Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? (16 page)

DOES A CALCIUM DEFICIENCY CAUSE ROUGH NAILS?

There are two facets of our anatomies that are basically dead. (By dead, I mean not sentient, not comprised of living cells, inanimate, muerto, y’know…dead.) Our hair and nails. (The parts we cut, shave, and clip.) And yet we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about these very parts…

Ironic, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t have bad pancreas days or bad adrenal medulla days…we have bad hair days. And, uh…we don’t have Cowper’s gland salons, we have nail salons…

If I seem to vamping here a bit, it’s because there’s a very simple, succinct, and unadorned answer to this question: NO.

Dietary calcium intake has nothing to do with the quality of your fingernails or your toenails. Consuming more calcium will not make your nails less brittle or smoother or grow faster. Nor will it prevent those occasional white spots on the fingernails (which are called “leukonychia,” and are usually caused by some long-forgotten injury to the base of the nail or by an allergic reaction to nail polish, and which disappear as the nail grows out).

If you need further proof—c’mon, don’t you trust us by now?—peruse the December 14, 2000, issue of
The New England Journal of Medicine,
specifically a study by Dr. Ian R. Reid of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Dr. Reid’s research, involving over 680 women who took either calcium supplements or placebo tablets, showed that there is no correlation between taking calcium supplements and nail quality.

WHAT PURPOSE DO FRECKLES SERVE?

I don’t know…What “purpose” does your butt serve?

Sorry, that was uncalled for. It’s just tricky sometimes to discuss things in terms of their “purpose.” It becomes a very philosophical question—the teleology of freckles. We can be fairly certain about the evolutionary development of certain traits (like prehensile digits) and discern the advantages and benefits they confer, but when we talk about “purpose” we get into fairly murky territory, because it presupposes some sort of grand plan. What’s the “purpose” of poodles, for instance?

A freckle is simply a concentrated deposit of the dark pigment, melanin. Produced by skin cells called melanocytes, melanin helps protect your skin from the ultraviolet (UV) radiation in sunlight. Especially in people with fair complexions—which means that they have less melanin in their skin—exposure to sunlight causes the melanocytes to produce more melanin in these small circular deposits. So people with lighter complexions tend to have more freckles. There are two kinds of freckles: ephelides (which are generally caused by sun exposure and fade in the winter months) and lentigines (which are darker and do not fade in the winter). Heredity is a very important factor when it comes to freckles. Studies have shown that identical twins have an amazing similarity in the actual number of freckles they each have on their bodies. (If you’re spending a long, rainy weekend with your identical twin, and you’re bored, try counting each other’s freckles.)

Now, as far as the “purpose” of a freckly butt—that’s something I can probably take a stab at….

DO YOUR EYEBROWS GROW BACK IF SHAVED?

As any Goth could tell you, if you shave your eyebrows, they grow back. (Actually, only a small percentage of self-described Goths shave their eyebrows. We have no precise statistics on this, but base it on empirical evidence gleaned from friends and family who are themselves Gothic Americans—the term we prefer.)

Remember, all the elements involved in hair growth are in the living part, down in the root. Shaving hair on the head, the face, or any other part of the body leaves that root intact. Shaved eyebrow hair is no exception—it will certainly grow back.

Don’t think for a minute that doctors are immune to urban legends and old wives’ tales. I was taught, back in medical school, never to shave an eyebrow because it could result in permanent brow alopecia (bald brows).WRONG.

In fact, there was even a study done in 1999 and published in the
Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.
It was called “Cilia Regrowth of Shaven Eyebrows.” We love this study. Five patients had a single brow “randomly” shaven, while the unshaven brow served as a control. The patients were evaluated for brow regrowth during six months and photos were taken. “Two masked observers analyzed the final photographs to determine if they could identify the side that was shaven.” Result: all patients had full brow regrowth without any discernable difference between the shaven and unshaven brow. But what’s up with the “masked observers”? I guess it gets a little kinky in the lab sometimes.

(Tweezing, by the way, can be a different story. The root of an eyebrow hair is quite sensitive, so if the same hair is plucked again and again, the root can become permanently damaged and eventually the hair may not grow back.)

WHEN YOU PULL OUT A GRAY HAIR, DO TWO COME BACK IN ITS PLACE?

