Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? (18 page)

WHY DO BOYS SLEEP LATER IN THE MORNING DURING PUBERTY?

Life requires at least three ingredients—water, heat, and carbon-based molecules. With adolescents, there’s a fourth requirement: beds.

Almost all teens—male and female—seem to crave the opportunity to “sleep in.” This probably seems more pronounced in boys, because it doesn’t seem so long ago when your little tyke was up at the crack of dawn—maddeningly early—chomping at the bit to play or build a treehouse or go ice-fishing or shoot quail, any of those all-American things little boys want to do at ungodly hours when normal human beings just want to sleep. Then they hit puberty.

Before puberty, kids’ bodies signal that they are sleepy at about 8 or 9
P.M
. With the onset of puberty, kids don’t start feeling sleepy until around 10 or 11
P.M
. This shift in an adolescent’s circadian rhythms (the body’s twenty-four-hour cycles) is called “sleep phase delay”—a tendency toward later times for both falling asleep and waking up.

Melatonin is a hormone made by a part of the brain called the pineal gland. It is thought to help our bodies know when it’s time to go to sleep and when it’s time to wake up. An experiment conducted at Brown University showed that melatonin secretion occurs at a later time in adolescents as they mature. It also showed that melatonin secretion turned off later in the morning, making it more difficult to wake up early.

WHY DO BOYS’ BREASTS GROW DURING PUBERTY?

I guess you’re never too young to begin worrying about the dreaded “man-boobs.” Plus, there’d be no summer-camp comedies at the multiplex, unless bullies were able to mercilessly torment some poor, lovable schlub with a conspicuous cup size.

When those hormones produced in the testicles to fuel puberty begin kicking in, many boys will develop some breast tissue. And this slight swelling under the nipples may persist for several years. But don’t worry. This is perfectly normal and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re growing breasts. About 65 percent of boys will develop some breast tissue—so it’s very common and very temporary. Unless you have a serious weight problem, this breast tissue should be all gone by the time you are twenty.

WHY DOES YOUR VOICE CHANGE AT PUBERTY?

Ah, yes, what a dignified time of life—when, in the course of the same sentence, you can sound like Issac Hayes and Alvin the Chipmunk.

Your larynx is a hollow, tube-shaped piece of cartilage that is located at the top of your trachea (windpipe). There are two thin muscles—called vocal cords—that are stretched across the trachea, sort of like rubber bands. And when you speak or sing, air rushing from your lungs causes these vocal cords to vibrate, producing your voice.

During puberty, higher levels of testosterone cause the cartilage of a boy’s larynx to grow and the vocal cords to become longer and thicker, vibrating at a lower frequency, and creating a deeper tone of voice. There are other anatomical changes that contribute to the differences in an adolescent boy’s voice. His facial bones begin to grow, as do his sinus cavities, nose, and throat. This creates a larger space in which his voice can resonate more deeply. (Some of this is actually visible—as the larynx gets bigger, it also tilts at a different angle and protrudes farther. Yes, boys and girls—the Adam’s apple.)

That cracking and breaking voice that can mortify a pubescent boy is simply the result of his body adjusting to all of these physical changes. This is all very temporary. Once maturity and full laryngeal growth are achieved, those unpredictable squeaks become a thing of the past.

And the award for best all-time cracked voice in a leading role…envelope, please…Anthony Michael Hall in
Sixteen Candles.

DOES DRINKING MILK REALLY MAKE YOU TALLER?

We know our response to this one is going to be greeted with howls of indignant protest from moms all over the world…. Butthe answer is no.

There is no special “growth factor” in milk. Not that milk and other calcium-rich dairy products aren’t wonderfully nutritious. Calcium is essential for helping promote stronger bones. And if you don’t get a sufficient amount of calcium in your diet, your body compensates and basically steals it from your bones. This can eventually lead to osteoporosis—a steady, progressive loss of bone density that can cause people to become hunched over as they get older.

