Good News! Sleeping in on the Weekend Might Prevent an Early Death

A study by Swedish and American researchers shows that people under the age of 65 who get less than five hours of sleep during weekends have an increased risk of death.

Photo Credit: US Army

The study followed over 30,000 people over a 13-year period and the results were published in the Journal of Sleep Research. But if you get less than five hours of sleep per night during your busy week, don’t fret. Catching up on sleep during the weekends can help you offset these risks. Keep in mind that getting more than 9 hours of sleep each night can also be harmful. It’s best to shoot for 6-7 when you lay down for the evening.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

But these scientific findings don’t affect people over the age of 65. The researchers note that most people at or above retirement age get an equal amount of sleep during the week and the weekends.

Photo Credit: Flickr,Marc Lewis

Bottom line: if you’ve had a long week, sleep a couple of extra hours on Saturday and Sunday. Your body will thank you for it.

h/t: Mashable

The post Good News! Sleeping in on the Weekend Might Prevent an Early Death appeared first on UberFacts.

Good News! Sleeping in on the Weekend Might Prevent an Early Death

A study by Swedish and American researchers shows that people under the age of 65 who get less than five hours of sleep during weekends have an increased risk of death.

Photo Credit: US Army

The study followed over 30,000 people over a 13-year period and the results were published in the Journal of Sleep Research. But if you get less than five hours of sleep per night during your busy week, don’t fret. Catching up on sleep during the weekends can help you offset these risks. Keep in mind that getting more than 9 hours of sleep each night can also be harmful. It’s best to shoot for 6-7 when you lay down for the evening.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

But these scientific findings don’t affect people over the age of 65. The researchers note that most people at or above retirement age get an equal amount of sleep during the week and the weekends.

Photo Credit: Flickr,Marc Lewis

Bottom line: if you’ve had a long week, sleep a couple of extra hours on Saturday and Sunday. Your body will thank you for it.

h/t: Mashable

The post Good News! Sleeping in on the Weekend Might Prevent an Early Death appeared first on UberFacts.

12 Times the Routine “Sexual History” Question Went Weird

The sexual history question is supposed to be routine. It’s there to cover bases and help doctors and nurses check off boxes and eliminate variables, or lead them to the source of a potential problem.

But, as these 12 stories from doctors, nurses, and patients can attest, when the subject of sex is invoked, the routine can swiftly veer into the absurd:

#1. Be Cool

When I was in year seven, probably 11 or 12 years old, I had broken my foot in a way that needed a minor surgery, so my cute twentysomething nurse was asking me the pre questions with my dad.

When she got to the personal part, she asked if I wanted my dad to leave the room, I said no, because, whatever.

When she asked if I was sexually active, I turned to my dad and said in a loud whisper, “I want her to think I’m cool.”

#2. Socially Active

The best response I’ve heard to this question was from a quiet guy in my freshman college English class.

Somehow our discussion on vaccines led to this topic, and he told a story about his doctor asking if he was sexually active.

His perfect response was, “Bro, I’m not even socially active.”

#3. Sweet Ride

One of my classmates was asking a 75 year old woman with dementia about her occupation for a PT exam.

Her response: “I give blowjobs in my garage to afford my sweet ride.”

#4. “Not that that would change a thing, though.”

I’m a hospital corpsman (navy medic) and I had this older retired salty dog as a patient a while ago.

His wife had passed away, but I didn’t know that.

When I asked if was sexually active he said, “Well, no for two reasons: I’m married, and she’s dead. Not that that would change a thing, though.”

I felt terrible, and then he just started laughing and told me not to feel bad.

Seriously caught me off guard though.

Crusty old bastard!

#5. Huge Difference

My doctor was just telling me a story…

Back when they first started performing vasectomies, doctors had to call their patients back for standard follow up questioning a number of weeks after the procedure.

He told me he got the same answers from all of the couples he interviewed:

Any Sensation change? -No, Any performance Change? – No… etc.

This went on and on… until one day, he asked a couple if there was anything different after the procedure. Any changes at all….

The wife said YES… There is a huge difference since he had the surgery.

My doc was very surprised, and when he inquired further, the wife said, “It tastes different”…

He said it was all he could do to keep from laughing as he made the note of, “Seminal fluid tastes different after procedure”

#6. Lottery

I told my doctor back in high school that I wasn’t sexually active and she said:

“And you go to ______ High School?! I should play the lottery!”

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Medical Pros Reveal the Most NSFW Situations They Encountered at Work

A lot of us like to stay away from NSFW content at work.

Hence the acronym…

But, what if the NSFW actually happens at work?

