-a-bullet feeling after you swerve to avoid a fender-bender or finding your keys and realizing you're not locked out.

The second kind is task-completion relief, from persevering through a difficult experience. Examples include wrapping up a stressful project at work, reaching the end of a tough school year, or training for and running a marathon.

To study relief, one experiment involved nearly 80 college students who were told they would be singing Morris Albert's corny song "Feelings" into an audio-recorder with someone observing their performance. Half of the volunteers -- the task-completion group -- sang. The other half -- the near-miss group -- were told the recorder broke so they wouldn't have to sing.

Afterwards, both groups completed surveys about the emotions they were feeling.

Researchers found the students who felt near-miss relief from not singing tended to think about how things could have turned out worse ("I'm glad no one had to listen to my awful voice.") Because their thoughts focus on the near miss, people in this situation turn inward and feel emotionally isolated from other people who did not share this experience, according to Sweeny.

In contrast, someone who has crooned "Feelings" also feels relieved that it's over. But they can focus less on the now completed task and their thoughts turn to moving forward, freed of the burden they once faced. "These people have no reason to feel socially isolated," explains Sweeny. "They may feel even more connected to other people because they are no longer distracted by the onerous task."

This study confirmed that all relief is not created equal, and the emotion serves a psychological purpose.  "We believe it may play a crucial role in helping people to improve themselves following an experience of relief," says Sweeny.

Feeling relieved to be done with something difficult or unpleasant can motivate people to stick with tough tasks or endure them in the future, Sweeny suggests. And she says that feeling relieved to have avoided something terrible can motivate people to avoid the near miss altogether in the future.

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Besides the cards, cake, candles, and gifts, there might be one more unexpected surprise in store for you on your birthday -- a higher risk of dying.

A new study suggests that men and women are 14 percent more likely to die on their birthday than any other day of the year.  This effect was strongest in people aged 60 and older, who were up to 18 percent more likely to die on their birthday.

"We find more deaths than expected solely on birthdays, that is neither in the days before nor after the birthdays," says lead author Dr. Vladeta Ajdacic-Gross, an epidemiologist for the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Zurich.

In this large study, which was published in the Annals of Epidemiology, researchers analyzed data from more than 2.4 million Swiss people who died between 1969 and 2008. They tried to determine if there was any relationship between when people died and the cause compared to their birthdays.

"We were surprised that our findings apply to specific causes of death," says Ajdacic-Gross. Both violent causes, such as suicides and falls, as well as strokes and cardiovascular deaths were tied to birthdays. "In addition, older people are distinctly more vulnerable than younger people," he adds.

Men were more likely to have a violent demise on their birthday, as their chances of suicides spiked by nearly 35 percent and their odds of being accident victims rose by almost 29 percent. Deadly falls in men rose by 44 percent on their birthdays, and, interestingly, the number of falls started to increase about four days before the celebration took place.

When it came to natural causes of deaths, women were at greater risk -- almost 22 percent -- of passing away from a stroke on their birthday. For both ladies and gentleman, there was a nearly 19 percent increase in dying from heart-related reasons.

Scientists also unexpectedly found the risk of dying from cancer jumps by 10.8 percent on birthdays. Cancer deaths also seemed to be higher than usual in the days immediately following a birthday -- a trend not seen for any other cause of death. 

But the question you may be asking is: Why? Is birthday partying to blame? Is it a psychological let-down to realize you're one year older -- and not getting any younger?

"We can only speculate on the reasons for the extra deaths on birthdays," points out Ajdacic-Gross. They suspect that birthday-related stress in older people may play a part in the jump in stroke and cardiac deaths.

Other studies have suggested that alcohol may be a reason behind the spike in suicides and perhaps even falls.

The Swiss researchers say their results support the theory of an "anniversary reaction" or "birthday blues," meaning that deaths occurred more frequently on a birthday. They suggest this is a more likely explanation than the "death postponement" hypothesis, or that deaths are less likely to take place on birthdays and people might hang on long enough to reach this yearly milestone -- or to see through certain holidays or special occasions.

