The De-Textbook Read online

  Deoxygenated Blood

  THE MYTH: The blood inside your veins is blue, only turning red when exposed to oxygen.

  This one is simple. White people, look at the underside of your arm right now. See all those veins? They’re blue, right? That’s because the blood coursing through them is also blue. It only turns red when it mixes with oxygen, a scientific process that those who have witnessed it have rated as “totally not worth it.”

  FIGURE 1.5 Bleeding to death on Earth versus bleeding to death on the moon: both probably terrible.

  THE TRUTH: Blood comes in two colors—red and even more red.

  Deoxygenated blood isn’t blue. Those veins we asked (demanded, actually) every white person look at also aren’t blue. The veins and the blood they carry are not only red; they’re even redder than oxygenated blood. That blue? That’s just your eyes playing tricks on you. The fact that you can see them at all is due to how close they are to the surface of the skin.

  The color change can be chalked up to the fact that light reflects blue through Caucasian skin, unlike how it reflects through the skin of other races, whose veins can look brown, green, or pink. Basically, blue blood was one of those “scientific discoveries” that probably happened when some white guy noticed something that was true about his race, briefly considered checking with people of different races, then remembered who was the white guy here and went back to his job deciding what color to make Band-Aids.

  Body Heat

  THE MYTH: You lose most of your body heat through your head.

  Listen up, this is just common sense. Heat rises. And where is your head? It’s on top of your body. So naturally, when heat escapes your body, it leaves through your head (see Figure 1.6). Now quit asking questions and put this hat on. It looks like a panda’s head. So not only will it keep you warm, but chicks will dig it, too.

  THE TRUTH: Covering one part of your body has as much effect as covering any other.

  The myth that heat escapes your body through your head is based on what could very well be the most poorly executed study ever conducted. In 1951, the U.S. Army tossed a bunch of test subjects wearing the latest in arctic survival gear out into the freezing cold and measured how much body heat they lost. One thing, though—they didn’t bother to put hats on them. Shockingly, most of the measured body heat escaped through their uncovered domes. Who could have seen that coming? The army was so proud of this groundbreaking discovery that it published the finding in a survival manual and stressed that hats were mandatory survival gear. Just like that, your mother had something to nag you about for the rest of her blessed time on this earth. The truth is, an uncovered head loses no more body heat than any other uncovered body part and gets you less jail time than a few of them.

  FIGURE 1.6 A man doffs his hat to a passing woman—the number one cause of hypothermia and global warming according to some bullshit your mom learned from the army.

  Corrected User’s Manual to You

  THE MOST BASIC THINGS YOU’RE ALMOST CERTAINLY DOING WRONG

  There are certain aspects of life that, thankfully, seem to come preinstalled—simple things that your body figures out almost instinctively so you can save all of your precious focus for cartoon plotlines and the instructions on the backs of shampoo bottles. There’s only one problem: You’re doing every single one of those things incorrectly, and it’s killing you.

  Most of the things that your body does instinctively are actually behaviors you’ve learned by watching your parents and the people around you. And humanity has picked up some pretty terrible habits over the years. For instance . . .

  Corrected User’s Manual to You: SITTING

  HOW YOU DO IT

  In a chair, at a 90-degree angle, which it turns out is the worst thing you can possibly do to your body that isn’t smoking. Your parents warned you about posture but forgot to mention that just sitting in a chair leads to a lower life expectancy and increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. You’d be better off connecting that chair to thousands of volts of electricity and getting it over with.

  It seems like the most natural thing in the world, but sitting in a chair is a relatively new development. Prior to the past few centuries, you could sit on a backless stool or bench, or you kneeled. We’ve still got terms like “chairman” that show how uncommonly high you had to get in an organization before they gave you something to lean back against.

  Now that everyone gets to sit in a chair all day like fancy millionaires, the core muscles that used to hold us together are turning into pudding, which is apparently really bad for you. So bad that people who work a desk job and exercise regularly die younger than people in careers that require them to stay on their feet.

  HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO IT

  Look at that weird guy in the office who sits on a giant inflatable ball. Ugh. As much as we hate to say it, the best way to keep your abs from taking the day off is to engage them by challenging your ass with a seat that requires some degree of balance and precision. Think a backless stool, a bench, or, if all those things burned down, a bouncy, pastel-colored yoga ball.

  You can also avoid the Sitting Death by kneeling, crouching, standing, or continuously performing jump-squats and roundhouse kicks while at your desk, at the dinner table, on roller coasters, or anywhere else you’d usually sit. Another option is to constantly recline at least 135 degrees, which has been shown to provide some relief to the spine but also increases tenfold your chances of falling asleep at work.

  So if you don’t feel like being “that guy with the ball,” getting fired, or ratcheting all your tables at home up to standing height, your best bet is to spend as much time as possible at the stool’s natural habitat: the bar. Do it for your health.

  Corrected User’s Manual to You: POOPING

  BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW: Not only is sitting on a toilet the wrong way to poop, it can also give you hemorrhoids, which will, in turn, make it even harder to poop! Life is an endless cycle of wrong-poopedness.