Well, I suppose you take to AskReddit, and you start sharing those stories.

At least that’s what these 18 doctors, nurses, and vets did:

#1. That should do it

“A person thought pouring Lysol on their diabetic foot-ulcer would keep it from getting infected.”

#2. Ugh!

“An obese women came back to the hospital after an abdominal operation, because her staples had ripped off, and she didn’t notice (!?!).

She now had a huge v-shape gash at least 2 inches deep from her pubis to the diaphragm. We had to clean that gash a couple of times a day.

The first student that went into the room fainted at the site of it, so our teacher asked me to do it (I had the reputation of being tough).

Imagine a small yellow and green river coming out of her each time she moved. The smell was so horrible that we had to opened the window and close the door.

Sadly, that poor woman died of the infection a couple of days later.”

#3. Good job parents!

“A patient’s extended family physically stopped us from resuscitating a completely limp and unresponsive newborn because helping it breathe, ‘isn’t natural. Labor is natural and requires no intervention.’

Baby eventually and slowly perked up about 15 minutes later.

Needless to say, I don’t expect this baby to go to Harvard.”

#4. Kind of like ‘The Walking Dead’

“I had a homeless patient come into the dermatology clinic. He had a filthy bed sheet wrapped around his head, with only part of the left side of his face and left eye exposed.

You could see the rancid stink coming off of his head.

We got him in the exam room and unwrapped his noggin. Turns out he had a basal cell carcinoma (skin cancer) for which he had refused treatment, for like 15 years.

The cancer had eaten away all of the skin on most of his head. There were very large areas of muscle and bone exposed.

The tumor had eaten into his skull and you could see into his skull as well as his sinuses. His right ear was long gone.

I could watch his muscles move and contract while he spoke. It was literally like watching something from The Walking Dead, except there was no sign of infection or maggots or anything else horrible.

It has literally a living, dissected skull talking to us like it was totally normal.

It was simultaneously horrifying and amazing to see.”

 

#5. Bath salts?

“Walked into back room with two patients with CP (cerebral palsy). Another client was in the back with FEMA and mentally disabled.

FEMA client was eating one of the CP clients’ face off.

Blood everywhere, and the screaming is enough to stick in my mind forever.

1/4 of her face was missing after that.”

#6. Fun with veggies

“Bok choi in an adult male’s ass.

Insisted it just, ‘slipped in.’

Removed it, and it had a condom on it.”

#7. Beware of washcloths

“A story about a quadriplegic guy who just had an operation. My teacher, another student, and I were taking care of it.

The teacher took a washcloth and decided to clean his face, and that’s when it happened.

The guy started to eat the washcloth. Yes, eat it.

The more he would eat it, the more he would start to choke on it.

The other student panicked. My teacher was pulling on the washcloth with her 2 hands and her knee on the bed to get some grip.

Nothing…

The guy was still eating it and choking. So I had, probably the best idea in my life, and I block his nostrils with my hand.

He couldn’t breathe, so he let go of the washcloth.

The 3 of us were shaking, sweating and swearing to never put a washcloth near the mouth of someone who just came back from surgery.

The funny thing is that I talked to the guy a couple of days later, and he didn’t remember a thing.”

#8. OBGYN

“Probably the most disgusting time of your medical school career will be your obstetrics and gynecology rotation.

You can expect on a daily basis to be splattered with blood/amniotic fluid mixtures, and on a slightly less frequent basis to be covered in vomit, urine, and poop.

For me the worst was assisting with C-sections. Mostly as the med student it would be your job to hold the retractor, which means standing there and pulling on a big metal thing and staying perfectly still.

Once they cut into the uterus, the amniotic fluid and blood all spills out all over your hands and arms and drips onto your gown and down to your feet.

It’s warm and there’s a lot of it and you can feel it through your gloves, but you can’t move.

That’s not really a special occurrence. It’s literally every day for the whole month (or more if you decide you like it of course).”

#9. Classy

“Walked in on a woman blowing her husband.

She had just delivered a baby 2 hours prior, who was in the NICU.
If my hubby had asked me to do that even a week after having our baby, I would have punched him in his dick-hole.”

#10. Depressing

“The worst day on the job was being the nurse for a pregnant woman who was due the same week as me…

I was in the room when the doctor told her that there wasn’t a heartbeat anymore. I sat with her while she cried.

Her boyfriend didn’t answer her calls.

She was hospitalized for an infection and I visited her after my shift. I felt so awful that she had to go through that alone.

I later found out that my baby had trisomy 13 and had an abortion.

I felt guilty for watching a woman cry over what she couldn’t control and then opting out of a wanted, albeit flawed, pregnancy.”