Some famous people who have passed away on their birthday include the actress Ingrid Bergman, feminist Betty Friedan, and William Shakespeare. 

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You’re staring at your blank computer screen when dots drift into your line of vision. They resemble specks of dust or perhaps clouds or cobwebs. Don’t panic -- you’re not seeing things. You’re witnessing eye floaters, not tricks of the eye or mind.

“Floaters are a part of the normal aging process,” says Dr. Pravin Dugel, managing partner at Retinal Consultants of Arizona in Phoenix.

Eye floaters are fibers that detach from the eye. A hollow cavity filled with a vitreous jelly, composed of 99 percent water and 1 percent collagen, lies in the center of the eye. This gel helps give eyes their round shape and aids in seeing. As we age, the vitreous liquefies and pieces of it begin to release from the back wall of the eye. The debris floats across the field of vision, causing people to see dots, flies, cobwebs, or clouds.

“You can think of [floaters] as UFOs floating in the eye,” explains Dr. Abdhish R. Bhavsar, director of clinical research at the Retina Center of Minnesota. He explains that unlike UFOs, physicians know what floaters are, but like UFOs they often appear differently based on who sees them. 

While it seems that floaters glide across the front of the eye, they’re actually drifting through the eye. It’s the shadow of the fibers reflecting on the retina that people see. 

Although eye floaters don’t occur in everyone, at least 60 percent of people experience them by age 65, says Dugel. Those who have had cataract surgery or have severe nearsightedness might experience eye floaters earlier in life. People who are nearsighted (or myopic) have longer eyeballs, and the vitreous gel stretches more in myopic eyes than in an eye with either normal vision or farsightedness.

Bhavsar notes that sometimes people experience vitreous detaching, but do not see floaters while others see a large number of floaters while the vitreous shedding is minimal.

Even though both doctors stress that eye floaters should not be cause for concern, they do recommend people go for eye exams if there is a sudden explosion in the number of floaters or flashing lights accompany the dots.

“In some people as that jelly peels off it’s like Velcro peeling off … it pulls on the retina and it causes a tear,” Dugel says.

If the retina tears, ophthalmologists can repair it, using lasers or cyrotherapy, which involves freezing, and can prevent the retina from detaching from the eye. If the retina does dislodge, doctors must perform surgery to repair it.

But for most people, floaters are simply an annoyance. In very rare cases, ophthalmologists perform surgery to remove the vitreous, but for majority of patients, the floaters settle to the bottom of the eye after time and cause no other problem. 

“In the absence of all those other medical conditions, [floaters] are a nuisance and they can affect people in varying [degrees],” says Bhavsar.

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Could fear of the dark be ruining your sleep?

Scientists now say that many sleep problems can be traced to an anxiety that sparks as soon as the lights go down, according to a new study presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

The small study found that 50 percent of adults who reported sleep problems also admitted to being scared of the dark - and were also measurably more anxious when the lights were turned off.

“The good news, is that if this is what is going on, it’s very treatable,” said the study’s lead author Colleen Carney, an associate professor at Ryerson University in Toronto. “And it doesn’t take long to treat.”

To see if bad sleep might be phobia driven, Carney and her colleagues rounded up 93 college students and asked them to fill out surveys that included questions about their sleep quality and whether they were afraid of the dark.

Then the researchers ran an intriguing experiment: In the first half of the experiment the volunteers sat in a room with the lights on. In the second half, they sat with the lights off. All the while, the volunteers were wearing headsets that would periodically play a blast of noise.

“Then we watched their reactions in the light and the dark,” Carney said. “In the light they were no different. But in the dark, the poor sleepers were more likely to be startled.”

In other words, compared to the sound sleepers, the insomniacs were more likely to blink and to flinch when they heard the noise in the dark. In fact, the more times they heard the noise, the more anxious and jumpy they got. The good sleepers, in contrast, got used to hearing the noise and eventually stopped reacting to it.

