Courtesy of Dana Marie Flores

Dana Marie Flores, a 42-year-old mother of two from Phoenix, has struggled with the compulsive urge to pick at her skin for years.

From time to time, everyone picks their skin, whether it's squeezing a pimple or removing peeling skin. But for people with compulsive skin picking, "We just take it to a whole new level," says Dana Marie Flores, who has struggled with this disorder for 30 years.

Flores started by picking at pimples on her face when she was 12 or 13. She'd spend hours with her face an inch away from the bathroom mirror picking at any acne bumps she saw and using her pinky fingernails to squeeze out the pus.

To her, picking served a useful purpose. "When I first started to pick, it was self-soothing," admits Flores.  "If something came out [like pus], it's affirmation that something was in my skin." There was a feeling of satisfaction and relief.

Flores said picking at her face then evolved to picking at any bump she'd find on her arms or legs. "I'd think of it as fixing a problem, removing an ingrown hair, evening things out on my skin," she recalls.

When doing it, Flores says her mind enters a trance-like state. "It's really an escape, like a drug. It's so self-soothing you lose track of time," she explains.

Although the urge to pick is incredibly strong and it can seem hard to fight, the 42-year-old mother of two from Phoenix eventually recognized her behavior was "a grooming habit gone terribly wrong."

Compulsive or pathological skin picking, which is also known as dermatillomania, falls under the umbrella of a "body-focused repetitive behavior," says Dr. Ted Grosbart, PhD, a Boston-based clinical psychologist who specializes in dermatology.

People with this impulse-control disorder have a strong urge to pick at their skin over and over again to a significant enough degree that it does noticeable tissue damage and they experience it as a problem, Grosbart explains.

He says the condition, which is more common in women, has a genetic basis. And there's often an emotional stressor or hormonal trigger (like puberty), which touches it off.

"Skin picking is not a character flaw, and it's not a bad habit," Grosbart points out. "It's a real medical condition with a biochemical underpinning." Researchers are also noticing slight variations in brain structure and function in people with the condition.

According to Grosbart, skin picking is a "hidden epidemic." "We used to think it affects 3 to 4 percent of the population, but the latest studies suggest the lifetime incidence may be closer to 15 to 16 percent," he says.

Sufferers may at first rationalize the picking as a type of skin care but it then crosses the line into a form of skin abuse.

"The shame is huge," says Flores. "You assume you're the only person doing this, and you feel like a freak.

"The shame felt is often more damaging than the physical damage done to the skin," she adds.

Many skin pickers feel so ashamed they hide the behavior from their family members, spouses and friends. They conceal any scabs under clothing, or by wearing Band-Aids, or with makeup.

They might pick skin in less noticeable places, like the scalp or chewing the insides of their mouths. Or they make up excuses: A bad reaction to a new medication or an attack by mosquitoes.

If they finally open up and confide in someone, that person may have difficulty understanding why pickers just can't stop.

As Flores put it, "The 'just-stop theory' sounds great." But your skin is always available and you can't exactly get away from it, she says.

Flores makes the analogy that the strong temptation to pick her skin is like being a recovering alcoholic with hundreds of bottles of beer and booze tied to your body. With 24/7 access to her skin, picking is an easy behavior to fall into when she feels angry or stressed.

Flores' path toward healing began seven years ago when she saw a TV news story about people who compulsively pull out their hair, or trichotillomania. The story referred her to a website for the Trichotillomania Learning Center, a nonprofit educational organization, where she finally discovered information about skin picking.

"After 23 years of doing this, I could not believe there were other people out there like me," admits Flores. She joined a local support group, attends their annual retreats, and serves on their Board to help get the word out. 

She's learned new tools for keeping her hands busy -- playing with bubble wrap to give her the same tactile sensation of popping pimples -- to help curb the behavior. Still, it remains an ongoing struggle to battle the impulse.

"I don't base my recovery on how my skin looks, but on how I feel inside," Flores says. "And that has changed 1,000 percent."

Related:

• Sorry, guys: We judge you by your facial hair
• What caused the N.J. tanning mom's leathery look?
• Taking a skin allergy and making it art

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Getty Images

Rookie Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals is a polarizing figure in baseball today, mostly due to his attitude. But recent discoveries in social psychology suggest our perceptions of Harper may be shaped by something a little hairier: the kid's facial hair.

