Your Pinkie Is More Powerful Than Your Thumb

And 333 Other Surprising Facts That Will Make You Wealthier, Healthier and Smarter Than Everyone Else

Mark Di Vincenzo

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780062008350
• eBook ISBN: 9780062087317
• Subtopic: History Reference

Mark Di Vincenzo, the New York Times bestselling author of Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon, brings us another book of fascinating, eminently useful facts certain to make you healthier, wealthier, and wiser. Readers of Schott’s Miscellany and other compendiums of helpful information will delight—and profit—from these little known tidbits about health, money, food, death, bugs, politics, history, geography, and more or less everything under the sun.

One

LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT IN NAURU

Where—or what’s—Nauru? Keep reading. You’re about to learn a lot about recent health-related discoveries your doctor probably doesn’t even know about. You’ll learn about whether you should bother with multivitamins, how much hair you lose every day, why it turns gray, and why you should care a lot if you can’t touch your toes. Speaking of your digits, you’ll learn about why life without your pinkie fingers would make you miserable and which nation is most visionary when it comes to kidney transplants. (You won’t believe it.)

WHY ARE HOSPITALS SO WORRIED ABOUT NECKTIES?

Neckties, regardless of who wears them, are rarely cleaned, and doctors’ ties, which are more likely to be bombarded with bacteria from sneezes and coughs, can unknowingly spread disease to patients. The British Medical Association recommends doctors avoid wearing neckties and other “functionless” clothes that can serve “as superbugs.” The American Medical Association may consider a similar resolution after it compiles more scientific evidence. Those who want doctors to shed their neckties point to a 2004 study of ties worn by employees of New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens in which half of the doctors’ ties contained germs that could cause illnesses. Only 10 percent of the neckties worn by hospital security guards carried similar germs. What you can do: This research, doctors say, just goes to show the importance of washing not only our hands—and bodies—but also our clothing, furniture, and carpeting.

HOW MANY DIFFERENT SPECIES OF BACTERIA ARE ON YOUR HANDS RIGHT NOW, AND WHY ARE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS EXCITED ABOUT THAT?

About 150. And about 135 of those are fairly unique to each person. Forensic experts and other law enforcement professionals predict that one day they’ll be able to use bacteria to prove who touched an object, even if a criminal wiped away his finger-prints. Researchers compared bacteria on a computer mouse with bacteria from the computer user and 270 other randomly chosen people and found that the closest match was to the person who used the mouse. The researchers expect that the technique they used will improve, leading to better accuracy. Right now their findings are correct between 70 percent and 90 percent of the time. What you can do: Washing your hands is a good way to kill germs and stop the spread of disease. Spend at least twenty seconds washing your hands. Despite what your mother always told you about using hot water, researchers have found that water temperature has no effect on soap’s ability to kill germs. Studies show washing hands with soap can kill diarrheal disease by 45 percent.

IF YOU’RE TRYING TO CHOOSE JUST THE RIGHT DOCTOR, WHAT’S ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU NEED TO FIND OUT?

If your doctor sees you at the grocery store or at the library, will he approach you and say hi or hide behind a shelf? In other words, is he an extrovert? A new study suggests that medical schools would do everyone a big favor if they required would-be doctors to take a personality test as well as the Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, the standardized test that measures mastery of premed courses. Three psychologists gave more than 600 Belgian medical students a standardized personality test that focused on extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The researchers kept in touch with the students for nearly a decade and concluded that extroverts often struggled early on in medical school but usually excelled as they spent less time in the classroom and more time with patients. While conscientious students also did well throughout medical school, extroversion was the most telling sign that students would succeed. Bad news if you’re sensitive: Students who were more likely to become emotionally upset struggled in school. Bonus question: Which prestigious medical school accepts students who don’t take organic chemistry, physics, or the MCAT? Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City. The school reserves slots for about thirty-five students a year who don’t take the traditional premedical school curriculum and maintain a 3.5 grade point average as an undergraduate.

BAD BOSSES CAN BE A PAIN IN THE YOU-KNOW-WHAT. WHERE ELSE CAN THEY BE A PAIN?

In the heart. Swedish researchers found that men who had to endure incompetent and inconsiderate supervisors were more likely to suffer from heart disease. The researchers tracked 3,100 men between the ages of nineteen and seventy, checking their hearts at work between 1992 and 1995. By 2003, seventy-four had suffered from heart attacks, angina, or some other sort of heart disease. Those with bad bosses were 60 percent more likely than those with good bosses to suffer heart disease, and the longer the men worked for a bad boss, the more likely they were to have heart problems. In fact, having a bad boss in this study was a more accurate predictor of heart disease than an employee’s smoking or exercise habits, weight or cholesterol. What you can do: A bad boss is the top reason why people quit their jobs. If you don’t want to leave your company: (1) talk with your boss and be direct and professional, (2) get advice from the human resources department, and (3) ask for a transfer to another department.