Fear of the dark isn’t something that sleep doctors currently look for, Carney said. So the new research might open new avenues for treatment.

And the good news is that phobias often respond very quickly to treatment with exposure therapy, Carney added. So, just as a therapist can get you used to spiders and snakes by slowly exposing you to them, they’ll also be able get you over your fear of the dark.           

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First, how big are these bubbles? According to the American anthropologist Edward Hall, whose 1960s research on the topic still stands today, you're actually enveloped by bubbles of four different sizes, each of which applies to a different set of potential interlopers.

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The smallest zone, called "intimate space," extends outward from our bodies 18 inches in every direction, and only family, pets and one's closest friends may enter. A mere acquaintance hanging out in our intimate space gives us the heebie-jeebies. Next in size is the bubble Hall called "personal space," extending from 1.5 feet to 4 feet away. Friends and acquaintances can comfortably occupy this zone, especially during informal conversations, but strangers are strictly forbidden. Extending from 4 to 12 feet away from us is social space, in which people feel comfortable conducting routine social interactions with new acquaintances or total strangers. Beyond that is public space, open to all.

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Those are the average sizes of Americans' personal bubbles, anyway. According to Ralph Adolphs, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology, "It is important to keep in mind that personal space of course varies depending on culture and context, and that there are significant individual differences -- so these numbers should just be taken to reflect the average." ( Infographic: A Day in the Life of the Average American )

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As we all know, cultural or individual differences in personal bubble diameters are all too often the cause of discomfort. (Take one step back, foreigners.)

But how do these personal bubbles arise? According to Adolphs, we begin to develop our individual sense of personal space around age 3 or 4, and the sizes of our bubbles cement themselves by adolescence. In research published in the journal Nature in 2009, Adolphs and his colleagues determined that the bubbles are constructed and monitored by the amygdala, the brain region involved in fear.

"The amygdala is activated when you invade people's personal space," he told Life's Little Mysteries. "This probably reflects the strong emotional response when somebody gets too close to us.  We confirmed this in a rare patient with lesions to this brain structure: she felt entirely comfortable no matter how close somebody got to her, and had no apparent personal space."

Furthermore, he said, abnormal development of the amygdala may also explain why people with autism have difficulties maintaining a normal social distance to other people.

There are times when personal space intrusions are simply unavoidable, such as in a crowded subway car. How do we cope? The psychologist Robert Sommer suggested we do it by temporarily dehumanizing those around us, avoiding eye contact and pretending they're inanimate until the moment comes when we spot an escape route. After all, it's not uncomfortable to stand inches from a wall.

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It's that time of year when yearbooks are making the rounds. After two psychology researchers recently pored more than 18,000 student yearbook photographs, they made an interesting observation -- they found a gender difference in smiling among the classmates.

Between age 10 and 11, or by the time kids reached sixth grade, boys started smiling less than girls in their yearbook portraits, the new research found.

In the study, which was published online in the journal Sex Roles, researchers looked at snapshots of kids from kindergarten through twelfth grade taken between 1996 and 2008 at 17 schools in Michigan.

They focused on the faces in 34 different yearbooks -- zeroing in on the mouth -- to determine if there were any sex differences in smiling across the age groups. Each grin was rated on a 3-point scale with 0 given for no smile, 1 for a partial smile, and 2 for a full smile.

Boys and girls probably received the same "smile" or "say cheese" instructions from the photographer. But there was a noticeable drop off in grinning among the boys by sixth grade, while the girls kept on beaming for the camera.

Asked why boys may have slacked off on smiling, study author Dr. Mihaela Friedlmeier suggests that during their late tween and early teen years, boys and girls get plenty of information about gender-related expectations from parents, peers and the media.

They learn "how to assert themselves as distinctly female (emotionally expressive and friendly) or distinctly male (dominant, aggressive, and nonsmiling)" says Friedlmeier, an assistant professor of psychology at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich.

