10 Medical Myths That You Believe To Be True
What are the medical myths you believe are true.
Every day, you hear or think things about your body and health that are not true. Maybe these ideas are simply unproven. Or maybe these ideas about your body and how to keep it healthy have actually been shown scientifically to be false. And yet we still see these things on TV, read them in magazines or hear them from our friends. Even your doctor may have told you one of these myths.
To know something is true, however, requires scientific research, and good research requires time and money. Although there are millions of people and billions of pounds invested in scientific research, there just isn’t enough to go around to answer every question; especially since the focus of modern research is usually on the most serious problems and the most advanced medicine and procedures.
Here is the list of 10 Medical Myths That You Believe are True.
Myth No. 1: You should drink 8 glass of water.
There’s nothing wrong with liking water, but there is no scientific proof stating that you need to drink anywhere near eight glasses a day. One doctor who has made this his research focus, Dr Heinz Valtin, searched through many electronic databases and also consulted with nutritionists and colleagues who specialize in water balance in the body. In all of his research, and in all of the research we conducted to double-check his work, no scientific evidence could be found to suggest that you need to drink eight glasses of water a day. In fact, scientific studies suggest that you already get enough liquid from what you’re drinking and eating on a daily basis. We are not all walking around in a state of dehydration.
There is no magic number to it, it depends on your body.
Actually, people should be careful not to drink too much water. Too much water dilutes the normal level of sodium in the blood, causing a condition called hyponatremia, in which brain cells can swell and die.
Myth No. 2: Your heart skips a beat when you sneeze
You may have heard that your heart skips a beat when you sneeze, but that’s a myth.
Electrical signals that control your heart rate aren’t affected by the physiological changes that happen when you sneeze. But the heart may get delayed for a second or two before resuming its regular rhythm.
There’s no need to worry — your heart gets right back on track shortly after a sneeze without causing any threats to your health.
Myth No. 3: You use only 10 per cent of your brain
Different types of brain-imaging, including CT scans, MRI scans, and even more detailed techniques, show that no area of the brain is completely silent or inactive. Much more than 10 per cent of the brain is busy at work virtually all the time. Furthermore, the many functions of the brain are localized to very specific areas of the brain. Each region has its own special job. When brain surgeons go in and probe the brain, area by area, they can’t find the ‘non-functioning’ 90 per cent, because they see functions for almost every area. Moreover, when scientists observe the responses of individual brain cells or neurons (called ‘micro-level localization’) they do not find any gaps or inactive areas. Even studies of cell metabolism, which look at how the parts of the brain metabolize or process chemicals, reveal no dormant areas.
The myth of the unused brain has been debunked in great detail by an expert in neuroscience, Dr Barry Beyerstein.
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Myth No. 4: If you shave your hair, it will grow back faster, darker and thicker
There are great scientific studies that prove that the hair you shave off does not grow back any darker or thicker than it ever was. As early as 1928, a clinical trial demonstrated that shaving had no effect on hair growth. When the researchers in that trial shaved patches of hair on some people but not on others, they did not find any difference in how fast the hair grew back. More recent studies confirm these findings.
The key to understanding this myth is knowing what really happens when hair is shaved off. Shaving removes the dead portion of hair, not the living section beneath the skin’s surface. As it doesn’t touch the portion of the hair that is responsible for growth, it is unlikely that shaving could change how fast the hair grows or what it looks like. In contrast, waxing and other forms of hair removal that pull the hairs out from below the skin actually can alter how fast the hair grows back. In fact, these methods, not shaving, might push the hairs into a phase of more rapid growth.
Myth No. 5: If you pull out a grey hair, two grow back in its place
As people get older, their hairs begin to turn grey. Plucking out those first grey hairs may seem like a good option, but many people worry that even more will sprout to replace them. The truth is your grey hairs will multiply as time goes on, but the plucking has nothing to do with it. Each hair grows out of a single follicle. Pulling one out is not going to make two hairs grow out of that one follicle.
Furthermore, when you pull a hair out, it only grows back at a rate of 1 cm per month. During those months that the original grey hair is growing back, it is normal for other hairs around it to turn grey on their own. The idea that plucking produces more grey hairs is a myth. The plucking had nothing to do with the increase; time did.
Myth No. 6: You’ll ruin your eyesight if you read in the dark
Dim light can certainly make you have difficulty focusing. It can also decrease how often you blink, making you uncomfortable because your eyes get dry and you squint for too long. However, the bottom line is that the effects of eye strain do not last. Once you return to good lighting, the effects go away.
There is simply no evidence proving that reading in the dark will ruin your eyesight for ever. In the face of no clear scientific evidence, we have to look at what other sources we can find – expert opinions, related studies and historical trends. The majority of ophthalmologists conclude that reading in dim light does not damage your eyes. Although reading in dim light can cause eye strain, with multiple temporary, negative effects, it is unlikely to cause a permanent change in the function or structure of the eyes.
Myth No. 7: An apple a day keeps the doctor away
The bottom line is that apples are a great fruit; they are healthy to eat and may even have some added benefits for staying well. But you should not think of the apple as a clear-cut way to stay healthy or to improve your health. The studies connecting eating apples with having fewer cancer or heart disease risks are a bit difficult to interpret because the same people choosing to eat more apples are usually also making other healthy choices, such as exercising or not smoking. Plus, people may not remember exactly how much fruit they ate and might inflate the number of apples they report. Ultimately, if you like apples, eat more of them! If you are not an apple fan, do what you can to increase the amount of fruits and vegetables you eat in a day. Other fruits and vegetables and other healthy diet choices might help to keep the doctor away.