Height is the result of a complicated assortment of genetic factors and environmental interactions. It is polygenic—which means that many genes are involved. This is why sometimes children are significantly different heights than their parents. (The legendary basketball player and sex machine Wilt Chamberlain was 7 feet 1 inch. But neither of his parents rose above 5 feet 9 inches.) And height is multifactorial. In addition to the complex genetic component, many lifestyle factors—especially the mother’s diet and health while she is pregnant and the nutrition of the child during the growth years—determine whether a person will attain his or her potential genetic height.

FYI—within the last hundred years or so, the Dutch have gone from being the shortest people in Europe to the tallest in the world. The average Dutch man today is 6 feet 1 inch. The average American man is only 5 feet 9½ inches.

Height is a critically important subject for Leyner. Although he ultimately achieved the imposing stature of 5 feet 7 inches, he was a shrimp of a kid. In an autobiographical account he wrote recently for
Best Life
magazine, he explains that his adult obsession with weight lifting “was a long overdue response to the cumulative traumas of having been picked on as a small boy. My parents doted on me as if I were some delicate, Proustian genius prince, but once I left the cultured confines of my own home, it was
Lord of the Flies
out there. As my father’s career as an attorney flourished, we moved frequently, and every first day at a new school presented a new gauntlet of bullies….” Leyner goes onto describe the following shocking scene:

“We’d just moved from Jersey City to West Orange, a seemingly benign middle-class bedroom community in the Jersey suburbs. One afternoon, on the way home from school, I’d followed a squirrel into the woods. (As an itinerant child who was typically friendless, I often found great solace in the companionship of small helpless creatures.) There I was with my fey Truman Capote blond bangs and sparkly
anime eyes, and as I tried to lure the squirrel closer with a tiny marzipan banana that my mother had packed as a surprise in my lunch that day, I was set upon by a pack of boys in blue uniforms. Crazed, sadistic Cub Scouts. It was like a scene from one of those Japanese schoolboy splatter films like Kinji Fukasaku’s
Battle Royale.”

WHY DO WE HAVE PUBIC HAIR?

This is a great conversation starter, if you’re sitting on a plane or in line at the DMV…. And it’s not only the why, it’s the where. Why there? Why have human beings been left with tufts of hair surrounding our genitals and in our armpits?

This isn’t the place for a debate about evolution versus intelligent design, but pubic hair might seem to indicate a Creator with a very frat boy sense of humor.

If you accost random people on the street and ask them why they have pubic hair, one of three things will happen: 1. They’ll call a cop. 2. They shrug and guess: “To keep my, uh, private parts warm…?” 3. They stiffen their posture, look you directly in the eye, and assert: “To protect my genitals.”

If the purpose of pubic hair was to keep our “private parts” nice and toasty, wouldn’t we have more of it and wouldn’t it be much thicker? And if we depended on hair for warmth at this point in our evolution, wouldn’t we be covered with fur?

As for protection, even so eminent an evolutionary biologist as Mel Brooks has mused upon why the genitals—given their importance and sensitivity—are not encased in a small skull. And if pubic hair actually provided protection, wouldn’t NFL players and NASCAR drivers wear big bouffant wigs woven out of the short-and-curlies?

The most convincing hypothesis is that pubic hair—like axillary (armpit) hair—traps pheromones, those erotic scents that play such an important and fascinating role in human sexual communication. These pheromones are produced when the apocrine sweat glands release a viscous and odorless secretion on the skin surface that, when broken down by bacteria, results in a characteristic sexual scent. Pubic hair and underarm hair are a human being’s primary “scent traps.” Mammalian pheromones influence the secretion of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), a hormone that has short- and long-term effects on neurotransmission. Studies (including various smelly T-shirt–sniffing experiments) have shown that human pheromones have a significant effect on the attractiveness of one sex to the other.

Odor is such a crucial component of mammalian mating. With all the deodorants, colognes, douches, and Brazilian waxes out there—it’s a wonder anyone can find a date anymore.

DOES FALLING IN LOVE REALLY CAUSE CHEMICAL CHANGES IN YOUR BRAIN?

Why does falling in love turn seemingly rational, even-keeled, considerate people into deranged, raving, volatile, self-centered psychos in dire need of an exorcism, especially teenagers?

