Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? Read online

Ah, yes, what a dignified time of life—when, in the course of the same sentence, you can sound like Issac Hayes and Alvin the Chipmunk.

  Your larynx is a hollow, tube-shaped piece of cartilage that is located at the top of your trachea (windpipe). There are two thin muscles—called vocal cords—that are stretched across the trachea, sort of like rubber bands. And when you speak or sing, air rushing from your lungs causes these vocal cords to vibrate, producing your voice.

  During puberty, higher levels of testosterone cause the cartilage of a boy’s larynx to grow and the vocal cords to become longer and thicker, vibrating at a lower frequency, and creating a deeper tone of voice. There are other anatomical changes that contribute to the differences in an adolescent boy’s voice. His facial bones begin to grow, as do his sinus cavities, nose, and throat. This creates a larger space in which his voice can resonate more deeply. (Some of this is actually visible—as the larynx gets bigger, it also tilts at a different angle and protrudes farther. Yes, boys and girls—the Adam’s apple.)

  That cracking and breaking voice that can mortify a pubescent boy is simply the result of his body adjusting to all of these physical changes. This is all very temporary. Once maturity and full laryngeal growth are achieved, those unpredictable squeaks become a thing of the past.

  And the award for best all-time cracked voice in a leading role…envelope, please…Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles.

  DOES DRINKING MILK REALLY MAKE YOU TALLER?

  We know our response to this one is going to be greeted with howls of indignant protest from moms all over the world…. Butthe answer is no.

  There is no special “growth factor” in milk. Not that milk and other calcium-rich dairy products aren’t wonderfully nutritious. Calcium is essential for helping promote stronger bones. And if you don’t get a sufficient amount of calcium in your diet, your body compensates and basically steals it from your bones. This can eventually lead to osteoporosis—a steady, progressive loss of bone density that can cause people to become hunched over as they get older.

  Height is the result of a complicated assortment of genetic factors and environmental interactions. It is polygenic—which means that many genes are involved. This is why sometimes children are significantly different heights than their parents. (The legendary basketball player and sex machine Wilt Chamberlain was 7 feet 1 inch. But neither of his parents rose above 5 feet 9 inches.) And height is multifactorial. In addition to the complex genetic component, many lifestyle factors—especially the mother’s diet and health while she is pregnant and the nutrition of the child during the growth years—determine whether a person will attain his or her potential genetic height.

  FYI—within the last hundred years or so, the Dutch have gone from being the shortest people in Europe to the tallest in the world. The average Dutch man today is 6 feet 1 inch. The average American man is only 5 feet 9½ inches.

  Height is a critically important subject for Leyner. Although he ultimately achieved the imposing stature of 5 feet 7 inches, he was a shrimp of a kid. In an autobiographical account he wrote recently for Best Life magazine, he explains that his adult obsession with weight lifting “was a long overdue response to the cumulative traumas of having been picked on as a small boy. My parents doted on me as if I were some delicate, Proustian genius prince, but once I left the cultured confines of my own home, it was Lord of the Flies out there. As my father’s career as an attorney flourished, we moved frequently, and every first day at a new school presented a new gauntlet of bullies….” Leyner goes onto describe the following shocking scene:

  “We’d just moved from Jersey City to West Orange, a seemingly benign middle-class bedroom community in the Jersey suburbs. One afternoon, on the way home from school, I’d followed a squirrel into the woods. (As an itinerant child who was typically friendless, I often found great solace in the companionship of small helpless creatures.) There I was with my fey Truman Capote blond bangs and sparkly anime eyes, and as I tried to lure the squirrel closer with a tiny marzipan banana that my mother had packed as a surprise in my lunch that day, I was set upon by a pack of boys in blue uniforms. Crazed, sadistic Cub Scouts. It was like a scene from one of those Japanese schoolboy splatter films like Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale.”

  WHY DO WE HAVE PUBIC HAIR?

  This is a great conversation starter, if you’re sitting on a plane or in line at the DMV…. And it’s not only the why, it’s the where. Why there? Why have human beings been left with tufts of hair surrounding our genitals and in our armpits?