Researchers also compared the smiling patterns in African American schoolchildren to European American kids. And they considered whether the ethnic diversity of the student body at each school mattered.

"We were surprised to find that African American boys displayed significantly less smile compared to European American boys," says Friedlmeier.

"It's particularly interesting that African American boys from schools with a predominantly African American student population showed less smile compared to those from ethnically mixed schools and those with a majority of European American students," she says. This was true even though there were no major socioeconomic differences in the students at the schools.

Friedlmeier thinks that African American teenage boys may have a different image of masculinity (as appearing "tough") compared to European American boys. And she says it's also possible that historical context might be influencing African American males. She suspects they may be avoiding the "Uncle Tom" image of the smiling Black man, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Although the young boys clearly weren't alive then, this idea may be internalized and passed down from their parents or grandparents, as well as their peers and the media.

In this Michigan-based study, African American girls smiled a little less than their European American peers. But there may be fewer differences in female smiles because both groups are influenced by similar cultural standards of beauty, explains Friedlmeier.

Friedlmeier hesitates to extrapolate her findings in these Midwest schools to the rest of the country. But if you happen to thumb through your (or your kid's) yearbook, along with noticing the horrible hairtstyles and goofy quotes, see if the smiles vary not only by gender but also by ethnicity.

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•  

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We've all had those fuzzy mornings where we've nearly brushed our teeth with Neosporin, but a new study presented at an annual meeting of epidemiologists has found that prison inmates are purposefully misusing over-the-counter topical antibiotics as grooming aids.

The study, which asked 822 inmates at two New York State prisons about their use of OTC antibiotics such as Bacitracin (an ingredient found in Neosporin), found that 29 percent of the men and 28 percent of the women had used the ointment for dry skin, 18 percent of men and 15 percent of women had used it as a lip balm, 8 percent of men and 3 percent of women had used it as hair gel and 6 percent of men had slathered the ointment onto their face as a shaving cream.

"I think one reason they used the antibiotic ointments in these ways is because they didn't know they shouldn't," says Carolyn Herzig, a PhD candidate in the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and lead author of the study. "Or it might be that they didn't have easy access to other products."

Misuse or overuse of antibiotics is worrisome because it can lead to strains of antimicrobial resistant pathogens resulting in the emergence of multi-drug resistant organisms such as MRSA, a strain of staph infection that's now resistant to methicillin, amoxicillin, penicillin, oxacillin, and many other antibiotics.

These pathogens are already a problem in prisons, and the "misuse of antibiotics in these facilities might exacerbate this issue," Herzig explains.

"We don't know specifically whether the overuse of topical antibiotics would lead to MRSA -- we don't have the data to demonstrate that -- but in many cases, in general, the overuse and misuse of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic resistance," says Herzig. "That's exactly what the concern is."

Herzig and her team of researchers tapped prison inmates as they were being admitted to two New York State maximum security prisons -- one men's and one women's. (The researcher declined to reveal the names of the prisons.)

"The question we asked was, 'Have you used antibiotic ointment in the past six months?'" she says. "They were entering the prison facilities from either jails or prisons or possibly, the community. If they served a sentence longer than six months, then they had used the ointments in other prisons or in county lockup. It's also possible that some of them used the ointments while they were not incarcerated but I would say the majority of them used them while incarcerated."

Medical personnel do dispense antibiotic ointments to inmates as needed; however, other items -- such as hair gel and shaving cream -- are harder to come by, Robin Campbell, press secretary for the New York City Department of Corrections (which includes Rikers Island and other Borough facilities), said in a statement. 

"Facility medical personnel dispense antibiotic creams and ointments, like foot gels, to inmates on an as needed basis," he said in an email. "Although inmates may purchase some personal hygiene products, like shampoo, toothpaste and deodorant, from the facility commissary, shaving cream, lip balm and hair gel are prohibited due to security concerns."

Antibiotic resistance concerns aside -- would a Neosporin-like cream even work as a beauty aid? "I think they probably worked as well as Vaseline," says Herzig. "And I really think if they'd had lotion or Vaseline, that's what they would have used."

