It's Friday, which means two things: We all have that Rebecca Black song in our heads, and it's time for us to answer a reader question. Today, we're tackling a beauty query from our Facebook pal Suzanne Pyles:

But we think this question brings up another question: Why do overplucked hairs stop growing back, anyway?

"Overplucking of the brows can lead to a diminution in the size of the hair follicle, thereby making the new growing hairs smaller and finer as well. This happens when people wax a lot," explains Dr. Carolyn Jacob, a Chicago dermatologist. "Older women tend to lose eyebrow hairs, too, so you don't want to make your brows thin when you are younger. It doesn't look right, and you wont have much, if anything, to work with when you're older."

Onto the real question here: Can the eyebrow hairs you accidentally made disappear ever grow back?

"Sometimes, if the plucking is too forceful or if there is chronic irritation or inflammation, this can lead to damage or scarring of the hair follicle, thus a new hair does not grow," says Dr. Paradi Mirmirani, a dermatologist practicing in Vallejo, Calif. "This is a rare occurence, but once the follicle is damaged it is permanent.  There is no treatment other than hair transplantation that would lead to successful regrowth of another hair shaft."

Short of hair transplantation, you could always consider permanent makeup, although we hear that doesn't always work out so well.

Got a weird health question you're itching for us to answer? Ask away -- leave a comment here, or find us on Facebook or Twitter.

Follow health editor Melissa Dahl on Twitter: @melissadahl.

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Watching these "Jersey Shore" goofballs might influence your smarts more than you realize, a new study suggests. Oh, dear.

Take note, fans of mindless reality shows like "Jersey Shore": New research suggests watching something dumb might make you dumber. In other words, you are what you watch.

It's called media priming -- the idea that the things we watch or listen to or read influence our emotions and our behavior, perhaps more than we realize. This particular study may be the first to use fictional characters in a narrative to show an effect on people's cognitive performance, says lead author Markus Appel, a psychologist at Austria's University of Linz.

In an experiment, volunteers were told to read a fake screenplay about a character they refer to as a "foolish soccer hooligan." (A subsequent finding of the study: Austrians are adorable.) The story describes a day in the life of a man named Meier: He wakes up, reads (and misunderstands) the message in an inspiration-of-the-day calendar, meets his friends in a bar and gets very drunk. Meier then goes to a soccer game, gets into a fight and comes home to crash; he sleeps through the next day. (Substitute the soccer game for a nightclub, and you have something very similar to the televised daily shenanigans of Snooki or The Situation.)

Some of the 81 volunteers were instructed to read a longer version of the "soccer hooligan" story, while others read a shorter version -- and the control group read a rather boring story in which Meier does nothing stupid. Then researchers gave the volunteers a multiple choice general knowledge test, including questions like, "What is the capital of Libya?" and "What kind of speed is expressed by the letter 'c' in physics?" and "Who painted La Guernica?"

To be fair, these are tough questions to answer sans-Internet regardless of whether you've just watched something vapid like "Toddlers and Tiaras." But, as the researchers write, "participants who read a narrative about a stupidly acting soccer hooligan performed worse in the knowledge test than participants who read a narrative about a character with no reference to his intellectual abilities.

"The present study is, to our knowledge, the first to show media priming effects of story characters on cognitive performance," they explain in the report, which was published online this month in the journal Media Psychology.

Think you're too smart to be influenced by the media you consume? That's cute. Anything we see -- a person on the street, an ad on TV, a character in a movie -- has some influence on our next thoughts, emotions or actions, simply because it's top of mind, says Joanne Cantor, a psychologist and member of the American Psychological Association who has studied the emotional and behavioral effect of TV and movies.

“What you’ve been thinking about recently or seeing recently (is) at a higher level in your consciousness, so your brain is kind of predisposed in that direction,” says Cantor, professor emerita of communication arts and outreach director center for communication research at the University of Wisonsin-Madison. “So if you’ve just seen a movie about really altruistic people and you get an opportunity to behave altruistically, you’ll probably do it, rather than if you’ve just seen a movie about selfish people." (So fans of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" aren't particularly charitable? Noted.)

