1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (20 page)

Leonard V. Crowley, An Introduction to Human Disease: Pathology and Pathophysiology Correlations, 7th ed.(Jones &Bartlett, 2006).

Susan Van Houten, “Accessory nipples (polythelia) and breast tissue (polymastia),” University Health Systems Of Eastern Carolina, March 21, 2003,
www.uhseast.com
.

123

FACT :
Breast cancer isn’t just a women’s disease.
Men can get it, too
, though they do so much less frequently, about one man for every 100 women. Also, unlike women, men typically only get the disease after age fifty.
Sounds to me like a good excuse to go into the mobile mammography bus and scope out some bare boobs.

Gerard M. Doherty and Lawrence W. Way, Current Surgical Diagnosis & Treatment, 12th ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2005).

124

FACT :
More than
90 percent of women have asymmetrical breasts
. While most asymmetry is slight and inconspicuous, women with significantly mismatched breasts can suffer mental and emotional anguish.
Especially if you call them “Feldmans” or ask if one breast is adopted.

Dimitrije E. Panfilov, Cosmetic Surgery Today, trans. Grahame Larkin (Thieme, 2005).

125

FACT :
Humans shed about
1.5 million skin flakes every hour
. Bath sponges and washcloths can be filled with these flakes and their accompanying
staphylococcus aureus
, a common skin bacteria that can cause infection if it ends up in the wrong part of the body.
In other words, don’t wash your crack with someone else’s loofa unless you want to spend the next six months scratching it.

Philip M. Tierno, The Secret Life of Germs: What They Are, Why We Need Them, and How We Can Protect Ourselves against Them (Simon & Schuster, 2004).

126

FACT :
Only 10 percent of the cells in our bodies are actually human. The rest are the
90 trillion bacteria that live on or in us
, covering our bodies from head to toe.
Only 5 percent of the cells in Christopher Walken’s body are actually human. The rest are from an alien world.

Rose George, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters (St. Martin’s Press, 2008).

Garry Hamilton, “Insider Trading,” New Scientist, June 26, 1999,
www.newscientist.com
.

127

FACT :
Less sleep disturbs normal metabolism, which
contributes to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease
. People who averaged just five hours of sleep a night also showed a higher level of ghrelin, a hormone the stomach releases to signal hunger.
People who average just five hours of sleep a night also show a higher level of ghrouch, a hormone that makes you want to kick someone’s ass when they say, “You look tired.”

Rick Nauert, PhD, “Childhood Obesity from Lack of Sleep?” PsychCentral, October 24, 2006,
http://psychcentral.com
.

128

FACT :
All humans exist for
half an hour
as a single cell at conception.
Some of us stay that way.

Truman Hedding, “Nineteen Things You Didn’t Know About The Human Body,”
www.trumanhedding.com
.

129

FACT :
The British Medical Journal
has estimated that smoking one cigarette
takes eleven minutes off the life
of an average person.
Too bad those eleven minutes don’t disappear right as you’re smoking, say, during
The English Patient.

Mary Shaw, Richard Mitchell, and Danny Dorling, “Time for a smoke? One cigarette reduces your life by 11 minutes,” British Medical Journal, January 1, 2000,
www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov
.