The Body Odd : Diane Mapes

Phantom smells may be a sign of trouble

fitlist — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:36:00 GMT

By Diane Mapes

In an episode of “Mad Men” earlier this season, a character with some major health issues — stroke and dementia — mysteriously smelled oranges while eating chocolate ice cream. Shortly after, the man dies while standing in line at the A&P.

Was the phantom orange scent a warning sign of his impending doom?

It’s possible, says Dr. Alan Hirsch of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago.

“By all means, a phantom smell could mean something serious,” says the psychiatrist and nationally recognized smell and taste expert. “It absolutely needs to be evaluated. It could be a tumor – that’s on the top of your list of things to rule out – but it could also be a cyst or some infectious agent housed in the area of the brain where the smell is processed.”

Brief episodes of phantom smells or phantosmia – smelling something that’s not there – can be triggered by temporal lobe seizures, epilepsy, or head trauma. Phantosmia is also associated with Alzheimer’s and occasionally with the onset of a migraine.

But it’s not typically something sweet that’s conjured up by the brain.

“It’s usually more unpleasant stuff or odors that are hard to describe,” says Hirsch. “People will say it’s chemical-like or talk about a burning smell.”

Common olfactory hallucinations include lots of icky odors. Sufferers report smelling hydrogen sulfide (rotten eggs), bad perfume, garbage, a gas leak, wet dog, pungent body odor or spoiled fish or feces. The brain may trigger such sickening odors instead of agreeable ones because humans learned very early to avoid noxious smells for survival.

“I think a larger area of the brain is represented by bad smells than good smells,” says Hirsch. “And they also may be easier to ‘fire off.’”

Smell disorders aren’t that rare. According to a 1994 survey, 2.7 million Americans have some type of olfactory problem, including anosmia (the inability to smell); hyposmia (a decreased ability to smell); parosmia (a distorted perception, instead of flowers, you smell rotten meat), and phantosmia. Another 1.1 million people have issues with taste (smell and taste are inextricably linked) including ageusia (the inability to taste); hypogeusia (a decreased ability to taste) and dysgeusia (a distorted ability to taste).

Phantom fragrances can be produced by one or both nostrils and can waft in and out of a person’s life over the course of a few hours or a few days or a few weeks. In some cases, such as that of a 35-year-old New Zealand woman who said her nose caused everything to “smell blimmin’ awful” for 17 years, the condition can come and go for no apparent reason for decades.

In a recent story in the New York Times, a woman suffered a succession of unpleasant phantom odors, from dank earth to burnt chili. When antibiotics failed to treat the condition, she simply learned to live with it — and avoid disagreeable odors.

Even if there is no underlying tumor, epilepsy or some other infection, problems with your sense of smell can be very disabling.

“Frequently, [patients will] lose a substantial amount of weight because they can’t stand the way everything tastes,” says Hirsch.

Furthermore, doctors will often treat it like a psychiatric problem, with patients visiting an average of seven physicians before getting help, says Hirsch. The irony is, some people with phantosmia will develop psychiatric disorders, depression or suicidal behavior as a result of their condition.

“Approximately half of my patients who have sought surgery for their distortions have at one time considered suicide because of the hopelessness of living a life where all food smelled like spoiled meat or worse,” Dr. Donald Leopold of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s otolaryngology department wrote in the 2002 edition of Chemical Senses.

Sometimes people think the stink is coming from themselves, which can lead to a condition known as olfactory reference syndrome, says Hirsch.“They’ll wash frequently and won’t go out. It will start with phantosmia, but then they’ll develop secondary paranoia as a result.”

Medical tests such as MRIs, CT scans and EEGs can find common physiological triggers such as tumor, sinus infection and epilepsy, but some patients never understand why they’re suddenly inundated by the smell of garbage or rotting fish or burned coffee or cheese. While pinpointing the cause of phantosmia can sometimes be difficult, treatment is available, including nasal saline drops, anti-depressants, sedatives and anti-epileptic drugs.

Most patients respond to medication, however, a surgical procedure involving the olfactory bulb has also been shown to provide relief. Although normal aging brings a gradual loss of smell, phantosmia sometimes occurs with a reduced ability to smell real scents, another matter that can have serious ramifications, Hirsch says.

“AIDS can initially present with smell loss,” he says. “Or it could be anything from vitamin deficiency to Alzheimer’s to hypothyroidism to head trauma to stroke to diabetes to medication to leprosy.”

One quick way to test whether your sense of smell is diminished is to dish up a bowl of ice cream.

“Take some vanilla ice cream and some chocolate ice cream and see if you can taste the difference,” says Hirsch, who says ninety percent of taste is smell. “If you can’t smell, they both taste the same.”

See ghosts? There may be a medical reason

fitlist — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:57:00 GMT

By Diane Mapes

Spooky footsteps, faint figures, the feeling of being watched – these unsettling signs of a ghost are as familiar to us as the goose bumps on the back of our arm (or neck).

But are there physiological explanations for those things that go bump in the night?

Absolutely, says Joe Nickell, a senior research fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, an organization that promotes scientific inquiry and critical investigation of paranormal and other extraordinary claims.

“I’ve investigated haunted houses, inns, theatres, graveyards, lighthouses, castles, old jails, and even office buildings,” says Nickell, who’s researched stories of ghosts, vampires, werewolves, sea monsters, psychic phenomenon and other unusual phenomenon for 40 years. “And I’ve never found a paranormal explanation.”

