Chapter 10: Your Body

You think today’s technology is complex? Wait till you start poking around the twisted, intertwined, microscopic, liquid-based, miraculous workings of your own body.

Every single day, another group of scientists releases the results of another study about health or medicine, and yet there’s still so much we don’t know. Much of the time, our experts are just shooting arrows in the dark. But here and there, people have stumbled onto more useful quirks of our bodies—and here they are.

Can you wake up not groggy?

According to modern sleep science, grogginess isn’t exclusively a matter of not getting enough sleep. It can result from being awakened at the wrong point in your natural sleep cycles.

If your alarm goes off when you’re in a deep sleep—REM (rapid eye movement) sleep—you feel out of it. You’re suffering from what’s called sleep inertia. It may take you an hour (or a cup of coffee) to snap out of it.

If you wake up at the lightest point of one of your natural sleep cycles, though, you feel more refreshed—even if you spent less time asleep.

That may seem hard to believe—surely 7 hours of sleep is always better than 6.5! But sleep inertia, and the causes of it, are real.

The question is: How do you avoid it?

The easy way: Don’t set an alarm. Wake up when you wake up. Your body’s own rhythms will take care of it.

If you must be up at a certain time (for, oh, say, work), there’s a realm of products designed to wake you at the lightest point of your sleep cycle. Here are some examples:

Fitness bands. These activity-tracking wristbands, like the ones from Jawbone and Sony, can wake you either at a specified time (by vibrating on your wrist)—or up to 30 minutes earlier, if that means you’ll awake during a lighter phase of your sleep.

Smartphone apps. You put your iPhone or Android phone beside your pillow. The app (Sleep Cycle for iPhone, SleepBot for iPhone or Android) uses the phone’s motion sensors to figure out when you’re asleep, and how deeply—and it tries to wake you with an alarm at the best possible moment within, for example, 30 minutes of your desired wakeup time.

Sleepyti.me. This Web site tries to predict what time you’ll be sleeping lightly—and you’re supposed to set your alarm clock accordingly. It’s based, however, on a 14-minute fall-asleep time and a 90-minute sleep-cycle duration, both of which are extremely variable and unreliable assumptions.

Most people who try the bands or the phone apps find that the theory works more than it fails: They feel less groggy when the alarm goes off, even if they actually spent less time unconscious.

Hand-washing: The Basics

It’s surprising how much lore and mythology has sprouted up from the simple act of washing your hands. You’re supposed to use hot water. You’re supposed to wash long enough to sing “Happy Birthday” twice through. And what about Purell? Doesn’t it kill bacteria just the way antibiotics do, thereby risking the rise of superbugs?

Here are the facts:

“Happy Birthday.” Clearly, the business about singing “Happy Birthday” twice is designed to make you spend more time washing your hands. But that’s not because washing a certain spot of skin longer makes it cleaner; it doesn’t.

Instead, if you’re committed to standing there for 20 whole seconds, you’re more likely to scrub the parts of the hands people miss: your thumbs, fingernails, and the backs of your hands. It’s not about how much time you spend; it’s about how much hands you cover.

Hot water. There’s no magic to the temperature of the water. Scientists just want it to be pleasant so you’ll wash longer (see above).

Purell. Even the people who make Purell admit that washing with soap and water is the best way to clean and disinfect your hands. You’re washing germs away instead of killing them.

But Purell should be your second choice if you can’t find soap and water. It’s basically alcohol, and it does a good job of disinfecting your skin.

Purell is also a lot better than antibacterial soap (read on).

Why antibacterial soap is bad stuff

Don’t buy or use soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, or other bathroom products labeled “antibacterial.” For a few reasons.

It won’t stop you from getting sick. Cold and flu come from viruses, not bacteria. Antibacterial soap doesn’t kill viruses.

It may breed superbugs. Maybe you’ve heard this one: Years of overprescribing antibiotics has resulted in the rise of new, super-resilient bacteria that nothing can kill. The staph infection you get from these bugs, called MRSA, has become a killer in hospitals and nursing homes, to the tune of about 10,000 Americans a year. Scary, right?

