Being a frontline health care worker during the COVID-19 pandemic can be a continuing source of sleeplessness, which may increase the risk of contracting the disease. In a summer 2020 survey of 2,884 workers exposed to COVID-19 patients daily, 568 developed COVID-19. For each hour longer that these health care workers slept, their odds of contracting COVID-19 fell 12%, reports STAT. Having severe sleep problems increased the odds of developing COVID-19 by 88%.

Health care workers who reported daily burnout were more than twice as likely to have COVID-19 and three times as likely to say it was severe.

Body of Knowledge

Records are obviously incomplete, but the smallest baby known to survive was a little girl nicknamed "Saybie," born in San Diego, California, in December 2018. She weighed 8.6 ounces, roughly the size of a large apple or two-thirds of a can of soda.

Saybie was born via C-section at 23 weeks and 3 days gestation after her mother experienced severe pregnancy problems. Normal gestation is roughly 40 weeks. After five months in the hospital, Saybie was discharged as a healthy 5-pound infant.

Get Me That, Stat!

National guidelines recommend women get a mammogram every two years between ages 50 and 74. A recent study found that 80% of U.S. breast cancer centers recommend annual mammograms beginning at age 40. The researchers also noted that false-positive rates are higher for women screened every year (61%) compared with every other year (42%) over 10 years, resulting in more biopsies, surgeries and other treatments for benign tumors or indolent cancers.

Mark Your Calendar

May is awareness month for strokes, arthritis, cystic fibrosis, hepatitis, lupus, melanoma, asthma, allergies, celiac disease, osteoporosis, teen pregnancy, mental health and high blood pressure, the last of which probably rose while reading about all of the other conditions you should be aware of this month.

Counts

60: Percentage of opioids prescribed post-surgery that are not used (indicative that physicians may be overprescribing)

Source: JAMA Network

Stories for the Waiting Room

Can your hair turn gray overnight? The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is that hair gets its color from melanin, the same substance that darkens skin. When melanocytes (a type of cell) stop producing melanin, hair loses color. Gray hair has less pigment; white hair has none. Hair color is controlled by genes, so graying happens sooner in some people than others (if it happens at all), but it only happens gradually.

Doc Talk

Xerostomia: dry mouth.

Phobia of the Week

Catoptrophobia: fear of mirrors.

Food for Thought

Casu marzu is a type of cheese that originates from Sardinia. It is made by allowing flies to lay eggs on the surface of a cheese known as pecorino sardo. When the eggs hatch, the maggots add fermentation and flavor. Some casu marzu consumers prefer to remove the maggots before eating, but others do not. Due to obvious health hazards, i.e., the potential of maggots also munching on your intestinal lining, casu marzu is banned in some countries.

Best Medicine

A psychiatrist was seeing a patient for the first time.

Psychiatrist: "You're here because your family is worried about your taste in socks."

Patient: "Yes, I like wool socks."

Psychiatrist: "That's not unusual. Many people prefer wool socks over those made of cotton or synthetic materials. I, too, prefer wool socks."

Patient: "Really? With oil and vinegar or just a little lemon?"

Hypochondriac's Guide

Auto-brewery syndrome occurs when alcohol levels in the blood are measurably high even though the person has not imbibed. A type of yeast present in the stomach and intestines ferments carbohydrates to produce ethanol, which in turn intoxicates the person even without drinking.

Observation

"The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning." — American physician and essayist Lewis Thomas (1913-1993)

Medical History

The oldest known functional prosthesis is a bronze leg dating to approximately 300 B.C., found in Capua, Italy. The leg was displayed at the Royal College of Surgeons in London but lost when the site was bombed by German planes in World War II.

Ig Nobel Apprised

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

In 1992, the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine went to a group of Japanese researchers at the Shiseido Research Center in Yokohama for elucidating the chemical compounds responsible for foot odor and concluding that people who think they have stinky feet have stinky feet, and those who do not do not.

Sum Body

Calories burned per hour (male/female):

— Sleeping: 65/55

— Sitting: 90/70

— Standing: 120/100

— Walking: 220/180

— Walking uphill: 440/360

— Running: 600/420

Med School

The medical abbreviation Rx is short for "prescription." Its origins are unclear, though one suggestion is that it comes from the Latin "recipere," meaning "to take." Xtra credit if you can decipher these:

1. Sx

2. Dx

3. Hx

Answers: 1. Symptoms 2. Diagnosis 3. History.

Last Words

"Let all brave Prussians follow me!" — field marshal Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin (1684-1757) at the Battle of Prague, immediately before being fatally struck by a cannonball

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: Engin_Akyurt at Pixabay