#11. A man and his dildo

“My dad is an ER doctor. Early in his career, he had a big, burly truck driver come into the emergency room and flat out say, ‘Doc I’ve got a dildo in my ass you’ve gotta get it out.’

So, my dad takes him into a room with a nurse accompanying him, has the guy bend over and grab the exam table, and my dad tells the nurse to duck when he says so.

He grabs hold of the end of the dildo with those gator clamp things, and straight yanks it out as hard as he can.

The nurse behind him never ducked, and a splurge of blood and shit hits her, full-frontal.

My dad said the nurse ran out screaming, leaving behind a perfect silhouette against the wall while the dildo flopped around the floor, still vibrating.”

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Video of Two Lynx Screaming at Each Other Will Look Familiar to Anyone with Siblings

“Stop touching your brother!”

“I’ll pull this car over right now!”

“What are you even fighting about $(*@(!!)!!!”

Cue descent into madness.

Every parent of more than one child ever has walked into an argument over nothing that sounds like incoherent screaming. Screaming that grabs onto your spine and won’t let go.

And that’s exactly what it sounds like these two lynxes are doing in this video captured by Nicole Lewis near Avery Lake in Ontario, Canada. According to National Geographic, the animals have these confrontations over territorial meltdowns (just like your children!).

But yeah. It totally sounds like they’re just yelling over something they’ve both forgotten about by now. Welcome to parenthood, animal-style.

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Science Says Practicing Yoga and Meditation Can Inflate Your Ego

A forthcoming study in Psychological Science confirms what everyone who has a yogi friend already suspects: regular practitioners experience inflated egos.

According to the study, both yoga and meditation increase “self-enhancement,” which is the tendency for people to attach importance to their own actions. In a report, Quartz said that the study followed 93 yoga students over the course of 15 weeks, and measured superiority, communal narcissism, and self-esteem. They repeated the study with 162 meditation students.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

In the hour after their practices, both participants showed significantly higher self-enhancement and were more likely to make statements that implied an inflated sense of self-importance.

Whether this is good or bad is your call, but given that the roots of Hindu and Buddhist yoga is the ideas of quieting the ego and conquering the self, there seems to be little doubt that Western-style yoga seems to be missing the mark.

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6 Tips on How to Pass a Lie Detector Test, Just in Case…

Because you just never know when you’re going to have the need, right?

But seriously, it’s not just for criminals anymore. Big corporations sometimes require them for new hires or when checking up on staff being considered for loans or insurance. With some practice and these tips, you should be able to pass but keep your dignity (and some of your secrets) intact.

First of all, it helps to know how they work. The tests measure a few of your body responses and pit them against your “control” answers in order to determine the likelihood of your telling the truth. These are:

Photo Credit: Brightside

Now, on to the advice.

#6. Be physically prepared.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

The 24 hours before you’re going to take the test, make sure you stick to your usual regimen in order to keep your mind calm, and make sure you get some good sleep in, too. When it’s time to go, make sure you’re not too hungry – or too full – and that you’re wearing comfortable clothes.

#5. Take your time.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Pausing isn’t taken as a sign of untruth – hurrying is what can distort the results. Go ahead and take a pause before you answer; you can use the time to determine which type of question you’ve been asked and whether or not you’re able to answer it truthfully.

#4. It’s OK to feel nervous – in fact, it might even help.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

If you’re nervous about answering the questions, good news – that’s totally normal and tends to give accurate readings. If you feel that you’re so nervous the results might be thrown off, you can check your basic psychological reactions by lying to the control questions, which will then cause the test to assume your answers to the actual questions are accurate.

You can tell the difference by how specific or relevant the questions are. For example, a control question would be “have you ever stolen anything” while a relevant question might be “have you stolen anything from somewhere you work.”

#3. Imagine something pleasant.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

This method works best for people who have a strong sense of control over their body’s reactions, because nerves are easier than thinking about something positive.

But if you’ve got a question and realize you need to lie, think about something pleasant – or better yet, try your best to be relaxed throughout the entire test. In a best case scenario, your body will react according to your mental scenario and not the questions at hand.

#2. Do your best not to lie about details.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

The more true things you say, the more precise the results will be, but people tend to lie about small things they consider inconsequential. You’ll likely have access to the questions before the test in order to avoid any reaction to their newness, so you should be able to prepare in advance.

#1. Avoid physical tricks.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Tricks like stepping on a pin or biting your tongue every time you need a certain reaction won’t fool experienced experts – in fact, they will do the opposite, and the tests themselves are designed to distinguish physical pain from lies.

