Health extra

Eyesight

+ Now may be a good time to reschedule that LASIK-surgery appointment. According to a new Wake Forest University study, guys who get LASIK in the summer are up to 50% less likely to wind up with perfect vision than those who get laser surgery in either the fall or winter. The reason? When it's humid, your eyes store more water, making it harder for the laser that smoothes out the cornea, improving your vision, to do its job correctly.

+ Next time you need a sugar fix, drop and give yourself 20--pushups, that is. Japanese scientists report that exercise can help reduce cravings for sweets. In the recent study, researchers found that rats were much less likely to drink the sugar water they normally loved after "working out." Even in humans, the report notes that exercise appears to cause an increase in the production of craving-busting compounds called opioid-receptor antagonists.

+ Quick quiz: Where do you think it's better to eat your lunch at work--your desk or a bathroom stall? If you picked number two, you may be on to something. A new University of Arizona study warns that most office desks contain up to 400 times the amount of bacteria found on an average toilet seat. Dirtiest of all are telephones, with 25,000 germs per square inch. Next come the keyboard and mouse, with each keystroke and click putting you in contact with between 1,500 and 3,000 germs.

+ Another reason to be extra careful in the bedroom: In a new University of Michigan study, researchers found that guys who've had gonorrhea are up to 12% percent more likely to develop, prostate cancer than men who haven't had the disease. Your best means of protection against this STD? Wearing a condom.

Obesity

* Paris and Nicole may be wafer thin, but they're making the rest of us fat. According to a new Greek study, if you watch 21 hours of TV or more each week, you have a 1 in 4 chance of becoming clinically obese. While 21 hours may sound like a lot, it's not. We're talking about just three hours of TV viewing a day. (Now, what did you say you were doing last night between the hours of, oh, say 8 and 11?)

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