The study's findings were presented this week at the 39th Annual Educational Conference and International Meeting of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology in San Antonio, Texas. Funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the study was the first of its kind to report on the widespread misuse of topical antibiotics among inmates.

While Herzig says she's been unable to find any studies on the misuse of over-the-counter antibiotic ointments in everyday life, she is curious about inappropriate use of these products in normal populations.

"I've spent a lot of time looking at the literature to see if there's a comparable study that shows how people use these ointments in a community, but I haven't seen anything that reports that information," she says. "I suspect it is happening, though."

Melissa Rowton, a 41-year-old customer service trainer from Seattle, says she's used antibiotic ointments on blemishes before -- although she doesn't do it very often.

"I've used Neosporin for pimples and have a friend who swears by it," says Rowton. "It makes sense when they are often caused by bacteria. I wash and dry my face thoroughly and dab a small amount on any problem area before bed."

Herzig says none of the prisoners who answered the open-ended questionnaire indicated they'd used the antibiotic ointments in this way. However, in addition to using the topical antibiotics as hair gel, moisturizer and lip balm, many said they'd used the products in ways that were closer to their intended use.

"We got many reasons," she says. "Some used them for skin injuries, skin conditions including eczema and acne, fungal infection, or for new tattoos. We're not suggesting people should use antibiotics for all those reasons. But they're more appropriate than using them for lip balm or moisturizer."

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Jason Merritt / Getty Images

Actor Chris Hemsworth arrives at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards held at Gibson Amphitheatre on June 3 in Universal City, California.

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience 

Movie star Chris Hemsworth plays a macho guy as both the huntsman in "Snow White and the Huntsman" and Thor in "The Avengers." But new research suggests that men with Hemsworth's broad-faced, square-jawed look aren't all aggression and brawn.

In fact, men with wider faces are more likely to sacrifice for their team, according to the study, published online May 23 in the journal Psychological Science. The findings suggest that people's first impressions of macho men — that they're uncooperative, cold and even dishonest — aren't so accurate.

"Men with wider faces have typically been portrayed as 'bad to the bone,'" study researcher Michael Stirrat of the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom said in a statement.

Exposure to high testosterone levels in the womb may bestow men with more "masculine" faces, manifesting in prominent jawlines and small eyes. These differences become clear at puberty, when testosterone levels rise in boys and their faces mature. Because testosterone is associated with aggression, some research has linked wide faces with the kind of guy who is always spoiling for a fight. 

Stirrat and his colleague David Perrett suspected the story might not be that simple. They gave University of St. Andrews students money to play a group game in which they could either freeload off other players or risk their money to benefit the group as a whole. Half of the students were told that their winnings would be compared with the winnings of other St. Andrews groups. The others were told that their winnings would be compared with the winnings of groups from Edinburgh University, a rival school.

The wider a man's face, the less likely he was to cooperate with his group when told that he'd be compared with other men from his school. But when given an outside rival, these broad-faced macho guys got competitive. Suddenly, they became more likely than average to gamble their own money for the good of their group. [The History of Human Aggression]

The findings reveal that masculine traits can come out in both pro-social and anti-social ways. In other words, masculine guys may be more aggressive in general, but their manly characteristics are downright warm-and-fuzzy in some circumstances, such as when they need to support the home team.

The finding bolsters research released in 2011 that found that wide-faced CEOs tend to lead better-performing companies than their narrow-faced counterparts. Perhaps these macho CEOs are more willing to sacrifice for their team, the researchers suggest. 

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If you can't stomach the thought of guzzling down eight glasses of water every single day, here's some good news: You're off the hook, more health experts are saying. 

A new editorial in an Australian public health journal is the latest to bust the widely-repeated health myth we need to guzzle 64 ounces, or eight 8-ounce glasses, of water each day just to stave off dehydration. Actually, we get enough fluids to keep our bodies adequately hydrated from the foods we eat and the beverages we drink -- even from caffeinated drinks like coffee and tea. 