Welcome to Cupid’s laboratory. There is indeed a biochemistry of love. Helen Fisher, an anthropology professor at Rutgers University—along with two colleagues, Arthur Aron and Lucy Brown—used an MRI machine to study the brains of people who describe themselves as being wildly “in love.” When each subject gazed at a photograph of his or her sweetheart, the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus lit up. The caudate nucleus is the site of a dense network of receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine. Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pisa in Italy, measured the serotonin levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the blood of people who’d been in love for several months and who pine or are otherwise preoccupied with their lovers for at least four hours a day. She found that the serotonin levels in the love-struck subjects were as low as the serotonin levels in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

So if you’re feeling “madly” in love, or a little “insane in the membrane,” or “crazy, crazy for feeling so lonely,” there’s a solid, scientific basis for losing your heart AND your marbles.

DOES TELEVISION REALLY ROT KIDS’ BRAINS?

How many parents have gazed despairingly at their children who sit comatose in front of the TV for what seems like eons of uninterrupted viewing, their eyes glazed, their sallow faces awash in that bluish glow? Surely this is rotting their brains, wiping clean whole neural networks, all cognitive functioning flickering off, neuron by neuron and synapse by synapse with each ensuing episode of
American Idol, The Apprentice, Survivor,
and
The Biggest Loser.
And instead of high-functioning, productive members of society of whom they can be justifiably proud, parents fear being saddled with zombies in hairnets, muttering “You want fries with that?” for the rest of their lives. And it’s all the TV’s fault, right?

Wrong. A new study by two economists from the University of Chicago, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, shows “very little difference and if anything, a slight positive advantage” in test scores for kids who grew up watching TV early on, as compared to kids who did not. And in households where English was a second language or the mom had less than a high school education, the positive effect of TV was even more pronounced. (This study was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of academic researchers in Cambridge, Massachusetts.)

New research also appears to debunk the notion that TV shortens children’s attention spans. A study recently published in the journal
Pediatrics
and based on American kindergartners, and another conducted in the Netherlands, found absolutely no link between television viewing and symptoms of attention-deficit disorder.

So, c’mon, kids! We apologize. Put those silly books down and come grab a seat in front of the 65-inch plasma…
Punk’d
is on!!

WHY SHOULD YOU BREATHE INTO A PAPER BAG WHEN HYPERVENTILATING?

This is a classic home remedy and something that we occasionally rely on in the emergency room, but not everyone who is hyperventilating should be given the bag. Hyperventilation is a fancy word for rapid deep breathing. It is usually caused by anxiety or panic, but many conditions can cause hyperventilation including: asthma, heart attack, bleeding, pneumonia, overdoses, and stimulant use. In patients with heart attacks, collapsed lungs, or blood clots in the lungs death can occur if they are misdiagnosed and treated with paper bag rebreathing. Once we decide that you don’t have something serious, we will reach for the bag. So let your doctor make this diagnosis!

Breathing into a paper bag works by making you rebreathe the carbon dioxide that you are exhaling. This causes the blood levels of carbon dioxide to rise, and slows your breathing.

Instead of using the bag, you can slow your breathing by breathing through pursed lips or by breathing from the diaphragm. If you do reach for the bag, know that there is no magic chemical in the brown paper bag, and you probably could use your empty McDonald’s bag or even your Prada purse.

DO THOSE INSTANT HAND SANITIZERS REALLY WORK?

Does washing your hands really prevent disease?

The answer is a resounding yes! Few things are as certain as this in medicine. There is no doubt that washing your hands can prevent disease.

The problem is getting people to do it. A study in the
Annals of Internal Medicine
looked at the rate of hand washing among physicians and found that doctors washed their hands only 57 percent of the time they should have. This is higher than many studies that have shown compliance rates lower than 50 percent. In this study, the adherence to hand hygiene rates varied by specialty with internal medicine doctors washing the most, and anesthesiologists the least. Medical students did better than their professors, and female physicians did better than their male counterparts. The presence of a hand-rub solution increased the compliance with hand washing.