COUNTING SHEEP IS SO BORING THAT IT’S BOUND TO PUT YOU TO SLEEP, RIGHT?

Wrong. It’s actually too boring. Researchers split insomniacs into three groups and told one group to visualize a relaxing scene—a babbling brook, for example—and told the second group to distract themselves by counting sheep. A third group was given no instructions at all. Insomniacs who were told to visualize a relaxing scene fell asleep twenty minutes sooner than those who were not given those instructions. The researchers theorize that the relaxing scenes take up “cognitive space” in the insomniacs’ brains and keep them from thinking about the worries or concerns that keep them from falling asleep. As for counting sheep, the researchers conclude it’s so monotonous that few people can do it for very long, and so it’s not very effective. What you can do: Think of that babbling brook or crashing waves or falling rain or whatever you find relaxing.

WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT TO BE FIT IN YOUR FIFTIES?

Because if you’re fit in your fifties, you double your chances of living to eighty-five. And if you’re not fit then, you reduce your lifespan by an average of eight years. Those are the conclusions from a recently published study that tracked 1,444 men and 321 women in their fifties. The research began in the 1970s, when doctors began performing physical exams on fifty-somethings. By 2006, 906 men and 238 women of the original group were still alive and at least eighty-five years old. The researchers found that men were 1.8 times more likely to make it to eighty-five if they were fit in their fifites and women were 2.2 times more likely. What you can do: Doctors advise middle-aged people to participate in at least moderate exercise—brisk walking, doubles tennis, or ballroom dancing, for example—thirty minutes a day, five days a week. Already doing that? A new study that followed 34,079 healthy women recommends that women exercise sixty minutes a day to keep from gaining weight as they age.

IF YOU’RE IN YOUR EARLY SIXTIES, WHAT ARE THE ODDS THAT YOU’LL NEED NURSING HOME CARE AT SOME POINT DURING YOUR LIFE?

Four out of ten of you will require nursing home care. And it doesn’t come cheap. In 2009, a private room at a nursing home cost an average of $219 a day in the United States, ranging from $584 a day in Alaska to $132 in Louisiana. Want to stay at home? You’ll pay a home health aide an average of $21 an hour—as much as $30 an hour in Rochester, Minnesota, and as little as $13 an hour in Shreveport, Louisiana. What you can do: Short of moving to Louisiana, insurance agents and financial advisors advise people who don’t want to live in a nursing home to buy home health care insurance, which has the potential to save you many thousands of dollars.

HOW MUCH HAIR DO WE LOSE EVERY DAY?

Fifty to one hundred strands. The good news is we usually grow that many replacement strands per day if we’re physically and emotionally fit. But stress and a host of other health issues can cause us to lose more than we grow. Medicines that treat depression and acne or boost testosterone can lead to hair loss, and women also lose hair during menopause. Sometimes bad genes supersede everything else. In the United States, about 50 million men and 30 million women lose hair because heredity isn’t on their sides. What you can do: Americans spend about $180 million a year on hair-loss products, but dermatologists and other doctors warn that few products are effective. See a dermatologist who specializes in hair loss and ask for a scalp biopsy. The biopsy may hold clues to your hair loss. If it’s due to iron deficiency, for example, take iron supplements.

THERE’S A GLOBAL SHORTAGE OF KIDNEYS FOR TRANSPLANTS, AND ONLY ONE COUNTRY HAS ENOUGH FOR THOSE WHO NEED THEM. WHICH IS IT?

Iran, which pays donors $1,200 and offers them free health insurance for one year. In addition, Iranian donors receive $2,300 to $4,500 from either the recipients or from charitable organizations. Iran has done this since 1988 and is believed to be the only nation without a shortage of kidneys for transplants. Singapore is considering paying organ donors as much as $50,000, and Israel has a program that makes it easier for people to receive organs if they are willing to donate them. In the United States in 2009, about 13,600 people received a kidney, about 3,500 people died while waiting for one, and more than 85,000 others were on waiting lists. Numerous economists, including a Nobel laureate, argue that there would be no shortage in the United States if donors were paid $15,000. Reports of black market sales indicate that kidneys go for about $20,000 in India, $40,000 in China, and $160,000 in Israel, with brokers making a tidy profit. Bonus question #1: How much will you shorten your life if you donate a kidney? Not at all, according to a study of all 80,347 people who donated a kidney between 1994 and 2009. Donors died no sooner on average than did members of a control group. Bonus question #2: What other organs can you do without? A lung, an eye, and some intestines, and, in rare cases, a pancreas. What you can do: As many as 120,000 Americans are on organ waiting lists of some kind. You can donate a kidney while you’re alive, but it’s obviously a lot less painful to donate your organs upon your death. You can sign up to do this when you receive or renew your driver’s license.

