The Mystery of Belly Button Lint Solved??

I may spend my talk show talking about the important issues in life, but sometimes it’s fun to blog about the seemingly insignificant things. Like where to find the best hamburger or conversations overheard while standing in line at the supermarket.

Or how belly button lint gets into our naval.

I must not be the only one who always wondered this, because an actual SCIENTIST found it worthy enough for study!

An Austrian chemist spent three years pursuing the truth of this great bodily mystery. And he thinks he has an answer.

He says it is mainly a male phenomenon because it is mainly the result of abdominal hair getting collected in the belly button. Without abdominal hair, it gets a little harder to find this.

Apparently our abdominal hairs collect fibers from clothing, such as cotton shirts, and catch them in a convenient spot–our belly button.

An earlier Australian study found that the person most likely to to be the subject of this strange phenomenon is “a slightly overweight male with a hairy abdomen.”

Great. That’s a perfect description of me. If you were to look that up in the dictionary you would find a picture of ME.

To up the ante on the “Eeeeeewwwww!” meter, the scientist collected 503 samples for the study. It doesn’t say what he did with them. OK. Now I am grossing MYSELF out.

I am going to pursue research money to determine why I don’t go bald on my arms or legs or ears, just on the top of my head.

Darn it. The research has already been done on that. I know the answer.

The truth just hurts sometimes.

Oh, and by the way, the researcher used his OWN money for the belly button lint study. And THAT is the bright spot in this story.