For this reason, those alcohol-based hand-rub solutions are all over hospitals. The good news is that they work well too. The CDC in their
Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings
state that “alcohol-based products are more effective for standard handwashing or hand antisepsis by health care workers than soap or antimicrobial soap.” But these hand rubs are not appropriate for use when hands are visibly soiled or after going to the bathroom.

As for the omnipresence of antibacterial soap, it is not necessary. The most important thing is to rub your hands vigorously together while washing and continue for ten to fifteen seconds. The regular soap and the scrubbing action together will help wash away the germs.

DO COPPER BRACELETS HELP WITH RHEUMATISM?

This was a question from Billy’s wife’s grandmother. We love the term
rheumatism.
It’s so old-fashioned and dramatic and makes you think about other illnesses like lumbago, dropsy, or the fits. Rheumatism isn’t a term that is used in hospitals, but is generally used to refer to arthritis.

Arthritis doesn’t refer to one specific condition, but is a general term for inflammation of the joints. There are over one hundred types of arthritis. Arthritis affects about 42 million people. The most common form of arthritis is osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is caused by wear and tear on the joints and ultimately the breakdown and loss of cartilage. There is no cure for osteoarthritis.

Copper bracelets have been sold as a cure for arthritis based upon the belief that the copper is absorbed into the skin and can help rejuvenate the cartilage. This is a myth, and there is no proof that these bracelets work. There are many studies looking at copper and how it affects the growth of cartilage, so in the future we may discover some new ways to use this important element. Copper is, however, a necessary part of our diet. Copper is essential for normal metabolism, but copper deficiency is extremely uncommon. In the meantime, there are serious side effects with copper supplements. So check with your doctor before taking them.

As for the copper bracelets, go ahead, wear them if you want. They won’t fix your arthritis, but they might turn your arm green.

CAN YOU GET THE FLU FROM A FLU SHOT?

Influenza (the flu) is different from the common cold. Both are caused by viruses and can produce the same symptoms, but the flu is generally much more severe. Most people describe higher temperatures and severe body aches when they have the flu and not a cold.

A flu vaccine contains inactivated viruses (viruses that are killed), so you cannot get the flu from a flu shot. The shot is designed to allow your body to develop protection (antibodies) without actually getting sick. This happens about two weeks after receiving the vaccine. Up to that point, you are still at risk of getting the flu, just not from the shot.

Minor side effects associated with the flu vaccine include: soreness, redness, or swelling at the injection site, low-grade fever, and body aches. The flu vaccine doesn’t provide 100 percent protection against getting the flu. Experts try to predict the strain for that year, and match the vaccine with the virus. As you probably know by now, experts aren’t always right.

IS IT TRUE THAT LAUGHTER HAS HEALING POWERS?

So, you are now on page 218 of this book. C’mon, tell us you’re not feeling a little better.

You might be surprised to know that there is significant evidence that humor can do a body good. Perhaps you have read “Modulation of Neuroimmune Parameters During the Eustress of Humor-associated Mirthful Laughter” in the March 2001 issue of
Alternative Therapies in Health & Medicine.
This study tested blood samples of over fifty men, before and after they viewed a one-hour humor video (
Over Your Head
with the comedian Gallagher, the guy who smashes stuff with his Sledge-O-Matic).

Scientists measured some hilarious things like “Natural killer cell activity, plasma immunoglobulins, B cells, T cells with helper and suppressor markers, total leukocytes with subpopulations of lymphocytes, granulocytes, and monocytes, etc.” They found increases in many of these cells, which suggests a link between humor, laughter, and positive health benefits. Now, this isn’t incontrovertible science, but there certainly aren’t any unpleasant side effects of laughter. (Although some people do have adverse reactions to watching Gallagher.)

For the more pious among us, an even earlier allusion to a link between laughter and health can be found in the Bible: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine” (Proverbs 17:22).

WHY CAN WE STILL NOT CURE THE COMMON COLD?