JUST ABOUT ALL OF US HAVE HAD OUR HEARTS BROKEN, BUT CAN A HEART LITERALLY BREAK?

Yes. About 1 percent of heart attack sufferers had relatively clear, healthy arteries. In those cases, the heart attacks were caused by severe emotional or physical trauma that triggered a massive amount of adrenaline that overwhelms the heart and causes it to fail. Doctors have a name for what happens when emotional trauma triggers heart attacks: broken-heart syndrome. Here are five emotional traumas that have triggered heart attacks: losing a spouse, gambling away a lot of money, watching a pet suffer, getting lost in an unsafe neighborhood, and feeling overwhelmed by new computer software.

BY NOW MOST OF US KNOW THAT EATING A LOT OF FISH HELPS YOUR HEART STAY HEALTHY, BUT IS THERE ANY OTHER GOOD REASON TO EAT IT?

Yes. A study of about 15,000 seniors in nations as diverse as Chile, China, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru, India, and Venezuela found that people who ate fish almost every day were 20 percent less likely to suffer from dementia than those who ate it a few days a week. And those who ate it a few times a week were about 20 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who never ate it. What you can do: Can’t afford to buy as much fish as you should eat? Doctors recommend taking fish oil supplements every day.

ATHEROSCLEROSIS, OR HARDENING OF THE ARTERIES, IS WIDELY BELIEVED TO BE A MODERN DISEASE, THE PRODUCT OF TOO MUCH FAST FOOD AND TOO LITTLE EXERCISE. TRUE?

False. A team of researchers—an Egyptian and four Americans—used CT scanning in 2009 to examine twenty-two especially well-preserved mummies at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo. They found a buildup of cholesterol in the arteries, a condition that can lead to heart attacks and strokes. Of the twenty-two mummies, sixteen were members of Pharaoh Merneptah’s court and lived somewhere between 1981 BC and 334 AD. Sixteen of the twenty-two were preserved well enough that the researchers could identify cardiovascular tissue, and of those sixteen, the researchers identified five confirmed cases of atherosclerosis and four probable cases. What you can do: The more we study cholesterol the more it seems to be a problem of genetics, but doctors say you can lower your cholesterol by eating healthier. Here’s a list of some cholesterol-lowering foods found in just about every grocery store: oatmeal; oat bran; fatty fish such as salmon, trout, sardines, and fresh tuna; and walnuts, almonds, and other tree nuts.

MARIJUANA HAS BEEN PROVEN TO HELP RELIEVE PAIN AND CURB NAUSEA, AND IN RECENT YEARS, AN INCREASING NUMBER OF STATES HAVE LEGALIZED IT. BUT HOW ADDICTIVE IS IT COMPARED WITH OTHER DRUGS?

Nine percent of the people who tried it once became dependent, according to a study that included 8,098 people. The most addictive drug: tobacco (32 percent), followed by heroin (23 percent), cocaine (17 percent), alcohol (15 percent), stimulants other than cocaine (11 percent), sedatives and hypnotic drugs (9 percent), psychedelic drugs (5 percent), and inhalant drugs (4 percent). At least fourteen states have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes, and others are considering it. Although marijuana can help with pain and nausea, it’s not a cure-all: It also increases appetite and heart rate, causes drowsiness, and impairs memory and coordination. And for younger users, it’s considered a gateway drug.

WOULD IT BE SUCH A BIG DEAL IF WE DIDN’T HAVE OUR PINKIE FINGERS?

A bigger deal than you might think. The pinkie finger and the ring finger give you power, and without the pinkie, you’d lose a whopping 50 percent of your hand strength. With reward comes risk: The pinkie, because it’s on the end, is less protected than the other fingers and is fractured twice as often.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR TOES? IF YOU CAN’T TOUCH THEM, DOES THAT MEAN YOU’RE AN OUT-OF-SHAPE SLOB WHO’S GOING TO DIE BEFORE YOUR TIME?

Well, uh, maybe. According to a study of 526 healthy adults between twenty and eighty-three, those who couldn’t touch their toes were more likely to have stiff arteries, which make it harder for the heart to move blood and can increase the risk for heart attacks and strokes. The researchers tested flexibility by having people sit on the floor with their legs straight and attempt to touch their toes. They tested their arterial flexibility by placing blood pressure cuffs on the ankles and arms of the participants. Good news if you’re younger: The researchers saw a correlation between inflexible bodies and inflexible arteries in those over forty but not in those under forty. What you can do: Personal trainers say stretching is way underrated. Try stretching every day. Most bodies will react favorably...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• Sources
• Searchable Terms
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Praise
• Other Books by Mark Di Vincenzo
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher