Hang-Ups of Phone Hoggers

You excuse yourself from an important business lunch to check in with the office and--wouldn’t you know--someone’s hogging the pay phone.

If you’re smart, you’ll stifle the urge to jangle your keys, jingle your pocket change, swear, sigh and check your watch every five seconds.

That only makes the caller take longer, warns Barry Ruback, a Georgia State University social psychologist who recently observed more than 250 public telephone users at hospitals, shopping malls and a train station. “The more people around the phone users, the longer they stay on the phone,” says the psychologist, who is an expert on public invasion of private space.

Rudeness isn’t the reason. “Whether they know it consciously or not, these pay phone users are instinctively protecting their territory,” says Ruback, who published the results in the Social Psychology Quarterly. “And because pay phones may be scarcer than, say, park benches or other public amenities, they’re a little fiercer about it.” Distraction also comes into play. “It’s hard to pay attention to two things at once,” says Ruback. So the call just takes longer to complete.

“Waiting patiently may be the best bet,” says Ruback. But Chaytor Mason, a USC psychologist, suggests purposely putting on a long face: “Looking unhappy, threatened or distraught is probably the best approach, the most likely to result in the person giving up the telephone.”

Night Wanderers

Although some experts believed the 10 million adult sleepwalkers are expressing submerged aggression, a new study found stress and fatigue are the real triggers.

Humboldt State psychologist James Dupree, who interviewed 100 sleepwalkers ages 17-26 at Texas A&M; University where he worked on his doctorate, chalks up sleepwalking to “a neurological problem or a reaction to stress.” Upwardly mobile baby boomers, often overworked and stressed, may be especially prone.

Dr. Philip Westbrook, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, agrees that sleepwalking is probably a genetically determined state: “Sleepwalkers can’t make the transition from deep sleep to wakefulness. I’m almost always able to find a family history.”

“If sleepwalkers aren’t walking outside in their underwear or endangering others,” says Dupree, “it’s simply a harmless habit.”

But some sleepwalkers are disturbed enough to seek treatment at special sleep disorders, turn to hypnosis or try medication. Others enlist family members to stop their nocturnal wanderings. One woman, a light sleeper, coaxed her husband back to bed by blowing a whistle every time she heard his foot hit the floor.

Preterm Monitors

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, one out of every 10 babies born each year in the United States is premature; so stopping preterm labor has become vitally important.

Home uterine-activity monitors can increase the odds of carrying a baby to term, say manufacturers of the device. Twice a day, a woman straps on a round disc sensor that detects uterine activity too subtle to notice. The reading is transmitted via telephone lines to the doctor’s office where trained personnel interpret the reading, ask the woman more questions and alert the physician if anything is amiss.

Despite the successful test of the thousands of monitors, the Food and Drug Administration and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists are still not ready to recommend them for routine care.

Critics of the monitors don’t question their safety. But they say the questions asked by the doctor’s office personnel may be as effective as the monitor in detecting preterm labor. Cost is a factor, too. Monitors can add more than $5,000 to the maternity bill, says Kate Ruddon, spokeswoman for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Its obstetrics committee is currently studying the monitors and could issue an opinion in the next month.

Aging Thyroids

According to a new study, people aged 55 and older may be twice as likely as experts believed to have an abnormal thyroid.

In a Wayne State University study, reported recently at the American Thyroid Assn. meeting, 9% of 968 subjects, all 55-plus, had thyroid problems. The researchers only expected 3%-5% to be affected. Women and whites in the Detroit study were more likely than other groups to have problems.

Located near the windpipe, the thyroid secretes the hormone thyroxine which regulates growth and metabolism. An overactive thyroid can cause weight loss, rapid pulse and muscle weakness; an under-active one can result in sluggishness, constipation and weight gain.

Those who suspect thyroid problems should mention their worries to a doctor, warns Dr. Leonard Wartofsky, chief of endocrinology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

“Thyroid disorders tend to get worse with time,” he says. Treating a sluggish thyroid usually requires only a daily pill of synthetic thyroxine, but treatment of an overactive thyroid could involve the use of radioactive iodine or surgery.