Surprising Health Myths

Your grandma and mother probably had several health “truisms” they instructed you with over the course of your lifetime. Some of them are in fact true but the following are healthcare factoids that are just myths. Let’s look at a few:

• Milk causes phlegm. In fact, those that drank milk in one study showed no more phlegm than those who drank a clear beverage.
• Cracking the knuckles leads to arthritis. While it’s an annoying habit, it doesn’t cause arthritis any more than those who don’t crack their knuckles.

• Birth control pills don’t work as well if you are taking antibiotics. A recent review of several different studies showed no change in hormone levels when taking most common antibiotics.
• It’s okay to eat food off the floor if you pick it up right way. There is no such thing as the “five second rule”. Bacteria do get on the food from the floor, even after a few seconds. The same is also true of carpet and food on the carpet seems to pick up carpet fibers as well.
• You can get sick from cold weather. Colds are actually formed when a person sneezes or coughs cold germs in the air. Cold germs can be found on surfaces. When it’s cold, you tend to stay indoors where you can get the virus from others who are similarly indoors.
• You need to have a bowel movement every day. While it is a good thing to have a bowel movement every day, perfectly healthy people have bowel movements every other day. Much past that, however, and you are in the constipation range.
• Single people have better sex lives than married people. The fact is that single people go through more dry spells in their sex life than married people. Forty three percent of men in one study had sex more than twice a week when compared to 26 percent of people.
• Sugar makes children hyper. This is just an old wives’ tale that hasn’t been shown to be true in scientific studies.
• It’s fine to double dip when you are dipping chips. It was recently studied and found that if you dip a chip three to six times in a dip, you are transferring about 10,000 mouth bacteria to the chip dip.
• If your mucus is green, you have a sinus infection. In fact, there is no proof of this and taking antibiotics do nothing to shorten the duration of the infection.
• Body heat is lost mainly through the head. It is exposed areas that lose body heat and your head is nothing special in that regard.