Back in the day, old wives (and old husbands, for that matter) were far too busy eluding predators, fleeing barbarian hordes, and prostrating themselves on the ground in the face of seemingly inexplicable natural phenomena like lightning and eclipses, to come up with patently erroneous tales like this. But today, with your modern conveniences like EZ Pass, TiVo, and microwave popcorn, I guess old wives have enough time on their hands to concoct spurious nonsense like this two-gray-hairs-for-each-one-plucked thing.

If you pull out a gray hair, and wait the three months it usually takes for a hair to grow back, and the additional three months it takes for it to get long enough to notice, know what you’ll have? One gray hair.

WHY DON’T YOU GET GOOSE BUMPS ON YOUR FACE?

There seems to be implicit in this question, a kind of longing, a yearning….

Although most of us only get goose bumps on our bodies—primarily our forearms, legs, and backs—some of us actually do get them on our faces.

The language of the goose bump world is rich and poetic. Goose bumps themselves are also known as goose pimples, gooseflesh, and chicken skin. The reflex that produces them is known as horripilation, piloerection, or the pilomotor reflex. Inuits have over 348 different words for goose bumps. (That’s not true.)

Goose bumps are caused by tiny muscles at the base of each hair on our bodies, known as arrecotres pilorum, which contract and pull the hair erect. This is a mammalian response to cold (erect hair creates a layer of insulation), although this doesn’t work much for people anymore since we’ve lost most of our body hair. It’s also a sympathetic nerve reflex that’s related to the flight-or-fight response. A frightened animal’s erect hairs might make it appear larger and thus more intimidating to an enemy. This horripilation-as-intimidation technique has become particularly obsolete for us humans. There’s nothing like turning yourself into a mass of quivering gooseflesh to intimidate some huge, menacing asshole who’s whispering salacious vulgarities into the ear of your date as he drinks your beer.

Anyway…if you really want goose bumps on your face and don’t get them, don’t try having some skin grafted from your forearm onto your cheek. But odds are against any insurance company reimbursing you for the procedure and it wouldn’t work anyway.

WHY DO SOME WOMEN GO BALD?

Alopecia—hair loss or baldness—affects some 30 million women in the United States, young and old, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. But hair loss in women is different from male pattern baldness (androgenic alopecia). For years, scientists believed that the same process was at work in female pattern baldness as in the male version—a genetically inherited sensitivity to dihydrotestosterone, a by-product of testosterone that can accumulate in and damage the hair follicle. But today, we know that baldness in women can be the result of many factors—there may be a variety of other types of enzymes, as well as hormone receptors and blockers at work.

Hormonal changes following menopause (including changes in the levels of androgens) can produce “female pattern baldness.” Whereas male pattern baldness usually starts at the temple area or the crown (that bald spot in the back), women more typically have a diffuse thinning around the whole top of the head, with the frontal hairline maintained. But remember—young women, as well as postmenopausal women, can experience hair loss. Other factors in female alopecia can include hormonal changes following pregnancy, and polycystic ovary syndrome (a fairly common hormonal problem in women). There’s also alopecia areata—patchy areas of total hair loss caused by an immune disorder—and telogen effluvium—a temporary shedding of hair following childbirth, crash dieting, or surgery. Certain kinds of prescription drugs and chemotherapies can also cause hair loss. There are many possibilities. So the first thing a woman should do if she notices that she’s losing hair is to see her doctor and get to the—excuse the pun—root cause.

A lesser known cause of baldness in women is something called trichotillomania (TTM), which is defined, in the venerable
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
as “the recurrent pulling out of one’s hair that results in noticeable hair loss.” (Trichotillomania is classified by some clinicians as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.) Among adults, TTM is more common among females than among males. A practice related to TTM is called trichophagia, in which the hair is sucked or eaten. And on the most exotic end of the hair-yanking spectrum is Rapunzel syndrome, in which people who eat their hair develop a small or large bowel obstruction caused by a trichobezoar…yes, you guessed it—a hairball.

DOES SMOKING HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT?

There is ample evidence that nicotine does cause an increase in metabolism, and smoking cigarettes may act as an appetite suppressant. The main reason, though, that we tend to associate smoking with weight loss is that people who quit smoking often report gaining some weight. But addiction specialists point out that this is simply because, at first, many ex-smokers use food as a substitute for cigarettes. And, of course, any significant increase in caloric intake without some commensurate calorie-burning exercise will probably result in some added poundage.

