Milestone effect keeps many of us clinging to life

Q: What's the most blessed gift any of us can receive, as do thousands of folks for their birthday every year?

A: Extra days of life on planet Earth, say Mitsuru Shimizu and Brett Pelham in "Basic and Applied Social Psychology."

When they studied details surrounding 30 million deaths over the years, they found that people were less likely to die right before their birthday or before Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year's Day than on days just after the events, presumably due to some sort of "death-deferral effect."

Many people seem able to muster the "will to live" a little longer in order to reach these milestones or strong family-connected days.

Regarding the milestone effect, the authors explain, people are actually a little more likely to die ON THE DAY of their birthday or on New Year's Day, as if attaining these targeted goals triggers a "letting go" process, as happened around the world at the start of the new millennium.

The Christmas and birthday phenomena are especially strong for children, who obviously feel the coming of these special days to the deepest degree.

Q: From a Kinsman, Ohio, reader:

"Every year at 4-H Camp Whitewood, we had a Backward Day.

When I returned as a counselor, I announced that I would start the bonfire that night with water.

Catcalls ensued — "Gas, Boy Scout Water, etc."

I volunteered to drink some and did this to wild applause.

I poured some on the bottom of the woodpile and walked away.

To the crowd's astonishment, the fire ignited.

'It has to be magic,' I said, 'How else could I do this?' "

A: His trick was to pre-build the bonfire with potassium permanganate at the bottom, under the paper and kindling.

He was actually drinking plain old glycerine, which reacted to start the fire.

(Glycerine in sufficient quantity is a laxative.)

Worse than catcalls when he later admitted all this.

Q: What's the deeper meaning to people "licking their wounds"?

Or is this just ancient metaphor drawn from the animal kingdom?

A: It's more than metaphor.

Many animals treat simple injuries by licking them and, interestingly, studies show that even if another animal of the same species is allowed to lick the wound, healing is facilitated, according to Robert Henkin of the Center for Molecular Nutrition and Sensory Disorders, in Washington, D.C.

Studies by Dutch researchers also found that compounds in human saliva called "histatins" not only ward off infections but also prompt cells from the skin's surface to close over a wound, says Karen Wright in "Discover" magazine.

Saliva's healing powers have long been suspected, since lesions in the mouth mend more quickly and scar less than those on the skin.

Though previously ascribed to concentrations of complex "growth factors," these were found to be too low to be effective.

However, when researchers isolated the histatins, wounds closed up twice as quickly as normal.

"This finding is good news for clinical medicine," says Wright, "because histatins are cheap to make and more easily purified than growth factors."

Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@compuserve.com