Attaining an even, all-over tan is a futile effort, no matter how much you sunbathe buck naked. The reason? Your booty.

Turns out, your hindquarters just don't tan as well as the rest of you. Instead, your derriere is more likely to simply turn red - probably not the look you were going for.

LiveScience reported on the new research conducted by scientists from the University of Edinburgh who were trying to learn why different skin cancers tend to be found in different parts of the body. Researchers exposed the back and the behinds of 100 volunteers to UVB rays, the type that cause sunburns. The findings? Some parts of your body respond differently to the sun, hence the red hiney.

But regardless, you probably shouldn't be soaking up the rays anyhow, either under the sun or in a tanning booth. The rate of skin cancer is on the rise, including melanoma, the deadliest form. Last year, international cancer experts called tanning beds as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas.

If that's not enough to instead send you to the self-tanning lotion, do it to avoid having a baboon bum.

What's your weirdest or worst sunburn? Tell us about it in the comments or, better yet, send us a photo. We'll publish some of the best pictures.

To read more Body Odd posts, click here. You can also find us on Twitter and on Facebook.

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

Hey, summer beachgoers: You might think twice about packing those swim fins and snorkels.

A new study by Florida scientists trying to account for pollution suggests that staying out of the water might keep you healthier than going for a dip.

Even in waters with no known impurities, swimmers were more likely to get sick than sunbathers who stayed on the shore, said Jay M. Fleisher, an associate professor of public health at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale-Davie.

"We know that waters that have been contaminated with sewage will cause illness," said Fleisher. "We wanted to see whether people were actually getting sick from a beach that had no pollution."

The answer, it turned out, was yes. Fleisher and his crew sent 1,303 adults to Hobie Beach near Miami, a site known for its pristine waters. Half were told to stay dry and other half were sent to swim.

Within a week, it was clear that going in the water took a toll on the bathers. Swimmers were 1.76 times as likely to report stomach troubles; 4.46 times times more likely to report illnesses with fevers, sniffles and sore throats; and 5.91 times more likely to report itching, rashes and other skin woes.

The culprit? Scientists aren't certain, but they suspect enterococcus bacteria, nasty critters normally found in the feces of people and many animals. Health officials typically detect the bacteria in waters sullied by sewage spills, but they were surprised to find it – sometimes in high concentrations – in a beach area without known contamination.

The findings raise troubling questions about public beach water monitoring in the absence of known sewage spills and about whether – and when – it's necessary to warn people about potential health problems. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is grappling with the question now, trying to decide whether there's a better way to identify markers of risk, Fleisher said.

In the meantime, Fleisher notes that although swimmers were more likely to become ill than non-swimmers, the number of actual illnesses among people who went in the water was small.

Only about 1 in 100 people developed respiratory illness with fever, and only about 2 in 100 came down with gastrointestinal illness. About 6 in 100 developed skin ailments.

"The individual risk to the bather is fairly low," Fleisher said. "But when you multiply that by the number of people who go on the beach, you could start having a public health problem."

If Fleisher had his way, every beach would be posted with a stoplight-type sign that signals green, yellow or red conditions for healthy water quality.

Barring that, summer swimmers shouldn't be afraid to go in the water, he said. But they might stay healthier if they stick to the shore.

Do you worry about swimming in public waters? Tell us in the comments.

You can also find us on Twitter and on Facebook

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

Apparently Darth Vader’s real problem was that he lacked a good therapist, say French psychiatrists and psychologists who, instead of working with an actual patient, used their diagnostic super powers to divine that the Dark Lord may have had a borderline personality. If he was real that is.

What’s more, they think he was on drugs, er, The Force, which they think maybe represents drugs somehow, according to an article in LiveScience. Additionally, they think his mental health issues were exactly why teens were attracted to the "Star Wars" movies -- they could relate because of their own borderline personality traits. Or maybe it was because of the cool special effects.

But why put the dude formerly known as Anakin Skywalker on the psychiatrist's couch now, more than three decades after he first picked up a light saber?

"I had watched the two prequel movies ["Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith"], and it was during my residency in psychiatry while trying to explain borderline personality disorder to medical students that I thought of Anakin," French psychiatrist Eric Bui told LiveScience.

Bui, a psychiatrist at Toulouse University Hospital in France, and colleagues describe their theory in a letter to be published in journal Psychiatric Research.

Bui says Vader’s diagnosis will help spread awareness -- maybe more people will seek help if they see a little Darth Vader in themselves. (No word on what to do if you lean more toward the sinister stylings of Dr. Evil from "Austin Powers.)

We here at The Body Odd posit that if psychiatrists were going to take a hard look at Mr. Vader, perhaps his real issue was an existential crisis because HE DOESN’T EXIST.

As for the researchers themselves, they may want to examine each other for delusional disorder, a condition where people confuse fiction with reality.

Did the Joker have multiple-personality disorder? Did Freddie Kruger have intermittent explosive disorder? Did Nosferatu have narcissistic personality disorder? Share what mental conditions you think afflicted your favorite villains.

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

Foreign accents conjure images of an exotic Ingrid Bergman, the mysterious lilt of socialite-turned- newshound Arianna Huffington, British heiresses like Jemima Khan and beautiful people from anywhere but here.

Glamorous, no? No, according to Robin Vanderlip.

The Fairfax County, Va., woman suffered a true slip of the tongue when she fell and hit her head in a stairwell at a 4-H youth conference. Two days later, after being released from the hospital, she suddenly began speaking English with a foreign accent. Now she’s suing for $1 million in damages from the National 4-H Council, the Washington Post reported this week.

While it seems the stuff of “Gilligan’s Island,” a very real condition can cause people who hit their heads, like Vanderlip, to suddenly develop Foreign Accent Syndrome. The rare malady occurs when a part of the brain affects speech is damaged, causing many patients to sound like they’re from Sweden due to the way they pronounce vowels.

The first widely known case was in World War II when a Norwegian woman was hit by shrapnel and developed an unfortunately strong German accent, which caused her to become an outcast in her country.

More recently, 35-year-old Sarah Cowell of England, who has never so much as been to China, suffered a migraine this spring and began speaking with a Chinese accent, according to The Guardian.

After Linda Walker, a U.K. woman, suffered a stroke she developed a Jamaican accent. “I’ve lost my identity because I never talked like this before,” she told the BBC in 2006. “I’m a very different person and it’s strange and I don’t like it.”

Still, for some, it can be even worse.

In April, a 13-year-old Croatian girl reportedly woke up speaking only German, a language she’d been studying in school but wasn’t fluent in. She completely lost the ability to speak in her native tongue. She likely had a condition known as bilingual aphasia, where people lose one of their two languages because different parts of the brain are involved, according to a Discovery News article.

That may also explain what happened to Sun Kwon on ABC’s “Lost” this season. The character, who spoke both Korean and English, lost her ability to speak English after hitting her head, although she could still read and write it.

Or maybe it was just the island’s mysterious mojo.

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