But let’s be serious here. Even if cigarettes were a remarkably effective appetite suppressant—which they are NOT—the dangers of smoking are so catastrophic that only someone with a powerful death wish would actually smoke to lose weight. But maybe fatal lung cancer or emphysema is worth it, considering that morticians are wizards at extreme makeovers, and that embalming fluid does give you a nice sort of glow….

WHAT MAKES SELF-TANNER WORK?

The active ingredient in self-tanners (or “sunless tanners,” as they’re also called) is dihydroxyacetone (DHA). DHA is a colorless sugar that interacts with the amino acid arginine in the dead cells of the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of your epidermis, which is the outer layer of your skin. The interaction of the DHA with these cells in the epidermis causes a color change, a browning of the skin.

Now, each and every day millions of dead skin cells are being sloughed away. (In fact, every month or so, you have a completely new epidermis. A whole new superficial you!) So as your old epidermis wears off, so does your sunless tan. That’s why self-tanners have to be reapplied every few days to maintain the maximum effect.

So for all you George Hamilton wannabes, if you covet that rich year-round tan, here are your choices: You can move to Florida or Southern California and slather yourself with baby oil and sit out on your patio all day with one of those aluminum reflectors—although you’ll be seriously courting melanoma (and at the very least probably end up looking like all my grandmother’s leathery friends who used to sit outside their swim-club cabanas in the sun, the reptilian flab dangling from their upper arms as they shuffled their mah-jongg tiles). Or you can routinely rotisserie yourself in a tanning booth, which also poses some potential UV overexposure risk. Or you can take a tanning pill, most of which contain something called canthaxanthin, which is NOT approved by the FDA for use as a tanning agent, and which will not only turn your skin a nice Oompa-Loompa orange, but will also tint your tears, sweat, pee, and poop, AND which has been linked to hepatitis and something called canthaxanthin retinopathy (a condition in which yellow deposits form in the retina of your eye).

So you might just want to coat your bad self with that self-tanner…. Just remember to rebaste every few weeks after molting.

CAN YOU GET TOE FUNGUS FROM A PEDICURE?

Is there danger lurking down at the local Happy Nails? The fungus among us is something doctors affectionately call onychomycosis, and it’s fairly common. Some 15 percent of us have it and almost half of people over the age of seventy suffer from this ailment, which causes the toenail—particularly on the big toe—to become thick and discolored. Toenails are a cozy environment for the fungus because they are usually dark and damp, and dark and damp is heaven for fungi.

Toenail fungus can sometimes get better on its own, but usually worsens without treatment. Prescription medication used to treat toenail fungus includes fluconazole (Diflucan), itraconazole (Sporannox), and terbinafine (Lamisil). Onychomycosis is contagious and, yes, you can get it at a nail salon.

But you can also get it in a shower stall, a locker room, a bathroom, or from sharing a nail file or emery board with a friend or family member who has toe fungus. So, please don’t deprive yourself of the pleasure of a pedicure, just be careful.

If you want to pamper your little piggies at a salon, make sure that it has a current operating license, and that its instruments are properly sanitized. Autoclaving (heat sterilization) of the instruments is best, but germicidal chemical sterilization will also suffice. You can also always bring your own set of toe tools.

CAN YOU GET HERPES FROM A HOT TUB?

So, you settle in for a nice soak, without a care in the world. But is there danger lurking in the water?

Well, we don’t want to be the bearers of bad news, but if that whirlpool or hot tub isn’t properly cleaned or chlorinated, you could end up with a nice body rash. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2004 that “Extensive spa use combined with inadequate maintenance contribute to recreational water illnesses (RWIs) caused by pathogens such as Pseudomonas spp., Legionella spp., and Mycobacterium spp.” Yuck.

It’s not as bad as it sounds. Pseudomonas folliculitis (hot tub folliculitis) is a skin infection that can develop within forty-eight hours after a dip in the spa. It is caused by bacteria getting into the hair follicles. You then get red, round, itchy bumps that later can develop into small pus-filled blisters. The rash usually resolves spontaneously within two to ten days.

As for the herpes question, the chlorine in hot tubs should kill the herpes virus. There are reports of people catching herpes skin infections from hot tubs, but these are very rare.