Mark Leyner - Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini

Porphyria is a rare hereditary blood disease. There are two types of porphyria. In one type, cutaneous porphyria, the symptoms can resemble the characteristics of a werewolf. These patients become extremely sensitive to sunlight, grow excessive amounts of hair, and develop sores, scars, and discolored skin. Porphyria also leads to tightening of the skin around the lips and gums, and can make the incisors stand out (think fangs).

Another disease that may have contributed to the werewolf myth is congenital hypertrichosis universalis, sometimes known as human werewolf syndrome. This is another rare genetic disorder that is characterized by excessive hair growth over the whole body, including the face. If you travel to Austria, you can see portraits of the first family discovered with this condition in Ambras Castle near Innsbruck.

So, there isn’t really such a thing as a werewolf, but there is a possible medical explanation of how the stories began. Sorry, we don’t have a medical explanation for Dracula, Frankenstein, or the Abominable Snowman, but we’ll do some research and include it in our next book, Why Are Women Smarter?

In Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, a man eats a massive feast, but one wafer-thin dinner mint puts him over the edge. He explodes all over the restaurant. With the obesity epidemic in our country, we have a great deal to worry about, but don’t expect to see people exploding at McDonald’s. People won’t explode from overeating, but if you eat too many Big Macs, you can rupture your stomach.

Stomach rupture, or gastrorrhexis, is a rare condition, although it has been reported to occur from eating too much. In a 2003 issue of Legal Medicine, Japanese scientists Ishikawa et alia, reported the case of a forty-nine-year-old man who was found dead in a public restroom after his stomach exploded from eating too much. There is no mention of what his last supper was, and therefore no reason to suspect Pop Rocks and Coke (see chapter 8, page 192).

Does anyone else remember the Man from Atlantis? Patrick Duffy (Bobby Ewing from Dallas ) played the last man from the legendary underwater city of Atlantis. He had webbed feet and hands and gills instead of lungs. This fantastic show only lasted for one season, but it inspired a TV junkie to ask if people could really have webbed hands and feet.

The answer is yes! People can have webbed hands and feet. Actually, it is more common than you may think, occurring anywhere from one in one thousand to one in two thousand births. There are two types of webbing: syndactyly is when two fingers or toes are fused or webbed; polydactyly involves the webbing of more than two fingers or toes. We all start life with hands and feet that resemble a duck, and between the sixth and eighth week of development, our fingers and toes separate. The failure of this separation is what leaves you looking like the Man from Atlantis.

It always happened to Wile E. Coyote. The Road Runner drops an anvil on his head and then the poor coyote sees stars circling his head. Not only does this happen in cartoons but it is actually a sign of a concussion. A concussion is simply when an injury to the head causes your brain to move around inside your skull.

As for the stars, what probably happens is that the portion of your brain that is responsible for visual information, the occipital lobe, bangs up against the side of the skull.

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE BOY IN THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE ?

In 1976, one year before John Travolta was dancing his way through Saturday Night Fever, he was in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. The film was based on a true story of a boy suffering from a rare inherited disease called Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease (SCID). SCID is now often referred to as “bubble boy” disease, thanks to this cinematic tour de force.

Severe Combined Immunodeficiency is a life-threatening syndrome in which there is a defect in the white blood cells that protect us from infection. This lack of a functioning immune system leads to frequent severe infections. Patients are usually diagnosed before they are three months old and if untreated the syndrome can be fatal. New treatments such as stem cell or bone marrow transplantation can save many patients. Gene therapy now also shows promise as a treatment for one type of this syndrome.

After some of his more recent movies, John Travolta has been rumored to be photographed by paparazzi attempting to re-enter the bubble. Good idea.

It’snow 4A.M. and people are drunk, bloated, and exhausted. Leyner is recovering from his Academy Award performance and has his tongue inside the tequila bottle, trying to extract every last drop. He removes his mouth from the bottle and says, “The tongue is God’s gift to the human race… the ultimate organ of poetry and pleasuring.”

Leyner goes on to say, “The lingua, blessed instrument of storytelling that allows me to continue the tradition of the oral urban legend.”

Jeremy, still stinging from his loss in charades, confronts Leyner and says, “I’m so sick of all your stories, my tongue tells me that you should kiss my ass.”

Although it’s late for most, nothing motivates Leyner more than verbal provocation. He responds with glee. “Ah Jeremy, in medieval times, kissing the ass of a fool’s sister was said to cure acne. Have you noticed how clear my skin is lately? Thank your sister for me.”

Jeremy leaps at Leyner and the two of them tumble around the floor in a grunting, adolescent flurry of fists and fury. They roll toward the living room and Leyner, although in a seemingly suffocating headlock, is still able to continue his grand historical survey of old wives’ tales. “The Visigoths believed that eating juniper berries would make them strong for battle.”

Jeremy tries to silence Leyner with a jab to the throat, but in a hoarse voice Leyner adds, “All it did was cause excessive flatulence.”

Urban legends and folklore can be the cause of tremendous uncertainty. People often desperately want the record set straight on some of these common myths. So, here you go.

As a child, no time seemed longer than the time spent waiting to jump back in the water after a meal. This half hour in hell is not based on science but rather on the minds of nervous parents. There is absolutely no medical evidence that supports waiting thirty minutes before getting back in the pool. Digestion begins immediately when you put food in your mouth, but once the food arrives in your stomach it takes about four hours to process there completely. Food then passes into the small intestine, where it spends another two hours, and then on to the large intestine for another fourteen. These times vary widely depending on what you eat, so don’t set your watch by it.

This doesn’t mean that it is safe to eat twelve hamburgers and then try to swim the English Channel. Use your head and listen to signals from your body. If you feel pain, cramping, or severe fatigue when swimming, get out, and please don’t puke in the pool.

Things to avoid staring at:

a woman’s cleavage

a large facial mole

a couple making out in public