  This isn’t the place for a debate about evolution versus intelligent design, but pubic hair might seem to indicate a Creator with a very frat boy sense of humor.

  If you accost random people on the street and ask them why they have pubic hair, one of three things will happen: 1. They’ll call a cop. 2. They shrug and guess: “To keep my, uh, private parts warm…?” 3. They stiffen their posture, look you directly in the eye, and assert: “To protect my genitals.”

  If the purpose of pubic hair was to keep our “private parts” nice and toasty, wouldn’t we have more of it and wouldn’t it be much thicker? And if we depended on hair for warmth at this point in our evolution, wouldn’t we be covered with fur?

  As for protection, even so eminent an evolutionary biologist as Mel Brooks has mused upon why the genitals—given their importance and sensitivity—are not encased in a small skull. And if pubic hair actually provided protection, wouldn’t NFL players and NASCAR drivers wear big bouffant wigs woven out of the short-and-curlies?

  The most convincing hypothesis is that pubic hair—like axillary (armpit) hair—traps pheromones, those erotic scents that play such an important and fascinating role in human sexual communication. These pheromones are produced when the apocrine sweat glands release a viscous and odorless secretion on the skin surface that, when broken down by bacteria, results in a characteristic sexual scent. Pubic hair and underarm hair are a human being’s primary “scent traps.” Mammalian pheromones influence the secretion of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), a hormone that has short- and long-term effects on neurotransmission. Studies (including various smelly T-shirt–sniffing experiments) have shown that human pheromones have a significant effect on the attractiveness of one sex to the other.

  Odor is such a crucial component of mammalian mating. With all the deodorants, colognes, douches, and Brazilian waxes out there—it’s a wonder anyone can find a date anymore.

  DOES FALLING IN LOVE REALLY CAUSE CHEMICAL CHANGES IN YOUR BRAIN?

  Why does falling in love turn seemingly rational, even-keeled, considerate people into deranged, raving, volatile, self-centered psychos in dire need of an exorcism, especially teenagers?

  Welcome to Cupid’s laboratory. There is indeed a biochemistry of love. Helen Fisher, an anthropology professor at Rutgers University—along with two colleagues, Arthur Aron and Lucy Brown—used an MRI machine to study the brains of people who describe themselves as being wildly “in love.” When each subject gazed at a photograph of his or her sweetheart, the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus lit up. The caudate nucleus is the site of a dense network of receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine. Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pisa in Italy, measured the serotonin levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the blood of people who’d been in love for several months and who pine or are otherwise preoccupied with their lovers for at least four hours a day. She found that the serotonin levels in the love-struck subjects were as low as the serotonin levels in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

  So if you’re feeling “madly” in love, or a little “insane in the membrane,” or “crazy, crazy for feeling so lonely,” there’s a solid, scientific basis for losing your heart AND your marbles.

  DOES TELEVISION REALLY ROT KIDS’ BRAINS?

  How many parents have gazed despairingly at their children who sit comatose in front of the TV for what seems like eons of uninterrupted vie
wing, their eyes glazed, their sallow faces awash in that bluish glow? Surely this is rotting their brains, wiping clean whole neural networks, all cognitive functioning flickering off, neuron by neuron and synapse by synapse with each ensuing episode of American Idol, The Apprentice, Survivor, and The Biggest Loser. And instead of high-functioning, productive members of society of whom they can be justifiably proud, parents fear being saddled with zombies in hairnets, muttering “You want fries with that?” for the rest of their lives. And it’s all the TV’s fault, right?

  Wrong. A new study by two economists from the University of Chicago, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, shows “very little difference and if anything, a slight positive advantage” in test scores for kids who grew up watching TV early on, as compared to kids who did not. And in households where English was a second language or the mom had less than a high school education, the positive effect of TV was even more pronounced. (This study was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of academic researchers in Cambridge, Massachusetts.)