Cbs Photo Archive / Getty Images file

Barney Fife (played by Don Knotts), Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors) and Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) investigate a haunted house in an episode of "The Andy Griffith Show."

Instead, Nickell says “ghosts” are often the result of pranks, environmental phenomenon, or physiological conditions such as sleep paralysis and the hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations that accompany it.

Dr. Priyanka Yadav, a sleep specialist at the Somerset Medical Sleep for Life Center in Hillsborough, N.J., says sleep paralysis occurs when there’s a disconnect between mind and body while people are going in or coming out of REM sleep.

“It seems like you’re paralyzed, which naturally occurs when you’re sleeping,” says Yadav.

“But this somehow happens while you’re awake. It can last from a few seconds to a minute or two and is often associated with hypnagogic hallucinations, things you might see when trying to fall asleep or hypnopompic hallucinations, things you see when you’re trying to wake up.”

Yadav says these “waking dreams” can involve serpents, spiders, intruders, and yes, even ghosts and are often associated with feelings of dread.

“Some people have visions where they feel something is trying to strangle or choke them or they have a sense of impending doom,” she says. “They’ll often see someone coming into their room and they’re not able to move or talk or scream or do anything.”

Nickell says the phenomenon, which has been suffered by humans for centuries, also explains both the demonic visitations people reported during the Middle Ages as well as today’s reports of alien abductions.

“People [who report hauntings] will often tell you that they just went to bed or will say they woke up at 2 in the morning,” he says. “They’ll tell you they couldn’t move. That’s enough to diagnose it right there. It’s extremely common and very, very often the simplest and best explanation for a ghost.”

But it’s not the only explanation. Ghostly sightings can also be brought on as a result of a psychotic state, drug use, sleep deprivation or temporal lobe epilepsy. He says a “ghost” can also be an illusion produced by the brain, particularly when a person is tired.

“Someone will be doing some routine chore like polishing the furniture – they’ll be in a near-reverie or daydream state – and they’ll see something out of the corner of their eye,” he says. “They’ll turn and their mind will fill in the blank – they’ll see a Civil War soldier or a ‘gray lady’ -- and then it will promptly vanish.”

Nickell says studies have shown that people who are tired or are performing mindless tasks are more susceptible to these visions and, again, it’s a body thing, not a disembodied thing.

“It’s a trick of the eye,” he says. “Your eyelid will twitch or an insect will fly by and this will trigger a momentary welling up of a mental image. It’s like a camera’s double exposure for just a brief moment.”

Carbon monoxide poisoning – and the hallucinations that can occur with it – is another possible explanation, although Nickell says he’s never encountered this scenario.

Others have, however. In 1921, the American Journal of Ophthalmology published a case study involving a couple who moved into a house and promptly began to suffer headaches, listlessness and strange auditory and visual hallucinations (footsteps, mysterious figures, strange sensations, etc.). Their symptoms were finally traced to a faulty furnace.

A more recent case in 2005 involved a woman who was found delirious and hyperventilating after seeing a “ghost” while taking a shower; respondents discovered a new gas water heater had been improperly installed, flooding her house with carbon monoxide.

More spooky Body Odds
Real-life vampires? People who are allergic to the sun
Can you really be scared to death?
Can hair truly turn white overnight from fright?

Other environmental explanations for ghostly phenomenon include low-frequency sound waves (infrasound), said to cause feelings of nervousness and discomfort and vibrations in the eye which can produce illusions; fluctuations in the electromagnetic field, which can purportedly interact with the brain, causing dizziness, hallucinations, and other neurological symptoms (paranormal buffs often point to these fluctuations as proof of a ghost’s existence) and inconsistent lighting and temperature, which in certain circumstances can unconsciously “spook” human beings.

So can a person build their own “haunted” house by incorporating these elements?

In a May 2009 paper in the journal Cortex, psychologists from Goldsmiths College in London wrote about their attempt to do just that. They then asked 79 participants to spend 50 minutes inside their “haunted” chamber.

Contrary to Hollywood expectations, no one died or was driven hopelessly insane, although “many participants reported anomalous sensations of various kinds” which the researchers attributed not so much to the experimental conditions but to one other common explanation for ghostly experiences: “suggestibility.”

Can you really be scared to death?

fitlist — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:19:00 GMT

By Diane Mapes

Turns out Mom was right yet again. You can scare yourself to death, although not necessarily by watching Halloween horror movies.

Dr. Martin A. Samuels, who studies the sudden death phenomenon, says some people do have the potential to suddenly drop dead from fright.

“It’s a relatively uncommon thing, but it does happen,” says Samuels, chairman of the department of neurology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “You can even find references to it in the Bible.”

Not to mention Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and even recent headlines (“Robber scared grandmother to death”).

How can a person literally drop dead from fear?

It has to do with our normal fight-or-flight response, says Samuels, which sends adrenaline to various parts of the body whenever there’s a life-threatening situation. The heart rate increases, the muscles get ready for action, digestion slows, and so on.

Unfortunately, these large doses of adrenaline can also do damage to our organs, particularly the heart.

“The release of the stress chemical adrenaline and related substances from the brain and the nervous system can cause damage to many organs,” he says. “It can cause the heart to stop or go into an abnormal rhythm and cause death.”

And it doesn’t just happen to people.

“It can happen to any animal with an advanced nervous system like ours,” says Samuels.

"Rabbits, squirrels, dogs, cats, rats, birds. Racehorses have a high rate of sudden death.”

It's relatively rare, he says, and only happens in a few people for every million. “If you think about it, our species wouldn’t have evolved to this level if it happened in large numbers.”

