Medical Myths

Poststructural Pub
1

Some interesting tidbits paraphrased from a newspaper article this morning:

The old saw that you should get six glasses of water a day - False. There is no medical evidence to support this. The nearest recommendation that could be found is that you should get the equivalent of six glasses of “fluids” per day, including coffee, tea, juices, and what liquids may be in your food. How much water you require per day really depends on your body size, the amount of exercise you get in a day, and the temperature.

That turkey makes you sleepy - False. This is based on the fact that turkey contains tryptophan, which can make you sleepy if ingested in sufficient quantities. However, beef and chicken contain just as much tryptophan as turkey. In fact ham and swiss cheese contain more tryptophan than turkey does, so if there is any food that could put you to sleep it’d be a ham n swiss sandwich. But really, the quantities are too small to have any effect. Overeating rich foods has much more to do with falling asleep.

We use only 10% of our brains - False. This myth came out about 1907 at the same time as a lot of advertising for methods to increase your brain power and potential. Modern brain imaging shows that there is no part of the brain that is not used.

Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight - False. Although it can cause eye strain with multiple temporary negative effects, it is unlikely to cause a permanent change to the function or structure of the eyes.

Shaving causes hair to grow back faster or coarser - False. This notion was disproved in 1928 in a study that compared hair growth in subjects who had patches shaved off with those who didn’t, but the myth continues to persist. Hair that grows back appears darker because it has not been exposed to sunlight and its blunt ends make it seem thicker.

This one was my favourite:

Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death - False. After death, the skin and other soft tissues dry up and retract, making it appear that the hair and nails have grown, when they have only become more prominent.

Don’tcha just love trivia?

djm

2

And then there is that myth that eating raw oysters is good for male potency, but that is just plain not true.

I ate an entire dozen of them once, and only seven of them worked.

3

ALL FALSE According to WEBMD and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

(1) Chewing gum takes seven years to pass through your digestive system

(2) Staying out in the cold and wind will give you a cold

(3) Chocolate causes acne

(4) Feeding a child a lot of candy or food with a lot of sugar in it will make them hyperactive (Not that it is good for you for other reasons!)

(5) Your heart stops for an instant whenever you sneeze

pastorkeith

4

I don’t care what any study, doctor or pastor (sorry) says, but for some children (I have one of them), consuming “food” items containing too much processed sugars definitely makes children hyper. No one will convince me otherwise. They obviously haven’t studied my son.

5

Of course not! Ani fule kno it sticks to your ribs.

But… but… that’s where the cold germs live!

Maybe not, but eating a lot of fat will give you spots, and chocolate has a lot of fat. IS a lot of fat.

I’m with Fyffer on this one. And I’m thinking of specific examples.

But it stops for an instant every instant. :confused:

Leave me my illusions. They are the greater part of my riches.

Oh! I’ve got myself a new sig line!

6

“Sallow skin, lusterless eyes, flabby muscles, loose stools, cold and clammy hands, poor indigestion, heart palpitations, hollow chest, headaches, dizziness all mark the young man snared by vicious habit.”

I like the “poor indigestion” part.

7

No medical expert, me.
As a pastor I have discovered much more about what I don’t know and would never claim to be an expert in anything. The best that I can hope for is to be occasionally thoughtful and a good listener, which my wife will tell you I don’t do perfectly either.

And there is a policy on the boards against offering medical advice, so I won’t go there. I hardly consider this list “medical advice” - just sharing some “myths” that I picked up on medical sites that offer them to add to the conversation. I thought some challenged some deeply held-opinions and might spark some interesting (and possibly humorous) exchanges.

I don’t know how many times my mom told me to put on a pair of socks so I wouldn’t catch cold or my adolescent chocolate guilt that every zit encouraged.

As the parent of an ADHD child I am well-aware of the diversity of opinions surrounding sugar, preservatives, gluten, artificial colors, and so forth and apologize to any who find #4 troublesome. That was not my intent.
:blush:

Blessings
pastorkeith

8

Specifically regarding the one about sneezing and your heartbeat:

Your heart is both a muscle and a battery; the cells of your heart act like little power cells, and there are special conduction pathways in your heart to get this power where it needs to go to trigger your heart beat.

When your heart pumps, it’s because those cells have depolarized, which means they have discharged.

If you’ve ever seen an EKG, the biggest, tallest spike is where the ventricles depolarize…an EKG doesn’t actually measure the physical movement of the heart, just the electrical potentials. The atria, the smaller chambers at the top of the heart, start this whole process when the cells of the heart’s primary pacemaker, the Sinoatrial Node, depolarize, causing the atria to pump their blood into the ventricles before the ventricles pump…going by memory, this so-called “atrial kick” can add about ten percent more blood to each heartbeat.

Then the impulse is delayed for a specific amount of time in the Atrioventricular Junction, to give the atria time to pump, and then the impulse is allowed downward into the ventricles, your heart’s largest and most muscular chambers, causing them to pump their blood out into the body.

Ok, I told you all of that to tell you this:

The heart is never more sensitive than it is when the ventricles are repolarizing (recharging). If a stimulus (such as a sneeze, or an erratic impulse from part of the heart) happens at just the wrong time when the ventricles are recharging, there is a small but real risk that some of the cells in the ventricles may depolarize, causing the cells around them to depolarize, causing the cells around them to depolarize…this proceeds around the heart, and the ventricles don’t beat any more, having been caught up in a potentially lethal arrhythmia called “ventricular fibrillation.”

That said, I believe I have read that your chances of dying from a lightning strike are better than of dying from sneeze-induced V-fib.

–James

9

Oh, just for fun…

On some kinds of surgery

Women born with lifetime supply of eggs.

Edit to fix link.

10

I’m not sure “battery” is the correct metaphor. A battery doesn’t discharge in one big spike, but slowly and evenly. Perhaps you meant “capacitor”, which will build up a charge to a critical point and then discharge all at once?

djm

11

You’re right; a capacitor is the better comparison, but I figured not nearly as many people understand “capacitor” in the same way as they do “battery.”

Perhaps a bad choice on my part.

–James

12

The lunch room here at work has a sign saying, “Caution. All unsupervised children will be given a double espresso and a puppy.”

13

One theory that’s been given for why children seem hyper after ingesting lots of sugar is that that amount of sugar is often ingested during situations that would over-stimulate the kid in any case: Holidays, birthday parties, Halloween, trips to the fair or the carnival, etc. The only way to disprove this really would be either to feed your kid a whole lot of sugar on an otherwise completely ordinary day, or to withhold all sugar on one of those stimulating occasions, to see if there’s a significant difference in the level of activity.

As a parent of a kid with ADHD, the dark side of the whole “sugar” thing is that teachers tend to assume that sugar is what’s making your kid “hyper,” regardless of medical evidence to the contrary, and they can get very pissy about it. Back when my daughter was in fourth grade, I finally had to complain to the principal about a teacher who had decided that Johanna’s problems stemmed from the fact that I always include a small dessert in her lunch, and had forbidden her to eat it (without consulting me). She even had the other kids “spying” at lunch and telling her if Jo had eaten her cookie! I finally learned about it when Jo broke down crying at the grocery store one day, as I was about to put some Little Debbie brownies in the cart, and told me that her teacher made her throw them away!

Redwolf

14

And all that is from playing pennywhistle! :astonished: :astonished:

15

So can I still catch an STD off a toilet seat,and will self administered hand relieve cause me to go blind?

RORY

16

Or does Rory have hairy palms? :wink:

djm

17

I dont know ,my eyesight is very bad .

RORY

18

Dunno, but i caught a dose of the wee crawly lads once from a dirty mattress in a hostel in prague once!

19

I personally believe it is a myth that high cholesterol causes health problems. It may be a statistical correlation, but it is not a cause. My grandmother died at the ripe old age 83 and her cholesterol was in the 700s.

20

This is something I have also wondered about.

One thing that is very true is that it is usually not that hard to upset nature’s balance–but it’s generally harder than hell (if possible at all) to restore that balance.

What is known is that there is a relationship between high cholesterol and high lipids in general and with cardiovascular diseases of the heart and circulatory system.

However, there is also a relationship between lying down and dying; however, the act of reclining does not cause death. Just because there is a relationship doesn’t mean there is a causitive relationship.

–James