  New research also appears to debunk the notion that TV shortens children’s attention spans. A study recently published in the journal Pediatrics and based on American kindergartners, and another conducted in the Netherlands, found absolutely no link between television viewing and symptoms of attention-deficit disorder.

  So, c’mon, kids! We apologize. Put those silly books down and come grab a seat in front of the 65-inch plasma…Punk’d is on!!

  CHAPTER 10

  NATURAL AND UNNATURAL CURES THAT WE WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT

  Leyner and I had a busy morning of patients and an intriguing mix of cases. Our last patient was a TV-obsessed housewife who spent her entire family’s savings on products hawked on an endless variety of infomercials. She finally came to us when the last book she purchased failed to cure her depression, insomnia, and obsessive hypochondriasis. After a long session, I tried to engage Leyner in a discussion of the overwhelming susceptibility of people to untested cures and hyperbole. Leyner resisted and focused all of his energies on his more entrepreneurial side. I decided to take a break from the office and go for a solo lunch to ponder things.

  When I returned from lunch, I found Leyner seated behind a desk with a bizarre miscellany of ingredients that he had purchased in Chinatown along with a Bunsen burner and mortar and pestle. Leyner was formulating some sort of exotic concoction made out of ground deer antler, desiccated seahorse, minced bear gallbladder, Siberian ginseng extract, and distilled ylang-ylang. Wendy was stationed behind a large tripod with a video camera aimed at Leyner’s science experiment. Leyner carefully measured out several teaspoons of omega-3 fish oil and equal amounts of manganese and riboflavin. Using a pipette, he drew 10 milliliters of kiwi-strawberry Propel from a bottle and meticulously added it to the potion. “Voilà!” he pronounced proudly. He gave Wendy a signal to start shooting.

  “And…Action!” she shouted.

  “Hi there. I’m Mark Leyner. What you’re about to hear will change not only your life, but the lives of those you love, and may very well alter the future of mankind itself. There are many organizations out there, which for their own selfish and nefarious reasons, don’t want you to hear what I’m about to say…the FDA, the AMA, the FCC, the FTC, the SEC, the AFL-CIO, the CIA, the NBA, and the PTA. But as an author and a healer, it is my responsibility to suffer the slings and arrows of the skeptics and naysayers in order to make this miraculous new product available to you as soon as possible.

  “MegaProfen-10™ is a revolutionary supplement that can almost instantly transform you into a happy, vital human being with boundless energy and natural immunity to all the world’s most devastating diseases and debilitating conditions. It has also been proven to add decades to your life span and imbue you with a radiant, indefatigable sexuality.”

  Leyner whispered to Wendy: “Go tight on me.”

  For his close-up, Leyner furrowed with great telegenic earnestness and concern.

  “Are you suffering from sudden back spasms? Do nighttime leg cramps keep you awake? Do you want to stop the embarrassment of diarrhea, gas, bloating, constipation, cramps, and incontinence, and regain the freedom of an active lifestyle? Do you want to slim down ugly bulges? Is your appearance marred by sagging skin, wrinkles, and unattractive ‘turkey neck’? Is your libido faltering? Are you falling behind in school or job advancement because of limited intelligence? Do you have eczema or nail fungus? Do you have high cholesterol, acid reflux, Marburg hemorrhagic fever, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy? Well, it’s time to stop worrying and reach for this little bottle—”

  Leyner holds up the bottle and grins with great satisfaction, his teeth gleaming.

  I couldn’t hold back and had to interrupt. “Leyner, we’re trying to be professionals and you can’t go on TV and make ridiculous unfounded claims. Are you trying to ruin my reputation? Do you want to sabotage our practice?” I was fuming.

  Leyner countered, “This country was founded on ridiculous unfounded claims. When Patrick Henry said, ‘Give me liberty, or give me death,’ do you think ‘liberty’ had gone through clinical trials at the FDA? When Paul Revere said, ‘The British are coming,’ do you think there was incontrovertible proof? We’re a nation of snake oil–quaffing pet rock owners and copper bracelet–wearing magnet worshippers. And I’m proud to be an American!”