Samuels has spent 30 years collecting stories of sudden death. Fear or acute stress led to an increase in sudden cardiac deaths in New York after 9/11, he says, as well as in the first Gulf War, among people who “huddled in their basement thinking missiles containing poison were landing on them.”

While people with a predisposition to heart disease might be slightly more susceptible, Samuels says he’s seen cases involving people with no heart disease whatsoever as well as cases involving kids.

“It could happen to anyone at any age,” he says “There’s no way to tell in advance who would be at risk. I’ve seen children who have died on amusement park rides, young people who have had a gun held to their head and dropped dead. It’s not necessarily people with heart disease.”

Nor is it always fear that causes people to succumb. Samuels says both men and women have been known to die suddenly from grief, shock, happiness, anger, excitement or passion.

“I have one case where a golfer hit a hole-in-one and suddenly died,” he says. “And a guy who rolled a 300 bowling game and was so elated he dropped dead. One man – who was resuscitated – got so excited about a fumble while watching a Pittsburgh Steelers game that he fell over dead.”

Sudden death among sports fans has even been studied.

In January 2008, the New England Journal of Medicine published a paper which examined the relation between emotional stress and the incidence of cardiovascular events during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Researchers found that “viewing a stressful soccer match more than doubled the risk of an acute cardiovascular event” and concluded preventive measures were urgently needed “particularly in men with known coronary heart disease.”

Sudden death can also be caused by superstition, says Samuels, pointing to the work of Walter Cannon, the Harvard psychologist who first wrote about the fight-or-flight response.

“He collected cases involving people who had been cursed or had a hex put on them and then died,” he says. “He referred to this as ‘voodoo death.’ As long as you believe it, you can put yourself at risk for having something like this happen.”

Can hair really turn white from fright?

fitlist — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:48:00 GMT

The phenomenon of hair turning white from fright (or shock or grief or stress) persists in literature, poetry and even a handful of medical journals.

But is there any truth to the rumor that we can actually scare our hair?

Yes and no, says dermatologist Dr. David Orentreich, associate director of the Orentreich Medical Group in New York and assistant clinical professor in the department of dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

“It’s appealing on a literary or poetic level that a person’s experience could be so severe or terrifying that they age overnight,” he says. “But you can’t lose pigment in your hair. Once it leaves your scalp, it’s non-living; it’s dead.”

But, Orentreich says, while fear can’t suddenly cause your hair to turn white, there is a medical condition that could make people think it has.

New Line Cinema

The hair of Nancy Thompson, played by Heather Langenkamp, suddenly starts to turn white after Freddie Kruger torments her in her dreams in 1984's "Nightmare on Elm Street."

Alopecia areata is an autoimmune condition that attacks hair follicles, causing pigmented hair such as black, brown, red, or blonde to fall out, leaving the gray and white nonpigmented hairs behind. (Eventually most people lose all their hair entirely.)

“If someone has salt-and-pepper hair – a mixture of gray and black – and they develop alopecia areata, the dark hairs can fall out quickly,” he says. “So it appears that they’ve gone gray overnight.”

Stress, as it turns out, may be a trigger for some autoimmune disorders.

“It’s conceivable for a person who has a tendency for alopecia areata to go through a stressful experience which makes it flair up and the first thing that happens is their dark hair falls out,” he says. “And that can happen quickly – in days or weeks – leaving just the gray hair.”

Although autoimmune diseases have been around forever, Orentreich says it’s only been in recent years that doctors have come to understand their impact.

“These phenomena would occur but they were completely mysterious,” he says. “No one had any inkling that the immune system could cause hair to fall out. There was only a primitive understanding – if any understanding – of the immune system.”

Fear, shock or grief, on the other hand, were something people could wrap their brains around, which probably explains why emotions play a huge part in most of the stories about hair turning white overnight.

According to a 2008 paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the first documented case of sudden hair whitening was in the Talmud in 83 A.D. The victim was a 17-year-old boy who was appointed chief of the main Israeli Talmudic academy. His sudden white hair was said to have been a “consequence of strenuous studying.”

In later years, the phenomenon was attributed to Marie Antoinette, whose auburn locks supposedly turned ghostly white the night before she lost her head to the guillotine and to Shah Jahan of India after his favorite wife died (he went on to build the Taj Mahal in her honor). Even sharpshooter Annie Oakley reportedly fell victim at age 41 after she was involved in a horrific train accident (an alternate story claims her white hair was the result of an overly hot bath).

In the '80s "Nightmare on Elm Street" horror movie franchise, a shock of the heroine's hair turns white after she is terrorized in her dreams.

There have been reports of sudden blanching as a result of bear attacks, ill-advised bets, shipwrecks, adultery and the death – or serious injury – of a loved one. A 1902 British Medical Journal even described the case of a 22-year-old woman who witnessed a woman’s throat being cut and got up the next morning to find half her pubic hair had turned white.

According to Orentreich, though, even white pubic hairs could be explained by the autoimmune disease.

“When it attacks hair, sometimes the hair will keep growing with no pigment,” he says.
Alopecia areata may not be the only explanation for this hair-razing condition, though. Researchers who have studied historical references to the phenomenon also believe a “sudden” change in hair color could also be traced to hair dye simply washing out.

“If you get your hair colored today and then stop getting it colored, it takes a number of weeks or months for the gray to grow out,” says Orentreich. “But years ago, the dyes weren’t permanent. It could be something like that.”