Rookie Bryce Harper, all of 19 years old, has such a poor rep already in Major League Baseball that Cole Hamels felt justified in hitting him with a fastball, and then bragging about it afterwards, as Jelisa Castrodale of NBCSports.com points out.

Apparently there could be a number of reasons to explain the visceral reaction to Harper, including a propensity toward arrogance. But could the kid’s facial hair have anything to do with it?

Sounds bizarre, but maybe.

Last January, in the journal Behavioral Ecology, two researchers, Barnaby Dixson of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and Paul Vasey, of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, released a study on reactions to men’s beards.

They pointed out that beard growth is under genetic control, and that it may serve as a sexual signal between men. In tests, women in both Samoa and in New Zealand did not rate bearded men as any more attractive than the same men pictured without beards, so beards weren’t helping the guys get girls. But other men (women, too) viewed bearded male faces as more threatening when the pictured males adopted an angry look.

Facial hair, the authors wrote “may intimidate rival males by increasing perceptions of the size of the jaw, overall length of the face, and by enhancing aggressive and threatening jaw-thrusting behaviors ... . The current study is the first to show that the beard augments a threatening behavioral display as bearded men with angry facial expressions received significantly higher scores for aggressiveness compared with clean-shaven faces ... . This suggests that the beard plays an important role in intermale signaling of threat and aggression.”

Other, past studies, have shown that when mock juries are presented with pictures of men accused of crimes like rape, the juries are much more likely to believe the bearded man is guilty. A 2004 study from researchers at Montclair State University in New Jersey asked 371 people to “sketch the face of a criminal offender. Eighty-two percent of the sketches contained some form of facial hair.” Yet beards have often been seen a sign of maturity, education, and competence. So what’s up?

A man’s facial features have been shown to reflect both his androgen status -- how much testosterone and related hormones he’s making -- and physical strength. Beards, themselves dependant upon androgens, can frame and accentuate those features.

This could be positive. “Both men and women ascribe positive attributes such as intelligence, courage, confidence and social maturity to beards,” Dixson explained in an email. But in his study, he included the angry expressions, and then, the beards made the men look threatening and meaner than when the same men were clean shaven.

So it’s all the above, suggested Dixson. “Beards appear to be linked with perceptions of elevated age (maturity), social status, dominance and threatening facial displays.”

Whether or not it’s deliberate strategy, the rash of beards among athletes, most famously Brian Wilson of the San Francisco Giants, is one way to intimidate the opposition. The callow Harper is just playing along.  

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com)  to be published Sept. 13.

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• Genetic mutation may explain mysterious blond Solomon Islanders
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Yikes!

That’s was the reaction of many of our readers after seeing burnt-to-a-crisp New Jersey mom Patricia Krentcil, who made news after authorities arrested her for taking her 5-year-old daughter to a tanning salon to tan, a claim she denies.

Krentcil does admit that she enjoys tanning -- perhaps a bit too much -- but all those hours in UV light have likely damaged the collagen in Krentcil's skin, causing her leathery, brown visage. 

“That’s a result of chronic exposure, which causes darkening of the skin,” says Dr. Shannon Campbell, clinical assistant professor of general dermatology and cutaneous oncology at The Ohio State University James Cancer Center. 

While many people just desire a bronze color, a tan is actually the body’s way of protecting itself. “Why is she so dark?  Tanning is a protective mechanism that the body has and it is sign of skin damage if the body tans. That explains why her skin is so dark,” says Campbell.

TODAY

New Jersey mom Patricia Krentcil is denying charges of child endangerment after taking her 5-year-old daughter to a tanning salon. But what many msnbc.com readers couldn't help but focus on was her leathery visage.

Collagen, which is in the dermis, the second layer of the skin, gives the skin its elasticity. Collagen keeps skin strong and elastic, but as it lessens due to age or UV damage, the skin sustains cracks or wrinkles. It’s what makes skin pliable and the less one has, the more wrinkles occur. That's what's causing Krentcil to look prematurely aged and leathery (she's 44, but could easily pass as a Golden Girl). 

And tanning — especially indoor tanning — causes more than just hideous looks. Campbell says that people who use tanning beds are 2.5 times more likely to develop squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) and 1.5 times more likely to develop basal cell carcinomas (BCC). Someone with such a tanning history would also suffer from a weakened immune system (people often develop cold sores after tanning) and an increased chance of getting cataracts and ocular melanoma, a rare and often overlooked eye cancer caused by overexposure to UV light.