  “Wendy, did you get that?” Leyner asked.

  I couldn’t believe he was trying to drag me into this.

  “You do not have my permission to include me in your charade!” I screamed as I went into my office and slammed the door.

  Leyner waited a brief second and motioned to Wendy to roll the camera.

  He settled himself, sat down, and reassumed his salesmanlike demeanor of jaunty credibility.

  “MegaProfen-10™ has been exhaustively tested in our state-of-the-art laboratories and received the full and unequivocal endorsement of…Dr. Billy Goldberg.”

  WHY SHOULD YOU BREATHE INTO A PAPER BAG WHEN HYPERVENTILATING?

  This is a classic home remedy and something that we occasionally rely on in the emergency room, but not everyone who is hyperventilating should be given the bag. Hyperventilation is a fancy word for rapid deep breathing. It is usually caused by anxiety or panic, but many conditions can cause hyperventilation including: asthma, heart attack, bleeding, pneumonia, overdoses, and stimulant use. In patients with heart attacks, collapsed lungs, or blood clots in the lungs death can occur if they are misdiagnosed and treated with paper bag rebreathing. Once we decide that you don’t have something serious, we will reach for the bag. So let your doctor make this diagnosis!

  Breathing into a paper bag works by making you rebreathe the carbon dioxide that you are exhaling. This causes the blood levels of carbon dioxide to rise, and slows your breathing.

  Instead of using the bag, you can slow your breathing by breathing through pursed lips or by breathing from the diaphragm. If you do reach for the bag, know that there is no magic chemical in the brown paper bag, and you probably could use your empty McDonald’s bag or even your Prada purse.

  DO THOSE INSTANT HAND SANITIZERS REALLY WORK?

  Does washing your hands really prevent disease?

  The answer is a resounding yes! Few things are as certain as this in medicine. There is no doubt that washing your hands can prevent disease.

  The problem is getting people to do it. A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine looked at the rate of hand washing among physicians and found that doctors washed their hands only 57 percent of the time they should have. This is higher than many studies that have shown compliance rates lower than 50 percent. In this study, the adherence to hand hygiene rates varied by specialty with internal medicine doctors washing the most, and anesthesiologists the least. Medical students did better than their professors, and female physicians did better than their male counterparts. The presence of a hand-rub solution increased the compliance with hand washing.


  For this reason, those alcohol-based hand-rub solutions are all over hospitals. The good news is that they work well too. The CDC in their Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings state that “alcohol-based products are more effective for standard handwashing or hand antisepsis by health care workers than soap or antimicrobial soap.” But these hand rubs are not appropriate for use when hands are visibly soiled or after going to the bathroom.

  As for the omnipresence of antibacterial soap, it is not necessary. The most important thing is to rub your hands vigorously together while washing and continue for ten to fifteen seconds. The regular soap and the scrubbing action together will help wash away the germs.

  DO COPPER BRACELETS HELP WITH RHEUMATISM?

  This was a question from Billy’s wife’s grandmother. We love the term rheumatism. It’s so old-fashioned and dramatic and makes you think about other illnesses like lumbago, dropsy, or the fits. Rheumatism isn’t a term that is used in hospitals, but is generally used to refer to arthritis.

  Arthritis doesn’t refer to one specific condition, but is a general term for inflammation of the joints. There are over one hundred types of arthritis. Arthritis affects about 42 million people. The most common form of arthritis is osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is caused by wear and tear on the joints and ultimately the breakdown and loss of cartilage. There is no cure for osteoarthritis.

  Copper bracelets have been sold as a cure for arthritis based upon the belief that the copper is absorbed into the skin and can help rejuvenate the cartilage. This is a myth, and there is no proof that these bracelets work. There are many studies looking at copper and how it affects the growth of cartilage, so in the future we may discover some new ways to use this important element. Copper is, however, a necessary part of our diet. Copper is essential for normal metabolism, but copper deficiency is extremely uncommon. In the meantime, there are serious side effects with copper supplements. So check with your doctor before taking them.