Congratulations! That stomach cramp is a full-term baby

fitlist — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:52:00 GMT

By Diane Mapes, contributing writer

We all get busy at times, so overwhelmed with work, family, friends and obligations that we neglect our bodies. But how is it possible to be so out of touch with your body that you don’t know you’re about to give birth?

Easy, say the people involved with “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” a 10-episode reality TV show that tells the story of 10 women who conceive and carry babies full term without realizing they’re pregnant.

“I think at first glance you think, how could a woman not know,” says Wendy Douglas, director of production for the TLC network. “Clearly she’s not paying attention or not smart or something. But that’s really not the case.”

Timothy Bullard / The Daily Courier

Bonita Ewen with 1-week-old Chance, who arrived seemingly out of the blue.

A host of circumstances can contribute to a stealth pregnancy, say doctors, starting with the fact that not all women experience the familiar nausea, weight gain, swollen ankles, food aversions and emotional ups and downs we’ve come to associate with pregnancy.

Pregnancy symptoms can really vary,” says Dr. Michelle Evans, a reproductive endocrinologist from Pasadena, Calif., who’s featured on the show. “Some women have very minimal or no symptoms. Other women will be throwing up every day.”

Expectations can also come into play, say the experts. Some women will take a pregnancy test and receive a false negative. Or be told by their doctor they’re unable to conceive. Moms who’ve just delivered a baby often (mistakenly) believe it’s too soon to be pregnant; other women will be using birth control but for whatever reason – an expired condom, a missed pill, a course of antibiotics – the system will fail. Thinking there’s no way they could possibly be pregnant, these women will attribute their symptoms to something else – morning sickness becomes a bad bout with food poisoning, swollen ankles are due to all the time they spend on their feet. They’ll blame their weight gain on outside circumstances – stress from the job, the fact they recently quit smoking – or they simply won’t gain that much weight in the first place.

“Some women only gain 5 to 10 pounds in their pregnancy,” says Evans. “One woman on the show was taking all of these extra Pilates classes and working very hard at exercising because she was gaining weight and didn’t know why.”

Other women’s weight will go up and down so much on a normal basis that the extra pounds don’t seem all that strange.

But wouldn’t these moms feel their babies kick?

“Everyone should have some fetal movement during the latter half of their pregnancies but there’s absolutely a range,” says Dr. Karen Wells, an ob/gyn at the Center for Women’s Health at Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland, Wash. “If a woman is heavy she doesn’t feel things quite as much and if the placenta is in the front, right under the belly, and the baby is below that, that’s going to insulate it, too.”

But if a woman doesn’t believe she’s pregnant, the movement of a baby will often be attributed to something else, says Evans.

“They may think they have indigestion or that there’s something else going on that causes them to feel movement,” she says.

Even old standbys like a woman’s period – or lack thereof – can often prove to be unreliable indicators, say the experts.

“One of the things I saw in many of these cases was that the women had very irregular menstrual cycles,” says Evans, who studied the case histories of the women featured in the show. “Many were so irregular that their doctors told them ‘When you want to get pregnant, we’re going to have to help you because you’re not ovulating.’ So when they had symptoms during pregnancy, they attributed it to some other condition.”

Spotting – which often occurs during a woman’s pregnancy – was another factor that led to confusion. Women with irregular periods assumed an episode of spotting was simply their haphazard period showing up.

Psychological factors like fear and denial can also play a role in a “surprise” pregnancy.

“Our minds are our most powerful organs and there are people who really don’t want to be pregnant and convince themselves that they’re not,” says Wells. “This happened twice during my residency. One time, a woman was in labor and was sure she wasn’t pregnant even when the baby was crowning. Some people are in complete and total denial.”

Although doctors say going full-term without knowing you’re about to give birth is rare, TLC’s Douglas says she’s been inundated with stories of surprise pregnancies.

“Each time a show airs, we get a flood of letters from people saying ‘This happened to me!’ or “I know someone this happened to,’” she says. “I think right now we have well over 150 stories that we could tell.”

Indeed, the news is full of stories of stealth pregnancies. Last December, a British mother of two gave birth to a 5 pound, 8 ounce baby boy, who she claimed never kicked during the entire pregnancy. And in March of last year, 38-year-old Bonita Ewen of Oregon thought she was having stomach cramps, but instead gave birth to a 6 pound, 3 ounce baby boy out of the blue, telling reporters she had gained 10 pounds but experienced none of the “signs and symptoms of a pregnancy … no nausea, no cravings, none of that stuff.”

As in life, the unexpectant mothers featured in the show – which premiered September 30 –are from all walks of life. Some are in their late teens and early 20s, others are in their 40s (one woman was about to undergo a hysterectomy when doctors discovered she was on the verge of giving birth). Some have had children previously; others are new to the parenting game. One woman – who experienced no pregnancy symptoms whatsoever – tells the story of her two surprise deliveries, one at age 18 and another, three years later.

“Stealth moms” are found through e-0mails and letters sent to the show’s producers following each episode and via the show’s Web site.

Albeit unexpected, the babies are all healthy although considering the lack of prenatal care – and in some cases, the use of birth control pills or other medications – there are potential health concerns. The mothers, while unprepared, are extremely excited about their surprise packages.

Since none of them knew they had a baby on the way, stories are told in flashback form, via interviews with the women and her friends and family (many of whom vouch for the mother’s incognizance or lack of symptoms) and a series of dramatic reenactments.

And it can be dramatic, says Evans, who’s seen a surprise birth in action.