Krentcil's excessive tanning has focused attention on "tanorexia," a habit that research indicates can be as addictive as alcohol or smoking. A small study from 2006 found that when people who compulsively sunbathe -- whether in a tanning booth or outdoors -- stop, they can feel withdrawal symptoms from their UV high. And an earlier msnbc.com story reported that many teen girls hit the tanning salon for the first time with mom. Researchers from East Tennessee state University found that nearly 40 percent of young women, ages 18 to 30, who participated in a small study said their first experience with indoor tanning was with their mother.

Whether someone is hooked on rays -- artificial or real -- the World Health Organization classifies ultraviolet radiation as a known carcinogen, Dr. Jennifer Ashton, author of "Your Body Beautiful," told TODAY Thursday. "They put it on the same level as cigarettes, on the same level as plutonium. So it's dangerous."  

But there is hope for Krentcil. If she stops tanning her skin might lighten and different treatments could repair her collagen, leading to a more youthful appearance. Yet, Krentcil will probably always be at higher risk for cancer:

“To a degree the damage has already been done,” Campbell says. 

More from The Body Odd:

• Taking a skin allergy and making it art
• Here's what a lightning strike can do to your skin

Related:
For teens, 'tanorexia' starts with mom
Women with melanoma fare better than men

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Courtesy of Ariana Page Russell

Due to an allergic condition, Ariana Page Russell's skin provides an unexpected canvas for "skin writing." Russell used a stencil to rub this floral pattern on her stomach. Histamines helped create the colorful, raised design.

Ariana Page Russell's skin sometimes has an unusual reaction when she gets a slight scratch: Within minutes, her skin feels warm and the area that was scratched gets red, puffy, and raised like a hive.

Next, it turns white and then a little pink. Twenty minutes later any swelling, itchiness, or markings are gone, and her skin looks normal.

To Russell, it's just "this weird thing my skin does." It wasn't until she sought out a dermatologist that she realized this odd reaction had a name: dermographic urticaria.

Also called dermographism, meaning "writing on the skin," this exaggerated skin reaction is a type of hive, or "urticaria."

Courtesy of Ariana Page Russell

Ariana Page Russell used blunt knitting needles to form the letters on her legs.

If Russell, a 33-year-old New York City artist, scratches the letters of a word on her forearm, upper thigh, or stomach, you'd be able to read it because it will look like she has been writing on her skin.

"This reaction is due to a histamine release," says dermatologist Dr. Joanna Wallengren, who has studied dermographic urticaria. "This is the same response as in spontaneous hives." (Histamine is also what's released in an allergic reaction.)

These hives occur anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes after skin is scratched. First, the skin becomes red, and then a raised welt forms, followed by white hives along the scratch line.

"Often the central part is whiter than the surrounding redness," explains Wallengren, an associate professor in the department of dermatology at Skane University Hospital in Lund, Sweden. "There is often an itching or burning sensation," she adds.

Wallengren says that pressure on the skin is the most common trigger of dermographic urticaria. This can be from the pressure of tight-fitting clothing or from carrying a heavy bag that rubs against the skin. Some people get it after showering and scrubbing their skin.

This exaggerated skin reaction is usually not inherited, and most people with it do not have allergies or sensitive skin, according to Wallengren. Emotions and stress may worsen symptoms, she says.

Although the exact cause of dermographic urticaria is unclear, Wallengren says that people normally respond to treatment with antihistamines taken on a daily basis. "Sometimes one pill is not enough," to relieve itchiness, "and the dose needs to be doubled or tripled," she points out. 

Roughly 5 percent of the population is thought to have dermographism, and it's most common in young adults in their 20s and 30s.

Russell first noticed her skin had this odd reaction when she was in high school. Russell, who says she has a mild form, decided to play around with it and use her skin as a canvas for her artwork. Then she photographed the results.

"This was a unique way for me to make art," she explains. She uses blunt knitting needles to make her designs. Sometimes she draws freehand and other times she creates stencils with intricate patterns that she traces onto her skin.

"It doesn't hurt, but I know other people tell me that dermographic urticaria causes them pain," Russell says.

Asked about the reaction to her skin-related artwork, Russell admits, "Some people think it's weird, strange, or disgusting."

"But then I get hundreds of emails from people with skin issues who are so appreciative that I am putting my skin condition out there," she adds. "They tell me I'm doing something beautiful with a weird condition."

When people with dermographic urticaria see her photographs, it helps them know that they are not a freak, she suggests.

