The Checkup: Nick Cannon Hospitalized for Kidney Failure

Nick Cannon in the hospital with wife, Mariah Carey. Photo from nickcannon.com.

• Well, this is just scary: Actor Nick Cannon was hospitalized earlier this week for kidney failure. His wife, singer Mariah Carey, tweeted the news that her 31-year-old husband had been hospitalized during a family vacation in Aspen, Colorado. He’s been transfered to a Los Angeles hospital and, Carey told People.com, he’s in a lot of pain but reports are that his condition is improving. No word yet on the cause, but TIME Healthland speculates a bit, laying out some of the common causes of the condition.

• Does balancing on a stability ball all day, instead of sitting in a desk chair, actually improve posture? Mental_Floss says no (and yes, they have some science to back it up).

• I think I  might have seen this guy on a TLC or Discovery Channel special one time. Thirty-one-year-old Vietnamese man Nguyen Duy Hai had a 200-pound tumor (!!!) removed from his leg yesterday. It’s been growing steadily since he was a young boy; the operation to remove it reportedly took 10 hours to complete. HuffPost has more, include a picture of the man before surgery.