No one thinks procrastinating is a good thing. Well, almost no one. But a new study shows how it really might not be good for your health and well-being. Researchers surveyed 3,525 college students, asking them to rate their tendency to procrastinate on a standard scale; then followed up every three months for a year, asking about mental health, disabling pain, tobacco, alcohol, poor sleep, cannabis use, loneliness and other woes.

Students with higher baseline levels of procrastination experienced greater depression, anxiety, stress, pain, poor sleep, loneliness and financial trouble. Other studies have associated procrastination with poor health outcomes, but this is the first study to suggest that the problems were likely not the cause of procrastination.

The Other Victims of Cancer

A study in Denmark and Sweden reports that the spouses of cancer patients face an increased risk of experiencing a psychiatric disorder requiring hospitalization, such as depression, anxiety, substance use disorders and stress-related disorders, compared to other spouses. The risk was 30% higher in the first year following diagnosis, but lingered around 14% higher for many subsequent years.

Body of Knowledge

How much you smell depends upon personal hygiene but how you smell depends on your genes (not the kind you wash). Swiss researchers say the body odors of identical twins are significantly more similar than the scents of unrelated people, primarily because identical twins are much more likely to produce the chemicals that comprise sweat and produce body odor in the same formulation.

Get Me That, Stat!

Most kindergarteners still get their recommended routine shots against 14 childhood diseases, but the number is dropping: 95% in the 2019-2020 school year; 94% in 2020-2021 and 93% in 2021-2022. That translated to approximately a quarter million children vulnerable to diseases such as measles, diphtheria, pertussis and more.

Stories for the Waiting Room

In 1900, military surgeon Walter Reed paid people willing to be bitten by yellow fever infected mosquitos $100 in gold ($3,500 today) to take part in experiments. They received an additional $100 if they became infected.

At the time, yellow fever resulted in repeated, deadly epidemics. In 1878, for example, a seven-month epidemic in the Mississippi Valley killed 20,000. Famously, Reed worked with three other doctors, among them Jesse W. Lazear and James Carroll. Carroll was among the volunteers to be bitten. He recovered. Lazear was bitten too (perhaps unintentionally) and died. Reed continued his work in Cuba at a place dubbed Camp Lazear.

Doc Talk

Nasolabial folds: lines in the skin leading from the nose to the outer corners of the mouth, also known as smile or laugh lines

Mania of the Week

Asymmetromania: an uncontrollable obsession with asymmetrical or imbalanced objects

Best Medicine

Pupils are the last part of the body to stop working when you pass? They dilate.

Observation

"Sweat is your fat crying." — Unknown

Medical History

This week in 2000, the dwarf mouse named Yoda was born. Four years later, Yoda was declared the world's oldest laboratory mouse produced without a low-calorie diet. A third smaller than an average mouse, Yoda lived with a larger female (Princess Leia) for protective body warmth in a lab at the University of Michigan Medical School Geriatrics Center. Yoda's strain was genetically modified to live longer, stay smaller and age more slowly than ordinary mice. Average mouse lifespan is approximately two years. Yoda died on April 22, 2004, at four years, 12 days, estimated to be roughly comparable to 136 human years.

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that's hard to take seriously, and even harder to ignore.

In 1998, the Ig Nobel Prize in biology went to Peter Fong of Gettysburg College for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac. (The well-known adage is actually "happy as a clam at high water." Fong's work refines the observation to "happy as a high clam.")

Medical Myths

Egg yolks get a bad rap, with some folks insisting that they are rich in "bad cholesterol." While egg whites are mostly protein, it's the egg yolk that is rich in vitamins and nutrients. And while they do contain so-called bad cholesterol, or LDL, it is not super abundant and it is countered by the presence of "good cholesterol," or HDL. Plus, there is ongoing debate about whether there is a healthy limit to daily cholesterol intake from food and how dietary cholesterol affects blood cholesterol. Research shows that when you get little cholesterol from food, your liver produces more because the body needs cholesterol to build cell membranes and produce hormones such as estrogen and testosterone.

Last Words

"If I convert, it is because it is better that a believer dies than an atheist does." — British author Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011). Hitchens was a famously irascible writer who described himself as "anti-theist," believing that all religions were false, harmful and authoritarian.

Epitaphs

"I'm filling my last cavity." — Headstone of John Denby (1870-1927), a dentist. When his son Maurice, also a dentist, died in 1964, Maurice's headstone read, "Me too."

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: PublicDomainPictures at Pixabay