  HOW YOU DO IT

  Pooping is easy, right? So easy that you can do it sitting down, over an interminable length of time. It turns out, sitting at a right angle doesn’t just inflict crippling spinal damage; it also slows the pooping process. That’s because standard “sitting toilets” force the pooper to create a kink in their poop-tubes, jamming the poop all up in there.

  HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO IT

  Like a catcher: ass below knees, waist and knees bent at acute angles, head forward so you don’t witness the sin you are returning unto the earth. Remove catcher’s mitt prior to wiping.

  You’re supposed to squat without support, like you’re making a “mound” of your own right behind home plate. Modern toilets only came to prominence in the nineteenth century, meaning that the human race has been dumping on the go for far longer than we’ve been holing up with our laptops on the ceramic throne. In fact, our musculature is designed specifically to hinder defecation when we’re in a standing or sitting position, presumably because otherwise a game of musical chairs would be fraught with a lot more peril.

  A recent study showed that a sample group of people who agreed to poop and then talk to a scientist about it found their elimination experience “easier” and up to a minute shorter in the free squat than in the now-traditional sitting posture. So next time you’ve got the urge, try hovering above the can instead of slapping cheek, and see if you don’t set a land speed record yourself.

  Corrected User’s Manual to You: BATHING

  HOW YOU DO IT

  Too frequently. Or, if you’re French, c’est parfait! Although most developed nations encourage daily washing, there are a few reasons that it’s a bad idea, and only one of them is, “it’s easier not to.”

  HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO IT

  The rampant use of antibacterial soap has fueled the mutation of bacteria, causing them to evolve into stronger and deadlier versions of themselves. Like any evolutionary arms race, the more we push back against
the bacteria swarming all around us, the stronger they get, and some scientists warn of an impending superbacterial outbreak and subsequent disappointing film trilogy.

  If you’re not the type to worry about the good of the globe or tiny things that can kill you invisibly and are everywhere, there’s a selfish reason not to bathe as well: the horny layer. That’s the outer layer of your skin and also the name of the film that gathers on the surface of everything in a strip club. Daily bathing tends to strip off this protective cell layer, leaving us more prone to disease and infection and looking, ironically, like a person who never showers.

  It all comes down to what you value more: efficiency, the environment, and your health . . . or not smelling like ass. No one’s saying that daily washing doesn’t keep you smelling nice and fresh. It’s just incorrect. And can you really live with that? Not if a superbacterium washes from your head to your feet and gives you leprosy you can’t. That can happen.

  Corrected User’s Manual to You: BRUSHING YOUR TEETH

  HOW YOU DO IT

  Like Space Invaders: Right. Down. Left. Down. You work hard, you play hard, and, by God, you brush hard.

  Wrong. Bad.

  You probably also brush right after meals, right? So bits of food don’t get a chance to take root and become cavities? Also wrong. You idiot. In fact, brushing your teeth with vigor right after meals is one of the best ways to ensure that your teeth are riddled with cavities and become powder in your slack mouth.

  HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO IT

  Right before meals, and with soft bristles. Also brush your gums more than your teeth (it’s more of a massage) and floss regularly.

  The phenomenon at work is this: Acid in food causes your teeth to soften, leaving the outer layer of enamel most vulnerable right after meals. Brushing after breakfast and dinner can lead to a stripping off of enamel and more cavities as a result, whereas flossing dislodges bacteria and bits of food without disturbing the skin of your teeth, or “horny layer: mouth edition.” As for your gums, well, what needs more protection: the rock-hard bone-knives evolution gave you to tear the throat from a gazelle, or the sensitive pink foundation that keeps them from tumbling uselessly out of your jaw?

  If you want to keep a full set of healthy teeth on which to mount a set of solid-gold grillz, focus on the gums, floss, give your teeth a rest, and try not to contemplate suicide when your rancid postmeal breath drives away everyone you ever loved.

  Corrected User’s Manual to You: BREATHING

  HOW YOU DO IT

  So far you’ve been wrong about how to sit still, clean yourself, and let solid waste fall from your ass. Think you can handle the simple intake of oxygen? Well, pop quiz, hotshot! Breathe!

  Did your chest expand and your shoulders rise with the mighty suffusion of wind to your majestic lungs? Or did your shoulders stay put and your gut puff out like it does when you’re trying to pretend you’re pregnant (or “more pregnant,” if you are pregnant)?

  If you picked the majestic lungs one, you’re in the statistical majority. You’re also more prone to anxiety, pain, fatigue, panic attacks, and headaches.

  HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO IT

  The way that accentuates your beer gut, unfortunately. Breathing with the diaphragm, a large muscle at the base of your lungs, just above your stomach (as well as a terrible strip club off the highway), provides a steadier and more ample supply of oxygen to your blood. That means you don’t have to breathe as often or as quickly, and the oxygen level in your blood will tend to be higher.

