By Dr. William Goldberg and Mark Leyner

Is it just us, or does it seem like everyone is either searching for that little something to get a competitive edge or simply struggling to keep up?

Americans are 24-7-365. We are both guilty of swilling espresso as we burn the candle at both ends to finish our new book. But that doesn’t disturb us nearly as much as the overwhelming amount of highly caffeinated “energy” products being marketed to help stimulate our competitive kids. Snack food maker Mars has even released a new “Snickers Charged,” so even candy can now give you an extra nudge.

The pharmaceutical industry is, of course, lurking right there with a whole slew of cognitive enhancers to push our bodies and brains to their max.

As a society, we tend to reflexively deride and often morally condemn the instant fix (while at the same time scrambling for it). But what about drugs that can instantly improve your cognitive functioning? Not good, right? They’re unfair – like steroids for the brain. Until you consider the pilot who’s flying your plane for the next 10 hours or the neurosurgeon operating on your mom. Maybe a hit of Provigil doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

Dr. Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

Dr. Billy Goldberg: I was working overnight in the ER last week and I saw a simple case that left me rattled and worried. This wasn’t some gruesome trauma or a heart-wrenching medical story.

It was simply the case of a 10-year-old girl whose parents brought her in for what turned out to be her first menstrual period. What disturbed me was when the pediatrics resident mentioned that they consider the normal range of menarche, the onset of menstruation, to be anywhere from 8 to 14 years. 8-years-old!

I have mentioned in this blog that I have two young children at home – a 2-year-old boy and a 3-month-old girl. Eight just doesn’t seem that far away. This sent me on a quest to investigate what happened to the innocence of youth.

It turns out that experts agree that the average age at menarche has dropped by 2.5 to 4 months over the past 25 years – and is now 12.5 years. Eight is still very early but it doesn’t necessarily get doctors scurrying to search for a cause of what is called precocious puberty.

By Dr. Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

Dr. Billy Goldberg: If obsessively eating ice is pagophagia, and eating raw potatoes is geomelophagia – then what would eating 420 oysters in eight minutes be? Victory!

Just ask Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti from Chicago who this past Saturday downed 35 dozen oysters to win The Acme World Oyster Eating Championship belt.

I have to admit that I’ve always been a little fascinated with Major League Eating and was a little disappointed that Deep Dish took down one of my favorite gurgitators, Crazy Legs Conti, who finished third with an impressive tally of 24 dozen. My interest in Pro Eating took a personal twist last Thursday when I celebrated my birthday while hosting my weekly radio show on Sirius’ new satellite channel, Doctor Radio. I was overjoyed when I found out that Crazy Legs was going to be a guest. My joy quickly turned to fear when I found out I was going to compete against Crazy Legs and another gustatory athlete, Arturo Rios Jr., in a birthday cake battle.

By Dr. Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

Dr. Billy Goldberg: There is no better impetus for a Body Odd blog than Demi Moore making a public declaration that she uses leeches to keep herself looking fresh and feeling healthy. Now, I can’t agree with Demi’s personal use of leeches (although she does look pretty fantastic), but the truth is, these little creatures are medical marvels.

In a throwback to the days of the medieval barber, today’s doctors use leeches, as well as maggots, with great success. Surgeons, for instance, use these creepy crawlers to remove blood from the site of skin grafts or reattached parts and to relieve congestion in the blood vessels.

The leeches used for medical purposes are a European variety called Hirudo Medicinalis and are raised on special leech farms. The Hirudo leech works some additional magic by secreting a chemical in its saliva that acts as an anti-coagulant to prevent blood clotting.

Oh, by the way, the bite of a leech is painless due to its own anesthetic.

Leeches aren’t the only bugs on the medical scene.

By Dr. Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

Dr. Billy Goldberg: The past eight weeks of my life have revolved around gas. On Jan. 22, I welcomed my second child into the world, a beautiful baby girl. It didn’t take long to realize that she was gassy like her daddy. In the wee hours of the morning when she was wailing from overwhelming intestinal distress, I had a revelation. I came to realize that we can mark the different stages of our life by how we handle our flatulence.

My poor little newborn desperately needed to let one rip. This is how we begin our life, unable to get them out.

Then comes adolescence – a stage where we are thrilled to let them out. Oh, the hilarious joy of the public fart! But BEWARE if you are in Camden, Maine. The Camden-Rockport Middle School has issued a ban on intentional flatulence – gas-passing students are threatened with detention.

Next comes puberty and we enter the phase of frantically trying to hold them in. I can just imagine my sweet little girl all grown up on a dinner date, squirming to prevent that embarrassing unintentional release.

Life gradually becomes more and more complicated and we find ourselves increasingly awash in uncontrolled flatulence and odor. We begin to reach for the Beano and even find ourselves considering the purchase of Odor Control Nether Garments. One of the many indignities of the aging process is that loss of muscle tone occurs – even around the anal sphincter. Yes, that is why an older person has a harder time holding ‘em in.

By Dr. Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

What do you think presents a more imminent danger to your average American citizen today? An Al-Qaida sleeper cell? A nuclear warhead hurtling toward the U.S. from some mobile launch pad in Tora Bora or Pakistan? A giant asteroid? An invasion of transnational flesh-eating zombies from Canada and Mexico emboldened by NAFTA? How about a lemon wedge in your Diet Coke?

Surprise! It’s the lemon wedge.

By Dr. Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

While Leyner was lying around nursing his injured knee and Goldberg was trying to console his hungry newborn at 4 a.m., we both switched on our DVD players. Leyner opted for “The Matrix Reloaded,” and Goldberg chose the oldie but goodie, “Foul Play,” with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn. The next day, we realized a very strange coincidence: we both chose films with albino villains.

This whole business of the “evil albino” in movies is quite interesting. You’d think a symptom of albinism is extreme wickedness. Consider the self-flogging monk Silas in “The Da Vinci Code,” the sadistic cowboy Bosie in “Cold Mountain,” the torturer in “The Princess Bride” (also, we might add, a hunchback) and, of course, our two late night examples. According to the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, there were a total of 68 movies from 1960 to 2006 featuring an “evil albino.”

For some, this raises the chicken-or-egg question: What comes first, the stigmatization in our culture of some physical characteristic or condition as an “abnormality,” “deformity” or disfigurement” or its demonized depiction in Hollywood?

By Dr. Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

Do you remember the 80’s Missing Persons song, “Walking in L.A.,” where they sing “nobody walks in L.A.?” Well, Leyner walks in L.A. and was hit by a car this week. After he realized that it wasn’t being driven by someone with a “dubious disease” who was trying to strike him down after our last blog entry, I tried to get him to discuss a topic for this blog.

A discussion of the health benefits of walking might be particularly appropriate at this time. I am not a gym person and have always argued that walking is what has kept me fit. Yeah, on a rare occasion you can trip and fall or get hit by a distracted driver, but a simple stroll is much less risky than so many other activities. Well, Leyner had other thoughts…

By Dr. Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

Well, here it goes…Our Body Odd podcast is becoming a blog, and now we apparently have to write something logical and organized rather than just rambling on incessantly from one topic to another. Or do we? This is the blogosphere isn’t it? Which always reminds me of that eco-experiment in the Arizona desert or worse the 1996 Pauly Shore movie, Bio-Dome.

Anyway, Leyner and I hope to maintain the same back and forth, free-wheeling, question and answer, educational and entertaining banter that we (and hopefully you, too) enjoy.

Today we’ll try to shed some light on a variety of syndromes with vague, subjective symptoms and how physicians sometimes view them as “dubious diseases.” Don’t expect a clear answer.