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

It’s all about the arrectores pilorum.

What, you say, are arrectores pilorum?

These tiny little hair erector muscles that contract and raise the hair follicles above the skin. These are goose bumps or goose flesh or chicken skin.

What causes them?

They start with a stimulus such as fear, cold, or the sight of yourself in the mirror after a night of vodka-induced debauchery. This causes the sympathetic nervous system to become activated. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the body’s “fight or flight” response. This sends a message to the skin and activates those little muscles.

Saturday night palsy is a condition often seen in the emergency room, not a sequel to a John Travolta film. It is caused by the same mechanism that makes your foot fall asleep but is a tad more severe. Saturday night palsy is caused when someone, who is usually really wasted, is unable to move an arm or leg in response to the pins and needles caused when a limb “falls asleep.” It can lead to temporary or even permanent nerve damage.

Here is what happens in normal conditions. When pressure is exerted on part of your leg or arm, several things occur. Arteries can become compressed, making them unable to provide the tissues and nerves with the oxygen and glucose they need to function properly. Nerve pathways can also become blocked, preventing normal transmission of electrochemical impulses to the brain. Some of the nerves stop firing while others fire hyperactively. These signals are sent to the brain, where they are interpreted as burning, prickling, or tingling feelings. It is these sensations, paresthesias, that alert you to move your foot. Shaking your foot releases the pressure and nutrient-rich blood flows back into the area and nerve cells start firing more regularly. The “pins and needles” feeling can intensify until the nerve cells recover. That is why it is painful when you try to “wake up” your sleeping limb.

Persistent numbness or tingling can be a sign of certain medical conditions, and in those cases you should see your doctor.

Feeling exhausted? Wondering why you have bags under your eyes that make you look like Droopy Dog or John Kerry?

Lack of proper restful sleep seems to cause dark rings for reasons not properly understood. The skin around the eye is the thinnest found anywhere on the body, and this thin skin allows dark, venous blood to show through.

Dark rings around the eyes are a common problem. They appear to be genetic and can get worse as you age and your skin gets thinner. Adequate rest, good nutrition, and overall good health tend to make the circles less noticeable. You can also wear sunglasses all the time.

You definitely don’t spend a great deal of time learning about laughter in medical school. I know that doesn’t surprise you since physicians are such serious people. The closest they come to humor is the physiological study of laughter — gelotology. There is even a form of seizures called gelastic seizures that causes sufferers to laugh incessantly.

Laughter is a complex process that requires the coordination of many muscles throughout the body. Laughter also causes an increase in blood pressure and heart rate, breathing changes, reduced levels of certain neurochemicals, and a potential boost to the immune system. So, overall, it is very good for you.

Researchers have attempted to decipher the purpose of laughter and many believe that the reason for laughter is related to making and strengthening human connections, a kind of social signal. Studies have shown that people are thirty times more likely to laugh in social settings than when they are alone. Reports also suggest that the origins of laughter may predate human evolution.

So, what about the connection between tickling and laughing?

Well, this tickling-induced laughter is actually a reflex. Scientists don’t fully understand how this works, but because you cannot tickle yourself, the reflex seems to require an element of surprise.

Have you ever used the expression “sweat like a pig”? Think again. Pigs don’t sweat. Pigs don’t have sweat glands, which explains why they have to wallow in puddles and mud to cool off.

As for us humans, we routinely sweat as a way of eliminating excess heat and maintaining a normal body temperature. The average person has 2.6 million sweat glands distributed over the entire body except for the lips, nipples, and external genitalia. There are two different types of sweat glands, eccrine and apocrine. These glands are different in size and produce different kinds of sweat. Eccrine glands are located all over the body. Apocrine glands are different because they are found mostly in the armpits and groin. They are larger and open into hair follicles. Though sweat is mostly water, it is the small amount of protein and fatty acids in the apocrine sweat glands that gives armpit sweat that wonderful milky or yellow color. It is also what causes it to stain.

Sweat itself is odorless whether it comes from the armpits or other areas of the body. The funk begins when sweat mixes with bacteria that occur naturally on the surface of the skin. This distinctive odor is called bromhidrosis — foul-smelling sweat.

Gberg:I was going to add a New York cab driver joke to the “Why does sweat stink?” question.

Gberg:Any thoughts?

Leyner:What’s the joke?

Leyner:I love jokes.

Leyner:What’s the stinky cabbie joke?

Gberg:I don’t know one, but the scents of a taxi are so rude.

Gberg:It’s either that overwhelming air freshener or wretched body odor.

Leyner:See!! It’s all economics…

cabbies won’t run the AC… so of course they’re gonna stink — especially the ones who wear the Irish fishermen’s sweaters and the Latex underwear in the middle of the summer.

Leyner:Air freshener is, to me, worse than the smell it’s supposed to obscure… it just makes me think of what the person is trying to camouflage, so my mind creates an even greater fetid fiction.

Gberg:I don’t know. It depends what scent you are talking about. The hospital has some particularly vicious scents that need covering, like…

Gberg:Butt pus and

Gberg:bloody stool, which…

Gberg:They both sound like punk bands.

Leyner:Isn’t the smell of sweat supposed to produce certain subconscious (or conscious perhaps) sexual responses? And…

Leyner:What the hell is “butt pus”?

Gberg:Like a perirectal abscess or a pilonidal cyst — you drain them and the scent is horrible.

Leyner:Oh… that’s not so bad.

Leyner:I’ve smelled that.

Leyner:I have a pilonidal cyst — a dormant one though.

Gberg:You always were scent obsessed.

Leyner:I met a girl at Brandeis who also had one, and we soaked ours together. That’s true.

Gberg:Sitz baths.

Leyner:Fond memories of her.

Gberg:A sitz schvitz.

Leyner:Yes… sitz baths — we were young and idealistic.

Leyner:Isn’t a pilonidal cyst somehow related to a vestigial tail?