Antibacterial soap has the same problem. It contains a chemical called triclosan, which has the same problem as antibiotics: It kills most of the bacteria, but leaves the strongest ones behind to reproduce and get stronger.

Soap and water does just as good a job (and costs less). Yes, they’ve studied it. Soap and water washes the germs off your skin instead of trying to kill them.

Alcohol-based hand sanitizers like Purell are fine, by the way.

The better way to take out contacts

Believe it or not, some optometrists and Web sites still advise you to remove your contact lenses by tugging up on the upper lid, as shown here. They’re suggesting that you reach over your head with one arm and pull up on the lid.

It actually makes more sense (and requires less acrobatics) to tug down on the lower lid. After all, you’re going to be grabbing the bottom of the lens to remove it. Isn’t it more logical, therefore, to create space near the bottom of your eye?

images

How to make instant reading glasses with your fingers

If you need reading glasses—and if you’re over 40 or so, you probably do—then the next couple of paragraphs will change your life. You’re about to find out how to read small type, in a pinch, without your glasses.

Maybe you’ve lost or broken your reading glasses. Or maybe you don’t feel like going upstairs to get them. Or maybe you’re naked in the shower, frantically trying read the bottles to see which one is shampoo.

Here’s the trick: Curl up your index finger, making a tiny hole. Hold it up to your dominant eye and peek through it.

Incredibly, you’ll discover that the small type you couldn’t read a moment ago is suddenly crystal clear! You can read the date on a penny, or the serial number on a product, or the instructions on a medicine bottle. It doesn’t matter if you’re nearsighted or farsighted.

images

So how does it work?

You’re letting in only a very narrow beam of light. You’re blocking the whole cone of light rays that, on aging eyes that don’t focus perfectly, cause a spot of blur on your retina. If you know anything about photography, this might help: Your fingers are creating a very small aperture, like the one on a pinhole camera. And when the aperture is small, everything is in focus, near and far.

So you’re turning your eye into a pinhole camera, and everything is in focus!

How to get a splinter out

One way to get a splinter out of a finger is to dig around with tweezer tips or a needle. But that’s painful, imprecise, and upsetting, especially if you’re under 10.

There are better ways.

First resort. Press a piece of Scotch tape against the protruding piece of splinter, and pull it right out. It works for splinters that aren’t especially deeply buried.

Second resort. If the splinter doesn’t come out with tape, squirt a dollop of white glue (like Elmer’s) or wood glue onto the splinter. Wait until it dries. Now, when you peel the glue blob away, the splinter comes out with it!

images

Alternate splinter wisdom. If you don’t have tape or glue handy, at the very least soak the finger in warm, soapy water for a few minutes. As the skin shrivels and softens, it will make the splinter’s end much more visible and easier to pluck out with tweezers—or even fingers.

The difference between Advil and Tylenol

Thank heaven for pain relievers. Without them, our headaches, sore muscles, and other aches would be a lot more … painful.

The shelves are teeming with white plastic bottles of over-the-counter medicines that promise to relieve pain. But you may not realize that (a) there are really only two types of painkillers, sold under a wide array of brand names, and (b) there’s a trick to knowing which one to take when.

The active ingredients boil down to these:

NSAID drugs. NSAID stands for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, but of course you already knew that. The point is that there are three big NSAID drugs that all work the same way: ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, Nuprin), naproxen (Aleve), and good old aspirin (Anacin, Bayer, Bufferin, Excedrin).

These drugs treat pain, fever, and inflammation/swelling—so take these (instead of acetaminophen) for sports injuries, menstrual cramps, lower back pain, and arthritis. Don’t take on an empty stomach.

Acetaminophen (“a seat-a-MINNA-fin”). Better known as Tylenol or Excedrin Tension Headache. Acetaminophen is for reducing pain and fever; this drug doesn’t reduce inflammation. It has fewer side effects than NSAIDs and is gentler on the stomach and kidneys.