We can map the human genome, clone a sheep, send a man to the moon, and even infuse bottled water with 100 percent of the daily recommended allowance of vitamins and minerals…. Sohow is it that we still can’t cure the common cold?

It’s not as though scientists haven’t tried. It’s just that the odds are stacked against them. To begin with, at least two hundred identified viruses are capable of causing the collection of symptoms that we identify as a cold. These viruses include rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, parainfluenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus, adenoviruses, and enteroviruses. Rhinoviruses are responsible for about 70 percent of all infections, but even among the rhinoviruses, there are many different types. Another trouble with these viruses is that they keep mutating. This makes finding a cure almost impossible.

The best hope lies with a vaccine, but with two hundred viruses that change every year, we would probably need just as many shots on a yearly basis to prevent colds. Maybe it’s better to just take some anti-inflammatories and cuddle up on the couch with a box of tissues, some chicken soup, and The Food Network.

WHY DON’T PEOPLE WHO TAKE NITROGLYCERIN FOR THEIR HEART EVER BLOW UP?

If you are a fan of the old Roadrunner cartoons, you probably remember the coyote blowing himself up time and time again trying to handle explosive nitroglycerin. If the coyote had so many troubles, why can heart patients carry around their nitroglycerin pills without any danger?

This question is made even more intriguing by the fact that there is no chemical difference between the nitroglycerin used in explosives and in heart medication.

For those who don’t know what nitroglycerin or “nitro” is, it is a medication used for the prevention and treatment of heart attacks. Nitroglycerin comes in tablets, ointment, patches, sprays, and most commonly a small pill that is placed under the tongue. Nitroglycerin dilates (opens) blood vessels, increasing blood flow to areas of the heart that are being deprived of oxygen.

A good way to understand why therapeutic nitro doesn’t blow up is to consider dynamite. Dynamite, which is safe to handle, also contains nitroglycerin. In dynamite, the nitroglycerin is combined (or diluted) with a nonexplosive substance, diatomaceous earth. Dynamite is then stable enough to handle and resists shocks and movement. All you need is a blasting cap and you are ready to blow stuff up.

The medicinal dose of nitroglycerin is infinitesimal compared to the amount in a stick of dynamite. So kids out there—don’t try to steal your father’s nitro, attach a blasting cap, and blow up the neighbor’s cat.

WHEN YOU USE PROPECIA OR ROGAINE FOR HAIR LOSS, DOES HAIR JUST GROW ON YOUR HEAD OR ON YOUR WHOLE BODY?

There are many options for people who are suffering from hair loss. Options include: shaving it all off like Kojak or Michael Jordan, growing the remaining hair as long as possible and attempting a “comb-over,” or enrolling in the Hair Club for Men and taking the toupee route. If none of these choices work for you, there are medications that can stimulate hair growth.

Minoxidil (Rogaine) and finasteride (Propecia) are the two best-known medications to try to regain that shaggy look. Minoxidil was a drug originally used to treat high blood pressure, that is, until it was found to increase body hair growth. This side effect led to the development of a topical solution that could be applied directly to the scalp. The exact mechanism of action of minoxidil is unknown, but somehow it stimulates the follicles to create new hairs. The treatment must be continued indefinitely in order to maintain hair growth, because we keep getting new hair follicles and we need to continue exposing them to the medication.

Although minoxidil is a topical treatment, some of the drug can be absorbed into your system, and unwanted body hair has been reported. If you are not careful when applying it and it gets onto other body parts, they can also get hairier.

Finasteride is a prescription drug that comes in tablet form to treat hair loss in men only. (Minoxidil works for men or women.) It was originally used for the treatment of prostate enlargement. Finasteride works by blocking an enzyme responsible for the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Men with male pattern hair loss (androgenic alopecia) tend to have miniaturized hair follicles and increased amounts of DHT on their scalps compared to those with hairier heads. The reduction in the amount of DHT can help reverse the balding process and stimulate new hair growth. Results are usually seen in about three months. The specific enzyme that is blocked by this drug is only found in the prostate, the liver, and the scalp, so there shouldn’t be any effect on hair on other parts of the body.