ArcaMax

If the amount of sleep you're getting varies by more than an hour day-to-day, you may be at a higher risk for type 2 diabetes, according to a new study published in Diabetes Care.

The findings, reports STAT, are based on analysis of more than 84,000 participants in the U.K. Biobank. People without diabetes wore monitors while sleeping for a week between 2013-2015. Researchers then followed their medical records until May 2022. Those with the most irregular sleep patterns had a 34% higher risk of diabetes than those with more regular sleep patterns.

A couple caveats: The sleep habits were only tracked for a week, so it's a small time sample. And those who did go on to develop type 2 diabetes were diagnosed an average of five years later.

Where Women Should Live, Health-Wise

The Commonwealth Fund recently ranked states based on women's health and reproductive care. Topping the list were Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. The lowest-ranked states were Mississippi, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Body of Knowledge

Water comprises different percentages of different people's bodies. Babies have the most, being born at about 78% but declining to 65% at age 1. In adult men, about 60% of the body is water. However, fat tissue does not have as much water as lean tissue. (So much for the water weight excuse.) Fat makes up more of adult women's bodies than men's; roughly 55% of women's bodies is made of water.

Simplified: Babies and kids have more water (as a percentage) than adults. Women have less water than men (as a percentage). People with more fatty tissue have less water than people with less fatty tissue (as a percentage).

Get Me That, Stat!

According to the National Library of Medicine, 35% of nurses and 54% of physicians have reported feeling symptoms of burnout.

Doc Talk

Occult: Something not visible to the naked eye but seen under a microscope or through lab tests

Phobia of the Week

Pteridophobia: Fear of ferns. (Reportedly, Sigmund was very aFreud of the plants.)

Best Medicine

Woman: "Doctor, for the last eight months, my husband has thought he's a lawnmower."

Doctor: "That's terrible. Why didn't you bring him in sooner?"

Woman: "My neighbor just returned him this morning."

Observation

"I recently had my annual physical examination, which I get once every seven years, and when the nurse weighed me, I was shocked to discover how much stronger the Earth's gravitational pull has become since 1990." -- American humorist Dave Barry (b. 1947)

Medical History

This week in 1865, the first U.S. patent for a liquid soap was issued to William Sheppard of New York City. The patent described his "discovery that by the addition of comparatively small quantities of common soap to a large quantity of spirits of hartshorn is thickened to the consistency of molasses, and a liquid soap is obtained of superior detergent qualities." (Hartshorn is an old name for an aqueous solution of ammonia).

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 2001, the Ig Nobel Prize in biology went to Buck Weimer of Pueblo, Colorado, for inventing Under-Ease, airtight underwear with a replaceable charcoal filter that removes bad-smelling aromas before they escape. (Under-Ease products actually made it to market, but the company shut down in 2021 having run out of gas, financially speaking.)

Med School

Match these medical conditions with their medical terms.

1. Blister

2. Hives

3. Scab

4. Bruise

a) Ecchymosis

b) Vesicle

c) Urticaria

d) Eschar

Answers: 1b. 2c. 3d. 4a.

Epitaphs

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." -- Headstone for F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and wife Zelda Sayre (1900-1948). It is the last line of Fitzgerald's classic 1925 novel, "The Great Gatsby."

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