Cantor explains that empathetic people are likely to be especially affected by media priming. "But also, people who expose themselves to TV more are probably going to be more affected,” she says. Something to think about next time you find yourself lured into an hours-long marathon of your favorite reality show. On the other hand, some of us could likely use more gym and laundry, if not tanning, in our lives.

Have you ever noticed a TV show, movie or book influencing your emotions or behavior -- in a positive or negative way? Leave a comment telling us about what happened.

Follow msnbc.com health editor Melissa Dahl on Twitter: @melissadahl.

More from Body Odd:

• Why some see Jesus in the face of their toast
• Bottom line: Doc explains mysteriously massive buttocks
• Can eating too much make your stomach burst?

Related:

• 'Jersey Shore' cast wants more money -- again
• Who's responsible when reality TV goes too far?
• Watching Jon Stewart might make you more creative
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow Melissa Dahl on Twitter @melissadahl.

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Cameron Whitman / Getty Images/Vetta

No pain, no gain, right? Actually, your favorite swear word really can help you fight through painful stuff, a new study shows.

Next time you stub your toe, go ahead and let those four-letter words fly. Cursing actually does help dull our perception of pain, research suggests.

In the study, researchers from the UK's Keele University asked participants for five words they'd likely use after hitting their thumb with a hammer; the first word listed would be their go-to profanity during the experiment. (They were also asked to list five boring words -- ones they'd use to describe a table.)

Participants were then instructed to submerge their unclenched hand in a container of 41-degree water, and keep it there -- while repeatedly cursing -- for as long as they could. Before and after plunging their hands into the chilly water, their heart rate was recorded. And after they could no longer stand the cold temperature, they were asked to rate the amount of pain they were in, too.

What's surprising is that the researchers had thought that swearing would make the cold water feel much colder, lowering the participants' tolerance for pain and heightening their perception of it. "In fact, the opposite occurred -- people withstood a moderately to strongly painful stimulus for significantly longer if they repeated a swear word rather than a nonswear word," write the team, led by Keele University psychologist Richard Stephens, in the journal Neuroreport.

From the way participants' heart rates accelerated post-swearing, the psychologists believed their fight-or-flight response had been activated -- that may be because cursing can amp up feelings of aggression. (Think of a bunch of rowdy NFL players psyching each other up before a big game.)

Interestingly, women reported feeling less pain after swearing a blue streak. (Hilariously, the researchers report that cussing "did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise." That's the polite British way of saying some of the boys were total drama queens.)

Has your own research already proven that a few well-timed swear words can soothe a stubbed toe? Do tell.

You can find The Body Odd on Facebook, and follow Melissa Dahl @melissadahl.

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Earlier today, Geoffrey Mutai ran the fastest marathon ever recorded -- the Kenyan man finished the race in an incredible 2 hours, 3 minutes and 2 seconds. (Update: Mutai's record-breaker won't be recognized, because today's racers were helped by an unusually strong tailwind.) Including Mutai, about 27,000 runners took over the streets of Boston today, racing in the 115th edition of the oldest annual marathon on the planet -- and after months of hard training, many have surely sustained a running-related injury.

STR / Reuters

Elite men runners start the 115th running of the Boston Marathon in Hopkinton, Mass., today.

In fact, injuries occur in 40 to 50 percent of runners every year, shows a 2010 study published in the journal Current Sports Medicine Reports. You've heard of shin splints, stress fractures and runners' knee -- but the weirdest injury we've heard of has to be "dead butt syndrome."

The silly "dead butt" nickname was made popular this winter when a New York Times blogger dramatically declared, "My butt is dead." Not nearly as hilarious as it sounds, the medical term for "dead butt syndrome" is gluteus medius tendinosis -- basically, one of the muscles that make up your behind becomes inflamed, causing searing hip pain.

