Military veterans, both men and women, are 10 percent more likely to say they're in excellent health than the rest of us, but they're also more likely to suffer from cancer, heart attacks and coronary heart disease.

The UnitedHealth Group interviewed 400,000 participants to better understand health outcomes and disparities among demographic groups. Vets tended to more often describe their general health as good (probably because they're physically more active), but they suffered higher rates for at least some diseases. For example, roughly 6 percent of veterans had suffered heart attacks in the surveyed group, compared to just 3.6 percent of the general population.

Virus Non-Desirous

Before Zika, there was Ebola, SARS, the bird and swine flus — all of which gripped the world's attention and, to varying degrees, fueled fears of epidemics. If past is prologue, there is a new virus looming, which may or may not be known to science.

The health news site STAT recently spoke with Evin Olival of EcoHealth Alliance about what might be the next SARS or Zika-like disease to emerge. By calculating factors like the number of animal species that a virus can infect and the number of vectors able to transmit it (the higher the numbers, the more worrisome), Olival said to keep an eye out for flaviviruses, a family that includes Zika, dengue and yellow fever.

In particular, he mentioned Usutu, Illheus and Louping ill viruses, none of which are currently household names and, with luck, won't be. These viruses are problematic because they occasionally infect people, but also because they infect a number of other animals, which suggests they have the capacity to jump species. Virologists describe them as "promiscuous."

Body of Knowledge

Your lungs are the only internal organs that float.

Number Cruncher

An In-N-Out cheeseburger with onion, ketchup and mustard (268 grams) contains 400 calories, 162 from fat. It has 18 grams of total fat or 28 percent of the recommended total fat intake for a 2,000-calorie daily diet.

It also contains 60 milligrams of cholesterol (20 percent); 1,080 mg of sodium (45 percent); 41 grams of total carbohydrates (14 percent); 10 grams of sugar and 22 g of protein.

Counts

16: Current maximum shift for first-year resident doctors

28: Proposed maximum shift proposed

80: Maximum hours per week a resident can work, now and under proposal

Source: Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education

Doc Talk

Wallet biopsy: What happens to discharged patients when they meet with the hospital cashier

Phobia of the Week

Phronemophobia: fear of thinking

Never Say Diet

The Major League Eating record for fish tacos is 30 in 5 minutes, held by Joey Chestnut. Note: Chestnut is a professional eater, so the scales were tipped in his favor. There were no ties, Chestnut is the sole champ, though some observers thought he cod have done better. You gotta admit some of these puns are finny.

Observation

"Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway." —Anonymous (and probably dead)

Medical History

This week in 2001, the first person in the world to receive a fully self-contained artificial heart, died in Louisville, Ky. Fifty-nine-year-old Robert Tools had received an AbioCor heart implant 151 days earlier at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, KY. Doctors said Tools' death was not caused by problems with the AbioCor heart device, but severe abdominal bleeding caused by long-standing health problems.

Self-Exam

True or False: Your thumb is roughly the same length as your nose.

Answer: True. (Go ahead and check.)

Medical Myths

Eating a late-night snack or meal does not contribute to weight gain any more than eating during the day. The real culprit here is two-fold. One, if you've already consumed the recommended daily allowance of calories (2,000 for a woman, 2,500 for a man) during the day then you're just over-consuming. Two, odds are that late snack is going to be followed by bed, which means no opportunity to burn off the excess calories.

Last words

"Damn it! How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?" —South American revolutionary Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) Bolivar's last words are also sometimes recorded as a less cryptic and more mundane "Fetch the luggage, they do not want us here." Bolivar had been planning to leave Colombia for exile in Europe when he died of tuberculosis.