“When I was a resident, I once saw a patient like this in the ER,” she says. “A woman came in and and the family thought she had appendicitis or something horrible. They thought she needed surgery. I evaluated her and did a pelvic and I could feel a head. I said, ‘Oh my gosh, we need to get her to labor and delivery right away’ and everyone’s jaw just dropped.”

Are some women superbreeders?

fitlist — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:26:00 GMT

By Diane Mapes, contributing writer

When Arkansas mom and reality TV star Michelle Duggar announced on the Today show Sept. 1 that she was pregnant with her 19th child, millions of Americans expressed joy and amazement.

But others – undoubtedly the queasiest of the bunch – were a bit uneasy. How could one woman – or rather, one uterus – bear so many children? Isn’t that, well, stretching things a bit?

Not necessarily, experts say.

“The uterus is a remarkably flexible organ,” says Dr. Florence P. Haseltine, ob/gyn and founder of the Society for Women’s Health Research in Alexandria, Va. “It can grow rather rapidly and it can recede rather rapidly. It’s able to reconstruct itself and reconfigure itself quickly.”

Beth Hall / AP

Michelle Duggar is surrounded by her children and husband Jim Bob, third from right, while she holds her newborn daughter, Jennifer Danielle, the couple's 17th child, on Aug. 2, 2007, in Rogers, Ark.

Haseltine says she understands how people would be amazed that one uterus could carry and deliver so many children – especially in a day and age when the average number of births per female is 2.12 – but it’s a misconception to think that giving birth to 18 or 19 children is overtaxing the organ’s ability.

“The sense is ‘My goodness, I get physically tired just thinking about it, so therefore the uterus would be tired,’ but that’s not necessarily true,” she says. “I don’t believe a uterus gets tired. If it had damage as a result of a specific pregnancy, it might cause trouble. But it doesn’t make any physiological sense why one should worry about the uterus.”

Thanks to the wonders of reality TV – the family has their own show entitled “18 Kids & Counting!” on TLC – keeping track of Michelle Duggars’ uterus has become sort of a national pastime. According to the family Web site, the couple married in 1984 and had their first child four years later. Since then, Michelle Duggar has given birth to an additional 17 children, including two sets of twins. Three of the births have been via Caesarean section; the others have been vaginal. She and her husband, Jim Bob, are currently expecting their 19th child (as well as their first grandchild).

While experts say good health plays a major role in any woman’s ability to conceive, carry and deliver children, particularly multiple children, good genes are crucial, too.

“Everyone is different in their health, and with some women it takes more of a toll,” says Dr. Karen V. Wells, an ob/gyn at the Center for Women’s Health at Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland, Wash. “And women have different muscle tone in their uterus. Some people get saggier and baggier earlier on and some people have good tone to their tissue. It has to do with our individual makeup, our collagen, our elastic fibers, our genetics. I know someone who after just two children had to have her bladder resupported. Other people seem to do fine. Obviously Mrs. Duggar is a very healthy woman and her body is handling it well.”

Not that there aren’t concerns and complications when it comes to multiple pregnancies or “grand multips,” as they’re known. After delivering five or six children, women are more prone to post-partum bleeding or hemorrhaging. The risk for toxemia and preeclampsia also increases. Anemia can also be a concern.

“There’s a continuous leeching of calcium and iron, the supplemental building blocks that babies need,” says Dr. Peter Wall of Eastside Maternal Fetal Medicine in Kirkland, Wash. “After having many children, chronic anemia or osteopenia – weak bones – could be a chronic risk. Also carrying children does increase the risk of incontinence, but even women who haven’t had children have incontinence.”

And having lots of kids has health benefits, too, Wall is quick to point out.

“We know that having many kids protects from breast cancer and ovarian cancer,” he says.

Labor, also, becomes shorter the more deliveries a woman has, although it doesn’t necessarily become easier.

“The duration of labor is shortened, but that doesn’t automatically translate into easier,” he says. “You’ve been down that road before. The ability to cope with labor is probably better when you’re naïve and 18.”

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average number of births per female has gone up and down over the years, from 3.33 in 1917 to 2.17 in 1937 to 3.68 in 1957 to 1.77 in 1975. National averages aside, though, there have always been “supermoms,” from Queen Victoria and Rose Kennedy who both had nine children to Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, a Russian peasant who made the Guinness Book of World Records by giving birth to a total of 69 children, including 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.

Today, the average woman has about 2.12 children, although if desired, any woman could try for supermom status. The trick is to avoid contraception, be exceptionally fertile and be up for the challenge, says Wells.

“Having that many children isn’t an oddity,” she says. “I look back at my own family history and my great-grandmother had 10 children and five survived. The fact is most people don’t want that many children today.”

Those who do want lots of babies are encouraged to space their pregnancies out by at least 18 months, says Wall. And to keep in mind that some women are simply more adept at baby-making than others.

“This woman has some remarkable capabilities,” he says. “I think this is her special talent.”

Ah-ah- achoo! Does that sneeze mean swine flu?

fitlist — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:35:00 GMT

By Diane Mapes

We do it when we’re sick, when we’re cleaning out our closets and, according to a recent YouTube chat with astronaut David Wolf, we do it in space. Even pandas do it.

Yet few really understand what’s happening when our noses explode in a sneeze. As we head into cold season and the dreaded return of swine flu, even the most innocent sneeze (Do you have a cat?!) can spread paranoia. Let go with a noisy honk and watch the uncomfortable reaction, or downright hostile stares, of nearby strangers. But are those powerful sneezes — called sternutations — proof that we’re carrying some kind of virus? Why do we sneeze anyway?