The gluteus medius is located on the outer surface of the pelvis, and it powers the thighs forward. Without proper strength training, this muscle is unable to withstand the repetitive stress caused by the long runs that training for a half marathon or anything longer requires.

To beginner marathon runners, all the miles you're expected to log is daunting enough -- and the pros want you to add another exercise on top of that? But it's important to strengthen the lower abdominal muscles and the gluteus muscles -- otherwise, smaller muscles like the gluteus medius muscle end up too weak to bear the brunt of the increasingly ridiculous distances you're running. It's a reminder to runners that when training for a half marathon or longer, just running won't cut it; some kind of cross-training -- whether it's strength-training, swimming, biking, rowing or something else -- is necessary. Keep that butt alive!

You can find The Body Odd on Facebook, and follow Melissa Dahl @melissadahl.

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We get it, Kanye West. You think you're the bee's knees. (In the photo, West is performing in Austin, Texas, during VEVO Presents: G.O.O.D. Music.)

On iPods everywhere, Rihanna is demanding, "Want you to make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world!" Taylor Swift is whining, "Why can't you see? You belong with me!" And Kanye West is bragging, "Excuse me? Was you saying something? Uh uh. You can't tell me nothing."

It would seem that the popular music we listen to today has become more "me"-centric, less "we"-centric, when compared to hits from decades past -- at least, that's what a team of finger-wagging psychologists are saying in a new study analyzing the lyrics pop hits from 1980 to 2007. What's more, they argue that the increase in "me me me" lyrics reflect a nationwide increase in that 21st century affliction: narcissism.

"Music and culture share a powerful relationship with each other that ... has been left unexplored," write the researchers, led by C. Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky. (The study was published in the March issue of the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.) The researchers add that "music serves as a cultural product that documents change in U.S. culture across time."

Researchers used a text analysis program to examine song lyrics for the 10 most popular songs (according to the Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart) for every year from 1980 to 2007. They found that the decades-old songs were more likely to use more first-person plural pronouns (we, our, us), while the newer lyrics contained more first-person singular pronouns (me, my, mine).

But modern songs aren't just more "me"-focused -- they're also meaner, the study shows. Researchers saw an increase in angry, antisocial words in pop songs as the years went on -- words like kill, hate, annoyed, damn, and f---. (Incidentally, two hit songs in recent months drop the f-bomb in their titles: Pink's "F---in' Perfect" and Cee-Lo's "F--- You.")

Of course, it's not entirely fair to say that pop songs reflect nationwide narcissism -- after all, what about the kids who only listen to indie or punk bands, or grown-ups who stick to oldies? Another shortcoming: The report acknowledges that the program used to analyze the lyrics isn't able to detect sarcasm or hidden meaning. Still, the researchers point out a past study that showed self-reported feelings of loneliness jumped 250 percent from 1985 and 2004 -- plus, more of us than ever are living alone, according to U.S. Census data. But it's an interesting examination of how pop culture is intertwined with our emotional lives.

Bottom line: We're not sure how, but we're pretty sure this is the fault of Facebook and Twitter.

What are some recent pop songs that are very "me me me"? And can you think of any lyrics from songs in the past few decades that defy this finding?

You can find The Body Odd on Facebook, and follow Melissa Dahl @melissadahl.

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Sorry, germaphobes: Those hands-free, automatic faucets that seem so clean and germ-free might actually be housing more bacteria than the old-fashioned, manual kind, according to a new Johns Hopkins University study.

Researchers, led by Dr. Emily Snydor, tested electronic and manual faucets in patient care areas of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, over a seven-week period from December 2008 to January 2009. The team found Legionella growing in 50 percent of cultured water samples from 20 electronic faucets -- compared to 15 percent of water cultures from 20 of the older faucets in the same patient care areas. (Legionella causes Legionnaires' disease, a severe and sometimes deadly form of pneumonia.)