  Which, for some reason, gives you superpowers. Coaches, acting instructors, and doctors the world over recommend diaphragmatic breathing exercises as a key to swift performance enhancement. And the good news is, with practice, you can even retrain your body to breathe properly while you’re sleeping. The bad news is, you’re probably fucking that up, too.

  Corrected User’s Manual to You: SLEEPING

  HOW YOU DO IT

  If you’ve ever lain awake at three in the morning, staring at the wall, counting down the minutes until your alarm goes off while you wonder, terrified, if you have actual, diagnosable insomnia, then you are sleeping wrong. But don’t worry, you’ve got company: Americans are prescribed hundreds of millions of sleeping pills a year.

  Of course, “wrong” implies a right way, a method of sleeping about to be disclosed to you that will ensure eight hours of uninterrupted rest every time, right? Wrong again! Ha! Are we beginning to sense a pattern here?

  HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO IT

  Your supposed “natural” sleep schedule of eight perfect hours of unconsciousness is a new invention. In fact, until the advent of round-the-clock access to electric lighting, it was very popular to sleep in “chunks,” with an hour or two of wakefulness in the night spent on quiet reflection, pipe smoking, prayer, chatting with neighbors, or crazy predawn Pilgrim sex. The normal schedule was: Sleep for three to four hours, then up for an hour or two of strange pipe-sex with the neighbors, then three or four more hours of sleep and/or postcoital shame-dwelling.

  See? Instead of working yourself into a panic or downing prescription medication to avoid having to lie awake at night, you should be getting laid on the daily. If that doesn’t put you back to sleep, nothing will.

  Discussion Questions

  (For Proving That Your Health Teacher Is a Liar)

  Your health sciences teacher is bluffing! The truth is, he or she can’t explain some surprisingly simple stuff your body is doing. It turns out that “Because I said so” and “You’re too young to understand” are actually code for “Even the smartest scientists in the world can’t answer that, kid.”

  1. Why Do We Yawn?

  Our brain needs oxygen.

  Yawning doesn’t actually seem to serve any purpose. Next time you feel a yawn coming, suppress it. You won’t suddenly die scrabbling at the air or anything. Even more baffling: Yawning has been proven contagious. When a chimpanzee yawns, the other chimps yawn in turn. If you yawn, you can make a dog yawn. Odds are you’ve yawned once just because you read the word “yawn” several times above. Why?

  Because we like messing with your head, that’s why. Oh, you mean why does it happen? Who knows?

  Elementary school textbooks may say that low oxygen levels in the blood trigger yawning, but it’s been found that it may actually decrease oxygen intake. It makes sense: People don’t yawn more in Colorado. You don’t see athletes yawning in the middle of a sprint. Seriously, Science just saw you taking a huge breath one time and figured, “Guy must need some air,” then went back to tinkering with its robots.

  In all fairness, robots are way cooler than yawn studies.

  2. Why Do We Sleep?

  It’s a reboot for the brain.

  Don’t ask Science. It’ll just give you a hearty shrug and start whipping test tubes at you until you flee the lab. Among the explanations for sleep that scientists have proposed, there’s the theory that sleep is helping the brain clean house after a long day of learning, like an underpaid maid who knocks you unconscious so you don’t keep stepping on her freshly mopped floor. Or the brain might be reinforcing the stuff you did that day: Scientists have seen that when rats were asleep the same neurons fired as when they had run mazes earlier that day. They were essentially reliving their day and “practicing” the maze.

  But there’s a problem with both of these theories. Plants and microorganisms have dormant states that are very similar to sleep, which kind of puts doubt on the whole “Sleep is good for thinking” theory, since, unless we missed a few papers this year, scientists aren’t running rhododendrons through mazes, because plants can’t think.

  In fact, sleep may be wholly unnecessary. One Vietnamese man, Thai Ngoc, claims he hasn’t slept a wink in thirty-three years. And he may not be entirely full of shit: Researchers recently discovered a gene mutation that allows people to sleep only two to four hours a night without any adverse effects at all.

  So is sleep useless, then? O
r is it vital downtime our psychic librarians use to make sense of our crazy lives? Or is it just God’s way of preventing adolescent boys from injuring themselves by forcing them to take a break between masturbation sessions? Your guess is as good as Science’s.

  3. How Does Medicine Work?

  The pills have chemicals that change the way your body works.

  Every high school has the urban legend about the kid who drank a bunch of non-alcoholic beer or smoked a joint full of oregano and acted totally messed up while everyone laughed at him. Science has been using the same prank to “cure” humans for years. The more we learn about medicine, the more it resembles flight in the Peter Pan universe: Sugar pills and other forms of fake medication have been found to help and even cure everything from warts to heart disease to asthma if the patients just believe that they’re taking real medicine.

  Even weirder: The effectiveness of various medications is determined by what color they are. In one sleep study, every patient was given the exact same sedative, but some patients received it in a blue pill and others in an orange pill. The blue-pill takers reported falling asleep thirty minutes faster, and sleeping thirty minutes longer, than the orange-pill takers.