According to Dr. Anne Maitland, assistant professor of clinical immunology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, sneezing is an involuntary response to anything the body identifies as a nasal irritant, including dust, hair spray, cigarette smoke, perfume, cleaning chemicals, pollen and/or viral inflammation.

“There are nerve fibers as well as hairs in your nasal passages that send a signal when they’re irritated,” she says. “They’ll signal: ‘We’re seeing something we don’t like. Mobilize forces quickly.’”

The body then goes into reflex mode, taking in air (“Aaaah, aaaah, aaaah”), closing your eyes and shutting the glottis, the membrane that covers the tube that leads to your stomach. Once all that’s done, air will rush up from your lungs and go through your mouth and nose at what Maitland calls “tremendous speed.”

“It’s a really forceful ejection, like taking a power washer to blow out your nose,” she says. “It’s trying to expel anything that’s not supposed to be there.”

Unfortunately, sneezes can sometimes expel that thing onto others.

“If you’ve seen somebody cough, the propellants from that will travel far,” says Maitland. “But sneeze propellants will go further. They’ve been clocked anywhere from 80 to 800 miles per hour. They travel almost 75 percent the speed of sound.”

Talk about a clear-out.

While getting sprayed with a sneeze is no picnic, it’s not cause for concern if the person is simply suffering from allergies — which aren’t contagious — or sneezing in response to dust, pepper or other nasal irritants.

If the person has cold or flu symptoms, however, such as fever or muscle aches, then those in the line of fire could be in danger of picking up more than just a gentle misting. When do you know it’s a cold and not allergies?

“It’s always the presence of other symptoms,” says Maitland. So if the person is also shivering or seems to have a fever or complains of being achy, run away. “Also, with allergies, you can predict it. It happens at a certain time of year or whenever you go visit Aunt Tillie and her five cats,” says Maitland.

Rhinoviruses are fairly hearty and can last for hours on surfaces, Maitland warns, so it’s important to wash your hands, especially during cold and flu season.

However, not all sneezes are caused by common culprits like allergies, irritants and cold or flu viruses.

Sneezing can also be triggered by environmental factors such as cold and dry air, by hormones, by certain kinds of drugs and by stimulation of the cranial trigeminal nerve, which often happens when you tweeze your eyebrows, according to a recent study. “If you tug on your eyebrows you’re irritating the hard wiring that’s responsible for causing the sneeze in the first place,” says Maitland. “You’ve inadvertently accessed that pathway.”

There’s also the “photic sneeze reflex” which causes anywhere from 18 percent to 35 percent of the world’s population to sneeze whenever they look at the sun or any bright light.

“We do not know exactly why this happens, but it might reflect a ‘crossing’ of pathways in the brain between the papillary light reflex arc and the sneezing reflex arc,” writes Murat Songu in the journal. “The reflex can be triggered only after the first exposure to light, never on repetitive stimulation.”

As with hiccups, some individuals have been overwhelmed with uncontrollable or “intractable sneezing,” such as the 13-year-old girl who, in 1957, sneezed steadily for over two months. Then there’s the teenage boy, written about in a 1994 case study, who sneezed continually for over a year. According to one study, most cases of intractable sneezing involve adolescents and are psychological in origin.

“It’s like people who have a tic with coughing,” says Maitland. “Some people have psychological disorders that are associated with intractable sneezing.”

Considering how satisfying a good sneeze can feel, it’s not too surprising the reflex has also been associated with sex. In 1972, researchers wrote about a 69-year-old man who complained of severe sneezing immediately following orgasm and a 2008 case study involved a middle-aged man with uncontrollable fits of sneezing that occurred along with sexual thoughts. Curious about the frequency with which this happened, researchers tapped into several online chat rooms and found “17 people of both sexes reporting sneezing immediately upon sexual ideation and three people after orgasm.”

“There are also some people who orgasm when they sneeze,” says Maitland. “These people feel really good” after a sneeze, says Maitland. “That’s just how they’re wired.”

Gesundheit, baby.

Hairy guys need love, too. Reality show for “Wolfboy?”

fitlist — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:32:00 GMT

By Diane Mapes

It’s hard enough for anybody to find love, but what do you do if you have a genetic disorder that leaves you completely covered with hair?

In the case of circus star Larry Ramos Gomez, better known as “Wolfboy,” you get your own reality dating show. At least that’s the plan hatched by Zoo Productions, creators of such reality TV fare as “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” and “Girls Behaving Badly.”

Recently divorced, the 31-year-old Mexican, who performs daredevil acrobat acts with his brother Danny, suffers from an extremely rare form of hypertrichosis, a genetic disorder that causes excessive hair growth in places you wouldn’t normally expect it, such as the face. The reality show, tentatively titled “Wolfboy: Divorced and Looking for Love,” will document Gomez’ search for a girlfriend and his quest to find acceptance as a normal guy.

Mary Altaffer / AP

Excessive hairiness and hirsutism, which affects women, can be relatively common and brought on by either family history or secondary factors like polycystic ovary syndrome. But the form of hypertrichosis Gomez suffers from is extremely rare, with only 50 described cases on record since the Middle Ages.

The condition, which Dr. Aires, director of the division of dermatology at the University of Kansas Hospital, characterizes as a “genetic puzzle that has not yet been solved,” can be inherited. But not always. Gomez’s son, for instance, is not excessively hairy. However, should he have a daughter, she would, based on recent genetic research, likely inherit the disorder since it appears that his particular form of hypertrichosis is “X-linked,” Aires says.