Somewhat surprisingly, this study is far from the first to place the germy blame on hands-free faucets. But Snydor's team believes their research is the first detailed analysis to show how and why the automatic faucets harbor more of the nasty bacteria. Researchers took apart four of the electronic faucets, and swab culture tests showed Legionella and other bacteria on all of the main valves. "All of those different pieces, when we took them apart, grew Legionella," Snydor says. "Manual faucets don’t have these parts."

Also, one reason hospitals and other facilities switched to electronic faucets is that they conserve water, "but decreased water flow may increase the chance that bacteria grows, because you're not flushing them through."

Another theory we'd like to offer: Those automatic faucets never work on the first try! You end up jabbing and poking your dirty hands all over the faucet to try to trigger the stream of water. Couldn't that promote the spread of bacteria? "I think people have hypothesized that," says Snydor. But in this study, "nothing on the outside was cultured." 

At Johns Hopkins Hospital, all of the 20 electronic faucets were removed from the patient care areas and replaced with the manual kind, as a result of the study. A hundred more are set to be replaced throughout the hospital, and 1,080 manual faucets will be installed in the new clinical buildings currently being built.

We should note that this research doesn't excuse you from post-bathroom hand-washing. "A person goes to the airport, and goes to the bathroom one time -- that’s really low exposure," Snydor explains. "In hospitals, obviously, people have weakened immune systems -- that’s who we worry more about."

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Is it reassuring that a surgeon has the precision of a competitive knife thrower? Or is the thought of letting a knife-throwing plastic surgeon near your breasts kind of terrifying?

On his off hours, Dr. Ted Eisenberg of Merion Park, Pa., throws knives and tomahawks in competition. But he's also set a Guinness World Record for most boob jobs performed.

According to Guinness, Eisenberg has performed 3,460 breast augmentations, reports AOL News. Eisenberg argues that he's done more than 4,700 of the surgeries over his cosmetic surgery career. Depending on whether you go by Guinness's count or Eisenberg's -- that's either 7,000 or close to 10,000 boobs.

We should note that the knife-throwing surgeon hasn't lost his heart. When he got his first throwing knife -- a gift from his wife -- he told AOL News, "I tried throwing it into a tree but I felt bad. I felt so bad I went and hugged the tree."

For more weird world records, check out TODAY.com's slideshow of 2011's Guinness World Records holders. 

[Link: AOL News: Philadelphia Breast Surgeon Moonlights as Knife Thrower]

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Oh, barf. Literally, though: Today, NBCLosAngeles.com reports on children with abdominal migraines, also called cyclic vomiting syndrome, a mysterious disorder that causes bouts of nausea and vomiting -- sometimes as often as six times an hour -- that can last for hours, or even days. (Days!) 

It's a condition with no known cause or cure, according to the Mayo Clinic, but it most often occurs in kids ages 3 to 7. Typically, it's something kids grow out of by the time they're teenagers, but it can last into adulthood, which is when things get really icky: For adults, symptoms can last as long as a week.  

The National Institutes of Health lists all the possible triggers for an episode of near-constant retching: emotional stress or excitement; anxiety and panic attacks; colds, allergies, sinus problems and the flu; eating too much or eating before bed, hot weather, physical exhaustion, menstruation and motion sickness. (In short: Being alive can trigger symptoms.) Medications are sometimes prescribed to stop all the barfing, but the NIH says most people learn to control their symptoms by staying in bed and sleeping in a dark, quiet room. 

Quoth one small sufferer of cyclic vomiting syndrome: "I'll vomit up to about 40 times a day. That's just terrible, terrible. For being my age especially," Olivia Brown told NBCLosAngeles.com.

Poor thing. Readers, have you ever heard of cyclic vomiting syndrome? And, just for fun -- tell us your grossest vomiting story, won't you? For Olivia's sake. 

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When Bridget Lewis began to lose her sense of smell, her friends and family thought she couldn't be serious.