Experts recommend that if you have to take a pain reliever for a long time, alternating them is a good idea. You should take all of them with a glass of water—and avoid all of them if you’ve had more than three alcoholic drinks. At that point, “feeling no pain” has a whole different meaning.

The one-step trick for perfect posture

There’s a lot involved in having good posture. Chest out, stomach in, shoulders back, head high, hips square … you’re going to remember all that?

Fortunately, there’s a single image that gets your entire self into alignment: Imagine a thread from the center of your chest-bone, pulling you diagonally up.

Bingo: Chest out, stomach in, shoulders back, head high, all at once, automatically. Cool, huh?

images

The easiest way to lose a couple of pounds

Go to bed.

It’s true: You weigh a couple of pounds less in the morning than you did the night before. And that’s before you go to the bathroom!

A lot of the weight leaves your body in the form of water vapor, every time you exhale—especially if your bedroom is cool. More water leaves you in the form of sweat. And water, as you probably know, is heavy.

You lose even more weight in the form of carbon. You know how we breathe in oxygen (O2), and breathe out carbon dioxide (CO2)? Well, during the night, you’re losing about 10 billion trillion carbon atoms as you exhale—about a pound of carbon. No wonder so many people prefer to weigh themselves first thing in the morning!

The obvious follow-up question is: Aren’t we also breathing, sweating, and expelling carbon during the daytime?

Why, yes—yes, you are. And you would lose pounds every day, just as you do at night, if it weren’t for one complicating factor: food and drink. You notice the effect only at night because you stop eating and drinking during your sleeping hours.

Usually. Sleepwalkers’ mileage may vary.

Read this before you get your blood drawn

If you’re going to have your blood drawn for medical testing, drink.

No, not alcohol—water or other beverages. If you drink a lot about 30 minutes before the appointment, your blood volume increases dramatically. That makes your veins easier to find, which means that the phlebotomist (the person drawing your blood) will have an easy, quick job of sticking you. The experience for you will be a lot less unpleasant.

In a similar vein (heh), keep your arms warm before the appointment, and let them hang down at your sides beforehand. All of this keeps blood in your arms, where the phlebotomist can find it. —Mary Margaret

How to get rid of belly fat

In general, as men gain weight, the fat collects around their bellies. On women, it collects on their hips and thighs. That’s just how we’re built.

In other words, millions of people have fat in these places and wish they could lose it. Here are some things that they’ve tried—and discovered, millions of times over, not to work:

Spot reducing. You can do sit-ups and abdomen crunches until your stomach muscles are made of carbon fiber, but your belly will not get smaller. Belly fat is fat on top of your abdominal muscles. It’s painful to accept, but true: You cannot spot-reduce fat.

All you can do is lose weight overall. The belly fat will go away along with the rest of the weight. (This gets harder the older you get, by the way, because your metabolism slows.)

Pills. Plenty of companies are happy to sell you supplements or other magical edibles that “burn” belly fat. Some even claim to be endorsed by TV’s Dr. Oz.

They don’t work. Ever.

Exercise equipment. The airwaves are teeming with ads for tummy bands, vibration disks, and exercise videos. All of them say they’ll get rid of belly fat, because they know that millions of people will pay money for some belly-shrinking magic.

None of these things work to spot-reduce belly fat. (If they help you exercise in the name of reducing your overall body fat, then by all means—because that’s the only way to zap belly fat.)

Anti-itch in a pinch

You can buy all kinds of anti-itch creams at the drugstore.

But when you get a bug bite or some other common itchiness and there’s no drugstore visit in your immediate future, roll or rub some antiperspirant on it. The zinc works wonders to stop the itch on contact.

(Diaper-rash cream also works, for the same reason; it contains zinc oxide.)

images

The Jolly Green Giant’s instant ice pack

When you sprain your ankle, bang your knee, or bump your head, one of your first instincts is probably to grab an ice pack. Good move.

An even better move: Grab a bag of frozen peas. It’s much less expensive than one of those actual gel packs, it molds nicely to the area needing the compress—and it’ll be all thawed out for dinner.

images