"I'm just trying to show that this is skin, and everybody's skin does different things," Russell says. "There's nothing to be ashamed of."

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Dario Cantatore / Getty Images

Ashley Judd attends an event at the United Nations on Wednesday in New York City.

While Ashley Judd is busily writing about AIDS, proffering bracketing tips and promoting her new TV series, "Missing," the celebrity's reps and gossip mags are in a heated debate as to what's going on with her weirdly puffy face.

RadarOnline.com threw out the first salvo with a March 13 story that declared the actress's newly chubby cheeks were caused by some type of over-the-top plastic surgery. One of Judd's representatives quickly countered with an alternative explanation. The actress has been "battling an ongoing, serious sinus infection and flu," they told E! News.

Medication, they claimed, had caused the facial puffiness.

Dr. Vincent Chan, a Seattle ear, nose and throat doctor specializing in sinus disease, says steroids (commonly used for sinus infections) can cause puffiness, but only when used long term.

"Generally, when steroids are given for sinus infection, they're given for 10 days to two weeks," he says. "Usually those types of regimens - steroids for sinusitis - don't cause that sort of problem."

Chan says that when he prescribes steroids such as prednisone to his patients for sinusitis, he never counsels them about possible facial puffiness.

"It takes several weeks to a month to get that kind of puffiness," he says. "And it will be accompanied by generalized water retention. You'll be puffy everywhere."

As it happens, though, Judd has talked (well, tweeted) about her sinus infection -- and the weight gain she's suffered, thanks to the steroids her doctors are using to treat it.

"Steroids r dramatic," the actress tweeted to a fan who'd written Judd about her own prednisone-related weight gain. "My clothes don't fit right, hard on a girl's self esteem, so lots of positive self talk & love."

Other sinus-related tweets from Judd talk about how long the infection's been around (three weeks) and how she's had "2 rounds" of the drugs.

According to plastic surgeon Dr. Anthony Youn, Judd's explanation regarding her puffy puss could certainly be true.

"If she says she started taking [steroids] five days ago and that's why she's puffy, that doesn't sound likely," he says. "But if she says 'I've been on steroids [for a while] and gained weight, I think that's a very reasonable explanation."

Youn says if it's not steroid use, his best guess would be that Judd is suffering from something he and his plastic surgery colleagues call "pillow face."

"There's a new trend in plastic surgery in Hollywood to over-plump people's faces," he says. "If it's not steroids, my guess would be that Ashley Judd has plumped her cheeks with Sculptra injections, which have caused her to have a pillow face and caused her cheeks to look almost chipmunk-like."

Youn quickly adds that the steroid story could also be true.

"It's possible either way," he says. "My feeling is that obviously it looks like she has a pillow face, not a steroid face. But her story definitely has some potential credibility to it."

As for Judd's fans, most don't seem to care about the facial filler rumors circulating the web one whit.

"Ashley Judd is still the sexiest woman in Hollywood," tweeted one.

Related:

• Here's what a lightning strike can do to your skin
• Why not fix that receding hairline with some leg hair?
• Woman's breast implant disappears during Pilates

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via GearDiary.com

A strike of lightning left Winston Kemp, a 24-year-old electrician, with Lichtenberg figures, a skin discoloration.

It's a terrifying way to get a temporary tattoo. To get the feathery looking, fern-like pattern running down this man's left arm, he first needed to be struck by lightning.

Known as a "Lichtenberg figure," for the German physicist who first described seeing a similar pattern while experimenting with static electricity, these reddish fern-leaf patterns are a skin reaction to a lightning strike.

These dramatic "keraunographic" marks are sometimes referred to as "lightning flowers" or "lightning trees." They tend to occur on the arms, back, neck, chest, or shoulders of lightning strike victims.

As the tech blog Gear Diary reported, Winston Kemp earned this intricate body art during a spring storm when he went outside to save his pumpkins. Ironically, Kemp is an electrician, but it wasn't his job that put him in contact with this electrical jolt; it was a bolt from Mother Nature in his own backyard.

The 24-year-old says he saw something bright and heard something loud hit his neighbor's yard, but he didn't feel a thing.

"I just came back inside like nothing was wrong. Umm ... my arm was sore. But I didn't ... I don't think I saw any marks until 30, 45 ... [it was] maybe an hour before I saw the marks," he tells Gear Diary.