In the Gomez brothers, who have generalized congenital hypertrichosis, all of the normally invisible vellus hairs are replaced with thick coarse terminal hairs.

Hypertrichosis is a complex disorder, but it’s easier to understand if you first realize that all human beings are essentially covered in hair, Aires says.

“All of us are sort of wolf people, but the hair we’re covered with is invisible; it’s vellus hair,” he says. “After puberty, the hair on men’s faces and their chest transforms into the thicker terminal hair. But there are a very small number of people in whom all the areas of the body that would have vellus hair, have terminal hair.”

Another disorder known as congenital hypertrichosis lanuginosa (CHL), results in hair that is long and silky and stems not from vellus hair but from the lanugo hair that covers all infants in the womb.

“Everyone has lanugo hair and you’ll often see babies born with hairy shoulders and hairy backs and parents panic, but that hair comes out and it doesn’t mean anything,” says Dr. Aires. “There are some conditions, though, where the lanugo hair persists. That’s extremely rare.”

Not all hypertrichosis is as severe as that of “Wolfboy.”

Localized hypertrichosis, as the name suggests, is where people will experience abnormal hair growth in one or two odd places on their body, such as their elbows (known as hairy elbows syndrome or hypertrichosis cubiti), their ears (hairy pinna) or their tailbone, referred to as faun tail deformity. These forms can be associated with bone abnormalities.

Of course, that doesn’t explain sudden growths of ear and nose hairs which can be common among aging men.

There are also cases of acquired hypertrichosis, either due to some type of body trauma (an injury or inflammation) or certain medications.

“Acquired hypertrichosis is not generally going to give you the werewolf appearance but a lot of people will just look hairier than they should,” says Dr. Aires. For example, children taking immunosupressive medications for organ transplants will develop dark peach fuzz.

If Gomez gets his own reality dating show, he could become as legendary as Jo Jo, the Dog-faced Boy or The Bearded Lady. Jo-Jo, born Fedor Jeftichejev, was an extremely popular sideshow performer who toured the world with Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth in the early 20th century. The woolly Julia Pastrana, also known as “The Marvelous Hybrid or Bear Woman” was widely exhibited in the U.S. and Europe before her death in childbirth in 1860. Her body was then mummified, along with that of her infant, and put on display by her husband-manager.

Then there was the Gonzales family — consisting of a hairy father, a “normal” mother and five excessively hairy children — who became the bewhiskered “Jon and Kate” of the 16th century and were celebrated throughout Europe.

Unfortunately, others with this rare condition did not fare as well. Ruthlessly exploited, they were labeled as monsters or “wild men” or “human terriers” and said to be the result of a sexual union between human and ape.

As for treatment, Dr. Aires says that while there are a number of hair removal options available — shaving, waxing, electrolysis, laser, and depilatories — there is no hypertrichosis cure.

A spokesperson for Zoo Productions says Gomez does trim the hair on his face, but he doesn’t attempt to shave it off anymore since it “just grows back.”

“Obviously, people with skin conditions are not monsters,” Aires says. “Maybe the show will be good and will serve to humanize someone with this unusual condition.”

Is your iPod making you itch?

fitlist — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:48:00 GMT

By Diane Mapes

Spring is here and with it the traditional sounds of allergy season: Sniffling, sneezing, wheezing and “honking.”

But while nearly 35 million Americans cope with everyday allergens like pollen, dust mites or pet dander, there are some itchy souls who suffer from more unusual triggers – nail polish, cockroaches and iPods, to name a few.

“Women will come in with redness on the lids of their eyes,” says Dr. Beth Corn, assistant professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. That’s a telltale sign of nail polish allergy – triggered by a fairly common reaction to the ingredient toluene sulphonamide formaldehyde resin. “I’ll tell them they’re allergic to nail polish and they’ll be shocked. But fingers touch your face a lot, particularly your eyes.”

Another common allergy: cockroach. “It’s very common in New York City and probably the most common allergen in the asthmatic population in East Harlem,” Corn says.

Indeed, one study found 40 percent of children with asthma in New York City are allergic to cockroaches – or cockroach feces, body parts or secretions – which researchers believe is what’s responsible for the airborne allergens.

msnbc.com

Less common – but not less serious – is a celery allergy, which is often found in people who are also allergic to mugwort pollen, onion and chive. “For a certain group of people, when they ingest celery and then exercise, they go into anaphylactic shock,” Corn warns.

Allergic reactions happen when the immune system misinterprets a harmless substance – like a cockroach or the Urban Decay nail polish called “Roach” – as an enemy and goes on the attack. And while it seems there’s an ever-growing list of allergens, Corn says we’re not becoming more sensitive, just more savvy.

“We’ve become more sophisticated with regard to understanding what allergies are,” she says. “Things that might have been confused with something else in the past are now realized to be allergies. And people are more attuned to understanding that when something repetitive happens, it might actually be a cause-and-effect type of deal.”

Just about everything under the sun can spark an allergic reaction. In fact, some people are actually allergic or sensitive to the sun and will break out in a red itchy rash, or worse, whenever their skin is exposed to sunlight. Others suffer from photoallergic eruption, triggered by the effect of sunlight on a chemical applied to their skin (such as fragrance, cosmetic or sunscreen) or ingested via a prescription (antibiotics, diuretics and certain birth control pills cause this reaction).

While allergies are often confused with the common cold, there are those who are actually allergic to the cold. Winter weather – or even cold food and drink – can cause their skin to get blotchy or break out in hives. Swimming in cold water can even bring on anaphylaxis, a severe, life-threatening allergic response that affects multiple organ systems of the body.