Turns out, the whole "eight glasses a day" thing "really is no longer the recommendation; the recommendation is drinking to thirst," explains Madelyn Fernstrom, a board-certified nutrition specialist and TODAY's diet and nutrition editor. Drink when you're thirsty! What a novel idea.

It's not a bad idea to consume 64 ounces of fluid a day, but it's not a scientifically proven idea, either. It likely comes from a 1940s recommendation from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, which said that adults should ingest about 2.5 liters of water a day. 

"But the often ignored second half of that statement pointed out that most of the water you need is in the foods you eat," explains Dr. Aaron Carroll, associate professor of Pediatrics and the associate director of Children's Health Services Research at Indiana University School.

"But that report wasn’t based on any solid evidence – it was just opinion," continues Carroll, who explored the waterlogged myth in the book "Don't Cross Your Eyes ... They'll Get Stuck That Way!", which he co-authored with Dr. Rachel Vreeman, assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. "A number of years later, a famous nutritionist, Dr. Frederick Stare, said something similar about drinking eight glasses of water a day, but he, too, stated that it could be in the form of coffee, tea, milk, soft drinks, or even beer. He even said that fruits and vegetables are good sources of water."

But doesn't gulping down water help with weight loss? Kind of: It's true that drinking a high volume of water has been shown to work as an appetite suppressant, but consuming foods with high water content -- like watermelon, lettuce or grapefruit -- results in more weight loss than eschewing more foods for more (and more and more) water, writes the author of the Australian editorial, Spero Tsindos, of the department of dietetics and human nutrition at La Trobe University in Victoria. We've also heard that drinking lots of water helps ward off kidney stones and UTIs, but studies have shown that's only true for those who are prone to recurring episodes of either condition. 

Last summer, a paper published in the British Medical Journal grabbed headlines when it called the myth "nonsense" -- thoroughly debunked nonsense," for that matter, citing reports in 2002 and 2006 that couldn't find any "clear evidence from drinking increased amounts of water."

Yet the myth sticks around, likely because people have made a lot of money off the idea that we're all on the precipice of dehydration. (And we're definitely not -- government research on more than 15,000 people in 50 states show that over three years, the average American ingested 75 ounces of water a day, Carroll points out.)

"(B)ottled water and the entire health culture around drinking more water have been very lucrative," Vreeman explains. "Certainly, your body needs fluids and water is a healthy choice to meet those fluid needs, but many of us spend a lot of money, effort and guilt on forcing ourselves to drink more water than we really need."

So how much water should we be drinking? Whatever your body tells you it needs. Listen to your body, drink when it tells you to, and there's no need to drink more than that. (The idea that "when you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated" is another myth.) 

Fernstrom notes that it's of course better to choose water over sodas, sweetened juices or other sugary, high-calorie beverages. There may not be any evidence that excess water is doing you any good, but it's not likely doing any harm, either. 

"The issue of too much water, that's only a problem for extreme athletes who are sweating profusely and drinking too much water without replacing their salt," Fernstrom explains. For us mere mortals, if you drink lots of water throughout the day, "you're just going to pee it out," she says. "The worst that'll happen is you'll learn where more bathrooms are in your community."

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Sometimes, a funny thing happens when Dr. Roberta Pagon looks directly into the sun. She sneezes. Not just once though, but usually three times.

She's not the only one in her family who sneezes when sunlight hits their face -- two of her children also react by sneezing three times in a row. And now a grandchild does it, but only sneezes once.

Odd coincidence? Not really, says Pagon, a pediatrician in the division of genetic medicine at Seattle Children's Hospital. This tendency to sneeze at sunlight is known as the "photic sneeze reflex," and it's hereditary.

Not only is there a genetic basis for "sun sneezing," Pagon says the number of times people sneeze in response to light also appears to run in families.