Kemp says it didn't hurt when it happened, but a few hours later his arm started to feel achy and sore. Big blisters started forming on his skin the next day, which his girlfriend, a pre-med student, carefully lanced and covered to prevent infection.

"The feathering marks are formed by the transmission of static electricity along the superficial blood vessels that nourish the skin," says Dr. Mathew Avram, director of the Dermatology Laser and Cosmetic Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

"They're the kind of marks that when an emergency medicine doctor sees it, you know exactly what the diagnosis is -- a lightning strike," he explains.

"These are an unbelievably rare thing to see," adds Avram.

What you tend to see is a superficial burn to the top part of the skin, he says. If the person was wearing a belt buckle or the skin was sweating a lot during the lightning strike, the fern-leaf patterns may be deeper.

Although Kemp did not go to an emergency room, Avram said a trip to the ER is generally a good idea, so you don't get any secondary infections from the skin wounds.

Usually the red marks fade within hours of the lightning strike, though Kemp's lasted longer than that. It's a good idea to put an antibiotic ointment or Vaseline on the affected skin several times a day until they completely heal.

Even a month after the lightning strike, Kemp said he still felt "random pains" running down his left arm and the skin felt tender.

"That's not surprising," says Avram. "Any time there's an injury to the skin you can get nerve sensations afterward and the redness from a burn can last for months."

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• Irishman died of spontaneous combustion, coroner claims
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Courtesy of Dr. Sanusi Umar

J.M., who requested to be identified only by his initials, was one of Dr. Sanusi Umar's patients who received leg hair in his hairline.

By Bill Briggs

The nicknames are meant make to their targets bristle: “Yo, Doll Hair,” or, more cringe-worthy, “What’s up, Chia Head?”  

Often, though, such cracks are an accurate description of reworked foreheads after people undergo hair transplants. Traditional hair plugs or replanted locks from the neck are usually thicker than the fine strands that normally grow somewhere above the eyebrows, leaving a coarse (and obviously fake) hairline.

But a Los Angeles dermatologist says he has devised a cosmetic solution to solve that gnarly, Raggedy-Ann look at the front edge of the scalp. And his method seems so simple, follicley challenged folks may kick themselves for not dreaming it up.

Leg hair.

Yes, those curly, fluffy tufts on the thighs, knees and calves that men generally ignore and many women dutifully shave are ideal for transplanting just in front of and behind the original hairline, according to a study authored by Dr. Sanusi Umar and published this month in the Archives of Dermatology.

“It is a breakthrough because transplantation has been around for a long time, through many evolutions -- from big plugs that look like doll hair to what we have today: hairlines that can look totally undetectable,” says Umar, who heads DermHair Clinic. 

“A trained eye can tell (an artificial hairline). Quite a number of our patients who come in don’t have bad transplants (from other clinics),” Umar says. “But they complain that people still stare at their hairlines. It bothers them. When you do any cosmetic procedure, you don’t do it so that people can tell you’ve had it done.”

OK, here are the bald facts: Leg hair meshes better with existing, frontal head hair precisely because it is thinner, Umar says. His study cites two of his patients who had leg-hair procedures performed on their hairlines about six years ago. (He waited to publish his findings so he could prove that the leg hair doesn’t eventually fall out). When leg hair grows atop heads, it can be groomed, styled and cut just like normal hair -- so patients aren’t left with random straight strands and a crop of new, coiled ones, the study states.

Umar has done such transplants on men and women, brunettes and blondes, he says. About 80 percent of the transplanted leg hairs grow successfully. A typical hairline transplant requires about 1,200 new follicles. The cost is $8 to $10 per follicle (or $9,600 to $12,000). The time needed to recreate a hairline: five to six hours.

But what about the legs? Won’t naked calves and bare thighs be a dead giveaway that your hairline may have been purposely relocated a bit to the north?

“On the legs, what we try to do is leave as few telltale signs as possible,” Umar says. “We want to diffusely take it, so it doesn’t look like there are patches there.”

And, ladies, if you’re considering this work, you won’t need to spend an entire winter growing out your leg hair.

Says Umar: “We need only stubble.”

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.” 

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More itchy, scratchy news from The Body Odd: 

• Spiders! Lice! Did that make you itchy? Here's why
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There's really no other way to put this: During a Pilates stretching exercise, a 59-year-old woman said her body "swallowed" one of her breast implants. Sounds like something we just made up, but the woman's case is the subject of an unbelievable report, just published online in the latest New England Journal of Medicine. 