Nickel is another common allergen that Corn says affects many people, especially those who wear metal jewelry. But it’s not just rings or bracelets that can trigger this allergy. Some people have discovered they’re actually allergic to their jeans, thanks to buttons or rivets or studs containing nickel.

Others have found their beloved cell phones and iPods are making them sick. In October 2008, British dermatologists issued a warning about something they called “mobile phone dermatitis,” a rash traced to the nickel found in the casings of cell phones and iPods. Big talkers with nickel allergies are more prone to the rash, which usually appears on cheeks and ears. But diehard text messagers can also experience outbreaks on their fingertips from tapping the metal menu buttons.

The answer? Dump the studded jeans, spring for 24K gold jewelry and use a headset for your cell phone. Foregoing fancy metallic cell phone frames and decorative logos may also help since that’s where the nickel tends to be found.

The list of oddball allergens goes on: alcohol, marijuana, hot tubs, deodorant, feminine products, exercise and (tragically, for our expert Dr. Corn) corn.

And, yes, some people are even allergic to sex.

Semen allergies, otherwise known as human seminal plasma hypersensitivity, can result in redness, burning, swelling and even blisters wherever the semen has contacted the skin; in rare cases, having sex with someone to whom you’re allergic can even result in anaphylactic shock. Symptoms usually start within minutes after contact and can last from hours to days. Although men may be at risk, the allergy primarily affects women.

Treatment usually involves “desensitizing” the woman to her partner’s seminal fluid by injecting her with shots containing small doses of semen. Frequent sex is also recommended.

As are condoms – as long as neither partner has a latex allergy, that is.

Blinded by the lyric? Study reveals why we get the words wrong

fitlist — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:44:00 GMT

By Diane Mapes

Misheard song lyrics, sometimes referred to as mondegreens, are incredibly common, often hilarious and always a crowd pleaser, judging by the number of stories, Web sites such as KissThisGuy and AmIRight and water cooler chatter devoted to the topic.

Molly Riley / Getty Images file

But while we can rattle off common misinterpreted lyrics (think “wrapped up like a douche” from Manfred Mann’s “Blinded by the Light”), most of us don’t really know exactly why it happens.

A new study by Dr. Wei Ji Ma, assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Tex., may finally reveal why so many of us think Freddie Mercury is singing “Beelzebub has a devil for a son named Steve” in Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Turns out, unless you're looking at a person's face, it’s much harder to understand what he or she is saying (or singing), according to Ma, who recently authored a study on lip-reading.

“Understanding speech can be difficult, especially when it’s noisy,” or overwhelmed by a loud music track, says Ma, whose study appeared in the March journal of Public Library of Science. “We found that this process can be helped a lot by looking at the speaker’s face. If you have only sound information, you will sometimes make mistakes. But if you also have the visual information, the brain will combine those two pieces and get a better sense of what’s being said.”

In the small study, Ma had 33 volunteers watch videos of people saying words with different levels of background noise, then had participants report what they thought they heard. He found that, depending on the noise level, participants got the words right a mere 10 percent of the time when there were only sound cues. Seeing a person's lips move improved understanding of the spoken words up to 60 percent.

The brain is like a police detective interviewing various witnesses after a crime, says Ma.

Visual information is one witness; auditory information is another. But just as in a criminal investigation, the witnesses can sometimes get the facts wrong. The brain basically weighs all the information it has and makes its best possible guess based on its own biases. Which is where that infamously wrong Creedence Clearwater Revival lyric, “There’s a bathroom on the right” instead of “There's a bad moon on the rise” comes into play.

“What seems to be happening with misunderstood song lyrics is that what you hear is not always reliable,” says Ma. “It’s noisy, the singer is singing fast, he’s not articulating well or maybe he has an accent. The sound information is uncertain, that’s step one.”

Step two is when the brain combines the sound information with whatever other information it has at its disposal, including prior beliefs or expectations.

“We hear some (expressions) more often than others,” says Ma. “And we often hear about bathrooms, or we’ll ask about a bathroom at a restaurant and be told that it’s on the right. That’s something we’ve heard many times. It’s much less common to hear a sentence like ‘There’s a bad moon on the rise.’ The brain will combine what it hears — the sounds — with those prior beliefs, those expectations. If the sound is not very reliable, than the prior beliefs will have more effect.”

Upbringing and personality may also have an impact on how a person hears or mishears a song lyric, says Ma.

“I was on one of those lyrics Web sites and found a line from "Bohemian Rhapsody" that goes ‘Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me’,” he says. “But Beelzebub is not a very common word. I saw that someone had misheard that as ‘The algebra has a devil put aside for me.’ Maybe that’s someone who really hates math.”

Is there any possible way to avoid mishearing song lyrics?

“If you’re watching (the video) while listening to the song, you’re going to do much better at understanding the lyrics correctly than if you’re listening to the music on your MP3,” says Ma.

After hearing Ma explain his research, I must admit that years ago I used to mock my little sister for mixing up the lyrics to a certain America song. Instead of riding through the desert on a “horse with no name,” she was galloping across the dunes on a “horse with no mane.”

I have my own mangled version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” Instead of “when the rain washes you free you’ll know,” I sang at the top of my lungs. “When Loraine watches you clean your nose.”

Beyond understanding why we get the songs wrong, Ma’s research could help clear up other verbal miscommunication problems. If you want to make sure someone understands exactly what you’re saying, face the person when speaking and don’t cover your mouth with your fingers.