"Everyone thought I was joking," says Lewis, who's 42 and lives in Arlington, Texas. "My mom even had fun with it, and 'tested' me. She asked me to hold out my tongue and had my little sister grab things from the kitchen, like Tabasco sauce and lemon juice and they squeezed drops of it on my tongue! When they saw I had no reaction, they believed me."

In Lewis's case, a severe bronchial infection stole her sense of smell in 2002; nine years later, it's only partially returned. Most of us have experienced a temporarily diminished sense of smell -- it's part of the super fun side effects of a cold, along with the dripping nose and general malaise. But before it happened to her, Lewis says she didn't even realize a long term loss of smell was even possible -- there is blindness, and deafness, but many people aren't familiar with the word for a lost sense of smell: anosmia.

"It's not as dehabilitating [as losing other senses]," says Dr. Beverly Cowart of the Monell Chemical Senses Center. "But I think people find it hard to relate to; I think people don't appreciate how much they use their sense of smell."

An estimated 1 to 2 percent of people in North America say they have a smell disorder, according to government figures. It's more common in men than in women, and it's much more common in older people, occurring in nearly 25 percent of men aged 60 to 69 and 11 percent of women in that age range, according to the National Institutes of Health.

High inside your nose is a grouping of cells called olfactory sensory neurons. These neurons each possess an odor receptor, which picks up on the tiny molecules released by things like a just-peeled orange, a bag of microwaved popcorn or your coworker's tuna fish lunch. The neurons then pass the information to your brain, which interprets the smell.

As Cowart explains, there are a few common ways to lose your sense of smell: a chronic nasal sinus disease, a viral infection, inhaling something toxic or a head injury. Unlike most nerves, the brain's olfactory nerve fibers are continuously replaced, "so occasionally people can gradually regain their sense of smell as new fibers grow in." And some people are born without the ability to smell.

Lacking a sense of smell can be dangerous -- anosmics wouldn't notice a gas leak, or the smell of smoke. Personal hygiene is a big worry for some. "The biggest effect is on food-flavor perception," Cowart says. "It actually creates social difficulties for people. Sometimes, people become more isolated; they don't go out as much."

Smelly stuff reaches the olfactory neurons in one of two ways: either through your nostrils, or through a pathway connecting the roof of your throat to your nose. If that second passageway is blocked, we're unable to pick up on the odors -- and, consequently, the flavors -- emitted by food.

One rainy day four years ago while Lewis was pregnant, she remembers bursting into tears over her anosmia."I was sad and I think depressed because I realized I couldn't smell the rain ... and realized I wouldn't be able to smell the scent of my newborn," Lewis remembers. "Horrible day."

On the upside, potentially smelly tasks like cleaning out the fridge don't bother her at all -- but she adds that she tends to go overboard. "I have always been scared that I could make our daughter sick — if I even suspect something has been in the fridge for too long, I throw it out.  I've also burned many pots and foods in the oven because as they cooked, I couldn't smell them!"

Have you or a family member lost the ability to smell? How has it impacted your life?

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Ross D. Franklin / AP

Henry Morello, of Anthem, Ariz., talks about his ordeal in the desert during a news conference on Tuesday.

An Arizona octogenarian was stranded in his car for five days, subsisting on nothing but leftover pasta and windshield wiper fluid, the Arizona Republic reported earlier this week. That's five days with nothing to drink but windshield wiper fluid. We're so glad Henry Morello survived -- but it's unbelievably lucky that he did, explains Dr. Eric Lavonas, a medical toxicologist from the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver, Colo.

"Five days with very little to drink would put most people in kidney failure," says Lavonas, who's a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. Indeed, Morello -- who's a diabetic -- will be treated for kidney damage in a Phoenix hospital for a few days, doctors at John C. Lincoln Hospital said at a news conference Tuesday. His doctors also said that it wasn't immediately clear whether the wiper fluid had caused him any serious harm.

Lavonas explains that windshield wiper fluid usually contains methanol, a toxic substance that's often used as an antifreeze. "It’s a poisonous alcohol that can cause bad chemical derangements in the body and can cause blindness. If you drink windshield wiper fluid, you can expect to get very sick and go blind ... within a few hours to a day." (For extra clarity, he adds later, "Yeah, just don't drink windshield wiper fluid.")