This scientific discovery happened in a very unscientific way. Pagon and her genetics colleagues were sitting at the same table during a birth defects conference when the conversation shifted to discussing the sun and sneezing. Much to their surprise, they learned that 4 out of 10 of them were affected by this strange reaction. "One person said it was common for people in his family to sneeze five times; in my family it was three times, and another person said once," recalls Pagon.

They quickly did what years of medical training had taught them -- they coined an acronym for it:  ACHOO syndrome, or Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst. Autosomal dominant stands for the way the 'sneeze gene' is inherited; an individual has a 50-50 chance of passing this trait on to a child. "Compelling" because it was well, interesting, or at the very least, quirky. "Helio" meant sun, "ophthalmic" meant eye, and "outburst" the end result. They even wrote up a paper about the peculiar phenomenon.

Although this reaction might seem unusual, it's not that uncommon. By one estimate,18% to 35% of people get a tickling sensation in their nose when their eyes meet intense sunlight. Some folks may also get this weird response to bright artificial light, such as the eye doctor's or dentist's light or a photographer's flash.

Driving out of a tunnel may trigger the reflex or leaving a movie theatre on a summer's day, says Nicolas Langer, PhD, a neuropsychology researcher the University of Zurich, who has studied the photic sneeze reflex. Often "it's just the change of a dark location to a bright (very sun exposed) location" that brings on the reflex, he explains. 

In his research published in the journal PLoS ONE, Langer compared the visual reactions of 10 sun sneezers to 10 people without this reflex. Volunteers were hooked up to an EEG machine so the scientists could measure their brain and neural responses when exposed to bright light.

Their results suggest that "the 'photic sneeze reflex' is not a classical reflex that occurs only at a brainstem or spinal cord level," says Langer. "It seems to involve other cortical areas" of the brain.

As for why it happens, Langer offers two theories. One is that the visual system in the brain is more sensitive in photic sneezers. When it gets overstimulated by light, this co-activates regions representing the nose (the somatosensory system), which then triggers a sneeze.

A second possibility is that two nerves (the optic nerve and trigeminal nerve) are too close together in photic sneezers. Langer says light may cause stimulation of the optic nerve in the eye, which then coactivates the trigeminal nerve in the face, and results in an achoo reaction.

Solar sneezes could be an occupational hazard if you're an airplane pilot, baseball outfielder, sky diver, punt-return specialist, or high-wire acrobat. But for roughly one of out four people, it's merely something curious that makes them a little different from the next guy or gal.

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If someone complains that a person has a big head, it’s normally considered a dig at the enormity of that person's ego. But when it comes to white Americans, being labeled as big-headed shouldn’t be considered a criticism as much as an apt description: Over the past 150 years, the size of white Americans’ craniums have actually increased in size.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center (what Mary Roach calls "the body farm" in her book “Stiff”) routinely examine skulls to try to determine sex and race of the craniums so if police officers discover just a skull, there are guidelines for gleaning info about it. The database of skulls and bodies has steadily increased to include people who were born and died in the 20th century, whereas prior the skulls were from people born in the 19th century.  

As researchers Lee Jantz, coordinator of Forensic Anthropology Center, Richard Jantz, professor emeritus, and Joanne Devlin, adjunct assistant professor, catalogued 1,500 noggins they observed that white people who were born in the 20th century had bigger heads.

They looked at white skulls because they wanted to have a large sample and they don’t have as many black and Hispanic skulls. When people decide to donate their bodies to science, some of those bodies end up at the Forensic Anthropology Center. Historically, more white people have donated their bodies to science than black or Hispanic people, but Jantz suspects that as the makeup of America changes, the center will receive more donations from black and Hispanic people. 

The height of white male skulls has increased by eight millimeters and the overall skull has grown by 200 cubic centimeters. For women, cranium height increased by seven millimeters and overall by 180 cubic centimeters. 

“The basic thing that we observed over the course of looking at crania that belong to people born from 1820s to 1980s, is that the cranium has gotten higher and narrower,” says Richard Jantz, who is married to Lee.