If you get caught pulling a trick, your results are likely to be evaluated differently, which likely won’t play in your favor.

There are some instances in which lie detector tests are not recommended (and will likely not be useful), like if you’re pregnant or suffer from heart disease, respiratory illness, have epilepsy, deal with chronic pain, or if the test is being forced.

You should let the person in charge know if any of these apply to you. Otherwise, may the odds be ever in your favor!

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This Common but Horrifying Delusion Will Make Your Skin Crawl

Approximately 27 people out of every 100,000 suffer from a syndrome called “delusional infestation.” And while that might not seem like many, it works out to about 90,000 Americans walking around, right now, believing that parasites or insects are crawling inside and over their bodies – even though there’s nothing there.

“Parasites usually complained of crawling, burrowing, and biting worms and insects,” wrote a team of psychologists in the Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore. “Patients may resort to self-mutilation in an attempt to remove the ‘parasites,’ such as obsessive nail-biting, or using a razor blade.”

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Doctors have also seen patients who engage in horrifying self-purification rituals that involve bathing in kerosene or dousing themselves in insecticide. They’ll gather evidence for their doctors that turns out to be pieces of skin or scabs, and will rarely accept a diagnosis once its given, continuing to seek treatment.

Mayo Clinic research has a database of cases that spans 30 years and proves that the condition is more common than originally thought. The condition can be linked to schizophrenia, dementia, and other neurological disorders, and also shows up in habitual users of meth and cocaine.

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Had Your Tonsils Removed? Here’s Some Bad News for You…

For decades, doctors removed the tonsils and adenoids from children who suffered from chronic strep throat infections. The reason is that the tonsils and adenoids trigger a first-line immune response for pathogens entering the respiratory tract, and can become chronically inflamed during our early years.

It probably seemed like a no-brainer to remove organs that don’t perform any essential purpose in favor of happier kids, but a recent study published in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery suggests kids who are missing their tonsils could be at risk for more illnesses in the future.

Photo Credit: MaxHealthline

The study is one of the first of its kind, but the massive dataset of around 1.2 Danish individuals lends serious weight to the results.

“Given that tonsils and adenoids are part of the lymphatic system and play a key role both in the normal development of the immune system and in pathogen screening during childhood and early-life,3 it is not surprising that their removal may impair pathogen detection and increase risk of later respiratory and infectious diseases,” they conclude.

Researchers followed the health of participants from birth to at least age 10, keeping up with some until the age of 30, and found that those who had their tonsils removed before age 9 were 3x more likely to suffer from allergic or infectious upper respiratory tract diseases like asthma, flu, and pneumonia. An adenoidectomy during the same period was associated with a two-fold higher rate of those diseases, plus COPD and conjunctivitis.

Photo Credit: Lavur

In light of the results, the doctors involved in the study conclude that the procedures should be avoided when other treatments are available, and if options run out, the procedures should be delayed for as long as possible to allow a child’s immune system to develop further.

“The growing body of research on developmental origins of disease has convincingly demonstrated that even small perturbations to fetal and childhood growth and development can have lifelong consequences for general health.”

So, you might be screwed, but at least you can save your kids from the same fate!

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7 Facts You Learned in School That Are No Longer True

It stands to reason that, with technology and our understanding of the world changing so rapidly over the past several decades, at least a few of the things we were taught back in the day would no longer be applicable.

Even so, you may not have considered these seven “facts,” or when, exactly, they became obsolete.

#7. Who built the pyramids?

Photo Credit: Pixabay

It wasn’t the Israelites exiled to Egypt, since the massive structures were erected before the Jews existed.

#6. The names of the nine planets.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto is a dwarf planet, and therefore doesn’t count. So there are only 8.

#5. The toilets in Australia.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

If you’re still under the assumption that the water spins the opposite way down the drain in Australia, you’d be wrong. The reasoning behind the claim is the coriolis effect, but it’s not strong enough on Earth to affect small appliances like a toilet or sink.

#4. The hardest material in the world is…

Photo Credit: Pixabay

I bet you said a ‘diamond,’ but if so, you’d be wrong. According to the Scientific American, there are two substances that are (quite a bit) harder: wurtzite boron nitride and lonsdaleite.

#3. You can’t see the Great Wall from outer space.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

According to NASA, the Great Wall is only visible from a max of 1200 miles up – low Earth orbit, not outer space.

#2. How witches were killed.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

In the United States, more witches were hanged than burned, especially during the Salem trials. Witchcraft was punishable by hanging here – in Europe, where the crime was heresy, more burning was done.

#1. Your favorite dinosaur is dead…again.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

There’s no such thing as a brontosaurus. Womp-womp.

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