The woman was a breast cancer survivor who'd had a double mastectomy, and afterward had gotten breast implants. During a Pilates routine, she was doing a Valsalva maneuver, a breathing technique in which a person takes a deep breath and holds it while bearing down. (In other words, you're going through the motions of exhaling forcibly, but without letting any air escaping through the mouth or nose.)

Doing a Valsalva maneuver increases pressure inside your chest cavity. In this lady's case, enough pressure built to essentially send her right implant through the thin tissue between her ribs and into the space in between the lungs. This left her more perplexed than anything -- where did it go?! Fortunately (and incredibly), she said upon arriving in the the emergency department of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore that she wasn't experiencing any chest pain or shortness of breath. 

"I can picture how this could happen in a freak occurrence," says Dr. Anthony Youn, a Michigan-based cosmetic surgeon and frequent contributor to msnbc.com, who didn't treat this patient but gave us his professional opinion on what the heck happened here.

Note that Youn called this a "freak occurrence" -- this is not exactly going to happen to your average Pilates lover, as this woman's case had some extra complications. She'd recently undergone a surgery to repair her heart's mitral valve, a procedure that typically involves some separating of the muscles that run between the ribs. 

"What likely happened in this instance is that the breast implant was placed under the chest muscle and on top of the ribs, an extremely common practice in breast reconstruction," Youn says. "When the patient Valsalva'd, the pectoralis (chest) muscle likely contracted and pushed the implant through the space between her ribs," which was particularly fragile after the valve surgery.

"The weakened scar tissue was easily torn, and the strength of the pectoralis muscle pushed the implant deep into her chest," Youn explains. 

The woman was treated at Johns Hopkins, where surgeons retrieved the implant from within her chest and put it back where it belonged. 

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• Gym-goers trip, flip and fall in pursuit of fitness

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Miami Gardens Police via NBC Miami

Oneal Ron Morris, shown after her arrest, is accused of injecting a victim's buttocks with a mixture of cement, Fix-A-Flat, mineral oil and Superglue.

News that Oneal Ron Morris was arrested for injecting a woman’s buttocks with a combination of cement, Fix-A-Flat, mineral oil and Superglue stunned readers. But even more shocking are the photographs of the alleged perpetrator that reveal the incredible size of her rear end. Her curves would make Jessica Rabbit blush! While the vast majority of the population inquiring about buttock enhancement would refuse treatment by an fake physician, photos reveal that Morris likely acted as a walking advertisement for her illegal practice.

So just how did Morris’s behind become so massive? I truly doubt that she partook in her own dangerous cocktail of injections. While these substances may work for repaving a road or patching a tire, they are dangerous when injected into living tissue. She would have likely found herself in the hospital (like her alleged victim) with large, festering wounds. In addition, the two traditional techniques of buttock augmentation -- solid silicone implants and fat injections -- are unlikely to have dramatic enough results to create proportions such as hers.

As a cosmetic surgeon making an educated guess, I suspect Morris, a 30-year-old transgender woman, maximally enhanced her buttocks using polypropylene string implants obtained overseas or through the black market.

Polypropylene string implants were used to enhance breasts back in the late 1990s prior to being banned by the FDA in 2001.  These implants consist of yarn-like string that gradually absorbs water and expands in size when surgically implanted into the body.  If these string implants are in place long enough, they can result in a massive, cartoonish enlargement, as can be seen in the breasts of a handful of adult entertainers.

While I’ve never heard of polypropylene being implanted into the buttocks, it’s very possible Morris underwent this procedure. The best treatment for polypropylene string implants is surgical removal.

If Morris does have polypropylene string implants and does not have them removed, she can expect her buttocks to continue to grow until they eventually drag on the ground.

Dr. Anthony Youn is a board-certified cosmetic surgeon in the Detroit area who has been featured on "Dr. 90210" and runs a popular celebrity cosmetic surgery blog. He is the author of the new, irreverent memoir "In Stitches."

Related:

Envy Scarlett's lips? Celeb parts look best on stars

Botched surgery leaves woman with 'uniboob'

'In Stitches' recounts doctor's rocky path to being plastic surgeon

Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images

Tyra Banks says the stress from writing her new book gave her alopecia. What's behind the link between stress and hair loss?

Tyra Banks definitely has a lot on her plate, but she recently complained about having much less on her pate. The "supermodel-turned-mogul" just added "fiction writer" and "New York Times bestselling author" to her ever-growing list of accomplishments.

But banging out a book and running a multimillion dollar beauty, fashion, and entertainment empire reportedly took a toll on her in an unexpected place -- her scalp.

Banks let her hair down in a recent Wall Street Journal interview, confessing, "I got a little alopecia from the stress." The stress is the five years it took to write her newly released young-adult book, "Modelland" while juggling her other professional responsibilities. Banks prefaced her comment by admitting, "How can I say this without tearing up?"

We feel her pain, even though we suspect she could afford to hire a ghost writer to pen the pages.

Even so, losing the hair on your head -- whether it's temporarily or permanently -- is hard to do, even for the most beautiful and richest among us.

"Writing a book can definitely be a stressor that can lead to hair loss, or alopecia" says Orr Barak, MD, a dermatologist at Main Line Dermatology in Philadelphia. But in women with hair loss, doctors also have to rule out if the stressor is a thyroid problem or low iron levels. "While these are rarely the causes, it's more commonly an emotional stressor like Tyra is talking about," he points out.

Barak suspects Banks had "telogen effluvium," a kind of stress-induced hair loss.

Still, we needed to get to the root of her problem. Our "mane" question (sorry) was: Why does stress cause your tresses to fall out?

As Barak explains it, a normal head of hair spends 80 percent to 90 percent of its time in the growing phase of the hair cycle, known as anagen, and 10 percent to 20 percent of its time in the resting, or telogen, phase. (An exception to this is pregnancy when the hair cycle increases to 100 percent anagen, or growth.)

"When the body undergoes a stressor, the hair follicle is affected and a new equilibrium is set for the hair cycle," Barak says. The rate may fall to say, 60 percent of its time in the growing cycle and 40 percent in the resting phase. This down shift causes more hair to fall out, and you see more of it in your brush or shower drain.

Thankfully, shedding more hair than usual is often temporary. "When the body recovers from stress, hair will get back up to its normal 80 percent to 90 percent ratio of growth over time," notes Barak. We hope that's what happened to Bank's locks.

Have you noticed more hair loss during an especially stressful time? 

Related:

• Can hair really turn white from fright?
• Science of the silver fox: Why hair goes gray
• Your hair knows when you're about to have a heart attack

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Clearly, she's embarrassed to turn around, lest we see her "runner's face."

Runners, beware. A New Jersey cosmetic surgeon has pinpointed something  more nefarious than shin splints, stress fractures and even dead butt syndrome: "runner's face." 

This is what Dr. Brian S. Glatt, a board-certified plastic surgeon in New Jersey, calls that skinny, Skeletor-esque look some dedicated runners may unwittingly develop, as they're likely distracted with all the miles they have to cover to prepare for their next race. Glatt describes the horrors thusly, in a press release issued today:

Runner’s face generally occurs in both men and women ages 40+ who exercise to improve their body, and in doing so end up with a skeletal and bony face. When exercising, an athlete burns off fat beneath the layers of his/her skin. The marked loss of fatty tissue results in a loss of volume which leads to a prominent appearance of the bones, accelerated development of skin laxity and deepening of wrinkles. Though you may look like a 20-year-old from the neck down—your face will easily give away your age.

Full disclosure: I ran my first marathon in June, and I definitely did get that hollow-cheek look described in the release. (Although I'm 26, not 40-plus.) So Glatt kind of has a point, allows Dr. Tony Youn, a Michigan-based cosmetic surgeon and frequent contributor to msnbc.com. 

"The general idea is that the leaner we are, the less fat we have in our face," says Youn. "One of the signs of facial aging is loss of facial volume. So losing weight or becoming very lean (like many runners are) can cause the face to look older."

"Runners face" is a cutesy, catchy term, but Youn points out this idea could apply to anyone who is thin for a variety of reasons -- playing a lot of sports, excessive dieting or anorexia, or genetics. And, Youn helpfully points out, rigorous exercise isn't the only thing contributing to aging -- sun damage does a fine job of that on its own. 

Glatt suggests a Botox-Restylane (or other injectable filler) combo, which will smooth wrinkles and plump that gaunt face right back up. Youn says the treatments in Glatt's anti-runners face arsenal would certainly work.

"That being said, I've never told someone to stop running so they could look younger," Youn says. "That's just silly."

What say you, readers? Is the old adage true -- do you really have to choose between your bum and your face? And, if that's true -- which would you choose? A fit, fierce body, or a youthful face? 

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