“If you just look at a side view of the skull, what you would see is the distance from top to bottom increased, and if you look at a front view of the skull, you would see the distance from side to side decreased.”

Bigger heads typically mean bigger brains, and while Richard Jantz and his colleagues did not look at brain size, he suspects brain size also increased. There are several theories why brains might be brawnier.

Over the past 100 years, life in America changed dramatically. People no longer toil in the fields, and they don’t struggle to consume enough calories. We have too much food and not enough physical activity. This means our bodies don’t have to divide fewer calories between the body and the brain, so enough energy can go to the brain, allowing it to balloon. Improved medicine also contributes to larger heads-- in the past babies with bulbous heads could not escape the birth canal and many died. With the increase of C-sections, more and more of these big-headed babes make it into the world.  

“As we continue to have excess calories then I am guessing that the brain can continue to increase in size. There obviously has to be some upper limit,” says Richard Jantz.

He suspects that most black Americans would have larger craniums as well, but believes that Hispanic skulls might be smaller. A greater number of the country's Hispanic people are not born in the United States, potentially limiting their access to excess calories and the additional energy needed to grower larger skulls (and bodies). As the generations pass, Hispanic people will probably grow larger as well. 

Jantz also notes that Americans mature faster now than they did in earlier centuries. In the 19th century, on average, girls reached menarche at 16 or 17, whereas modern girls reach it by 12 or 13, indicating that humans are growing more rapidly.

To a certain extent, the researchers weren't surprised to learn that noggins increased in size. Jantz says it is obvious that modern Americans look different than their ancestors. He notes there aren't a lot of pictures of obese people from the 19th century. Having access to excess calories leads to taller, fatter, bigger Americans. And while Jantz notes that bigger heads means bigger brains, he hesitates to speculate that bigger brains equal smarter people.

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Courtesy of the New England Journal of Medicine

While "tan mom" Patricia Krentcil’s skin illustrates what happens when a person chronically fake bakes, accidental exposure to sunlight can cause as many wrinkles without a person even being aware of it.

An unnamed 69-year-old man visited doctors at Northwestern University and with wrinkles etched into the left side of his face -- the lines are so deep that the left side looks as if it belongs to a man 20 years older, while the right side seems age-appropriate. The startling image appears in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. 

The man worked as a delivery truck driver for 25 years, and over time, the UVA rays shining through the truck window caused severe wrinkling and over-aging. UVA rays, or long wave ultraviolet rays, account for about 95 percent of the UV radiation reaching the Earth from the sun, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation. UVB rays, or short-wave ultraviolet radiation, cause the red blistering of sunburn, and though these rays do not penetrate as deeply as UVA rays, they contribute to the development of skin cancers.

Physicians call these deep lines caused by overexposure to UV rays dermatoheliosis, though most people know it as photoaging, the wrinkling and cracking of skin caused by too much time in the sun (or the tanning bed). During the 25 years the man drove his truck, the UVA rays hitting his skin damaged the epidermis and upper layers of his dermis, where collagen is. Collagen helps make the skin elastic and prevents such crevasses. 

Repeated exposure to UVA rays also thickens the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the epidermis, which protects the body from infection, chemicals, and environmental stresses. This toughening is the body’s way of attempting to protect itself from sun damage.

The physicians, Dr. Jennifer R.S. Gordon and Dr. Joaquin C. Brieva of Northwestern University, note that the driver most likely was exposed to UVA rays, which are less likely to cause cancer than UVB, but do play a role in skin cancers.

"I see photoaging and photodamage every day in clinic, but not so starkly demarcated," Gordon said via email. "Otherwise we typically see symmetric damage. Interestingly, there are some differences in which side of the body skin cancers occur more often on that some people think are attributed to driving habits because they vary based on country, gender, passenger/driver, etc."

The doctors recommended treatment for the driver that involves monitoring him for the development of cancer and prescribing a topical retinoid, which may erase some of the damage. Most people can easily prevent photoaging by slathering on the sunscreen and wearing protective clothing and hats (even if you think you’ll be shaded).

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