Some reports have said that Morello used a napkin to filter the wiper fluid, but Lavonas says that's not a great idea. "The parallel of that would be saying, 'I've got a rum and Coke, and I'm going to filter the rum out.' Yeah, not going to work," he says.

It's an especially remarkable tale considering that Morello is 84 years old. Younger, healthier people tend to be able to withstand dehydration -- and just about anything else, for that matter -- better than older, sicker folks, of course. The effects of dehydration -- muscle cramps, dizziness, decreased blood pressure and vision distortion -- can appear in as soon as a day, and lack of fluids becomes life-threatening within just a few days. (Most experts agree we can last about three or four days without any water at all.) As for food, we can go about three weeks without eating -- as long as we're getting enough fluids, that is. (The "starving yogi" would like to dispute that -- last year, the Indian yogi claimed he'd gone 70 years without eating or drinking anything, although experts say that's impossible.)

In Morello's case, "I would say that he’s a very lucky gentleman," Lavonas says. A better idea than downing wiper fluid: Keep an emergency kit in your car. Lavonas keeps an old duffel bag in his trunk -- it contains a gallon jug of water and a 15- to 20-year-old Army MRE (leftover from his days in the reserves), plus a blanket, flares, a crank-handle flashlight and a couple of old wool caps, to ward off the Colorado chill. You've already got most of this stuff lying around, he says. "Just jam a few basic items like that together in a duffel bag, throw it in your trunk and it could save your life."

It's either that, or risk a survival situation like Morello and others have experienced:

• In 2007, a college student was trapped in his car at the bottom of a steep embankment in Maryland for eight days and seven nights, reported the Washington Post; he depended on the adjacent creek for his survival, eating fish he caught with his hands and using his high-top sneaker to drink water.
• A 33-year-old Washington state woman was found alive after being trapped in her car for eight days at the bottom of a steep ravine in 2007; she was treated for dehydration and kidney damage, but she's well enough now to have written a book about the ordeal.
• Tillie Tooter, an 83-year-old grandmother, survived for three days in August 2000 while trapped in her car, which was stuck in a thicket of mangrove trees. The only food she had on her was a stick of gum, a peppermint and a cough drop.
• And a 32-year-old West Virginia man was stuck in his wrecked car for six freezing days -- with only an old jar of peanut butter and a few Taco Bell sauce packets for food.

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It's a question you might ask yourself after the fifth lip balm reapplication on this wintry February day: Is it possible to get hooked on this stuff? The answer: Yes! (Kinda.)

"It's an interesting question," says Perry Romanowski, a cosmetic chemist and a blogger over at The Beauty Brains. (So interesting, in fact, that he and his fellow beauty brainiacs have penned a soon-to-be-released book asking that question, plus others.) "You can’t get addicted to lip balm in the way you can get addicted to cigarettes; that’s actually a chemical addiction that affects your brain." But as he explains it, lip balm can certainly be habit-forming.

The lower layers of your skin produce fresh, new skin cells, which die and can dry out a bit by the time they reach the top layer, Romanowski explains. "When you put the lip balm on the dry skin, what that does is interfere with the signaling mechanism that signals to the lower cells to start producing more," he says. "Using lip balm, while it makes your lips feel good initially, when it wears off your skin feels dry again and your skin doesn’t have time to replenish that." So you apply more lip balm. And when that wears off, you apply more. And more. And more! "And so in that way you can get 'addicted'; it becomes sort of a psychological habit."

Another explanation: Some lip products out there contain products -- like the antiseptic chemical phenol, or even peppermint -- that can act irritants, and can potentially dry your lips out, suggests Dr. Margaret E. Parsons, a Sacramento, Calif., dermatologist.

What about you? Are you hooked on lip balm? (But you could stop any time you wanted to, right?)

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