Myth No. 8: Cell Phones Causes Brain Tumors
Let’s start with some facts. Cell phones are hugely popular. Worldwide estimates put their usage at more than three billion people. We also know that exposure to radiation increases your risk of developing cancer . And cell phones do emit radiation. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there is an ongoing debate as to whether this widespread use of a device that emits radiation causes cancer—specifically brain tumors.
The studies point out some important issues contradicting the idea that cell phone use is connected to brain tumors: With so many people using cell phones, you could expect, if there was a major association between cell phones and brain tumors, the number of tumors would be through the roof. Three billion people use cell phones! Even if there is an association, it has to be very small. Moreover, the types of brain tumors that have been more common recently take decades to appear. Cell phones, on the other hand, are a relatively new invention. We know from previous work that there is usually a long time period between exposure to radiation and the development of slow-growing brain tumors. According to that timeline, even if there were a link, we shouldn’t see a jump in brain tumors caused by cell phones until the 2030s.
Case-control studies are a reasonable measure for determining a link between the activities we undertake and the diseases we develop. But cell phones are so widely used that, honestly, if they were so dangerous, we’d be seeing that effect right now. That’s just not happening. Additional studies will be needed to see if they cause long-term harm, but as of now, this is a myth.
Myth No. 9: If you stop exercising, your muscles will turn to fat
Fat cells and muscle cells are different things, and one cannot convert into the other. Cells are the smallest functional units in your body, the building blocks of how you are put together as a living creature. You have fat cells, muscle cells, blood cells, bone cells, and so on. These cells do not convert from one kind into another. Muscle cells and fat cells look very different and work in different ways. Muscle cells are mostly a bundle of fibers or filaments that are attached to each other and contract when electricity from the body’s nerves come into the cell. Muscle cells are like tiny ropes, powered by small engines and connected together to do the work of pulling your bones around. In contrast, fat cells do not seem like they do very much. Under a microscope, they look like motionless globs. These cells are focused on storing fat and making fat from things like sugar.
When a person stops exercise, his/her muscle cells will not go away. If he/she stops doing his/her pull-ups and starts eating food that has a bit more fat in it, he/she will not have any fewer muscle cells; however, Person’s muscle cells will get smaller and thinner. He or She will not develop any more fat cells, but the fat cells that his/her body has will get bigger and bigger as they store more fat inside them and use less. The muscle and fat cells will not change in number, and the muscle cells will not become fat cells. Instead, the muscle cells will be getting smaller while the fat cells are getting bigger. As the fat cells get bigger, it might look like Person’s muscles are turning into fat.
Interestingly enough, the number of fat cells in your body remains almost constant throughout your life. Some of the fat cells die, and others replace them, but you do not grow brand-new fat cells when you get fat. Instead, your fat cells get bigger and bigger as they store more and more fat.
Myth No. 10: You can only get lice from another person with lice
Lice are tiny creepy, crawling bugs that live on the head or the hair of the head. They can be tough to see because they are gray or brown and only an eighth of an inch long. The grown-up lice lay eggs that are called nits. These nits or eggs may look like loose white dandruff or flakes in someone’s hair, but they are actually stuck very tightly to the strands of hair and do not wash off easily.
Lice can definitely spread through direct contact with someone else who has head lice. If your head touches the head of a person with lice, their lice can happily—for them—move onto your head and set up camp in your hair. Head lice do not jump or fly, so for a long time people thought that this kind of direct contact was the only way that lice moved from one person to another. Lice require human beings in order to stay alive, and many people have thought that only the adult lice were strong enough to infect another person.
Unfortunately, you can also get lice even if you do not come into direct contact with an infected person’s head. You can get lice from sharing a comb, hat, headband, or any other hair accessory with someone who has lice. You can get lice from caps, earphones, pillowcases, and upholstered furniture. Both teenaged lice (called nymphs) and adult lice can live for up to three days when they are not on human beings. The eggs can survive and still hatch into more lice for ten days.
Reference:
1) Valtin, H. (2002), ‘ “Drink at least eight glasses of water a day.” Really? Is there scientific evidence for “8 x 8”?’, American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology 283 (5), pp. 993–1004.
2)Healthline.com, https://www.healthline.com/health/does-your-heart-stop-when-you-sneeze
3)Beyerstein, B. L. (1999), ‘Whence Cometh the Myth That We Only Use Ten Percent of Our Brains?’, in S. Della Sala (ed.), Mind-Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain (Indianapolis, Ind.: John Wiley & Sons).
4)Trotter, M. (1928), ‘Hair growth and shaving’, Anatomical Record 37 (Dec.), pp. 373–9.
5)Tobin, D. J., and R. Paus (2001), ‘Graying: gerontobiology of the hair follicle pigmentary unit’, Experimental Gerontology 36 (1), pp. 29–54.
6)Howstuffworks.com, ‘Does reading in low light hurt your eyes?’, http://science.howstuffworks.com/question462.htm (accessed 11 June 2008).
7)Jedrychowski, W., U. Maugeri, T. Popiela, J. Kulig, E. Sochacka-Tatara, A. Pac, A. Sowa, and A. Musial. “Case-Control Study on Beneficial Effect of Regular Consumption of Apples on Colorectal Cancer Risk in a Population with Relatively Low Intake of Fruits and Vegetables.” Eur J Cancer Prev 19, no. 1 (2010): 42–7.
8)Hardell, L., M. Carlberg, and K. Hansson Mild. “Use of Cellular Telephones and Brain Tumour Risk in Urban and Rural Areas.” Occup Environ Med 62, no. 6 (2005): 390–4.
9)“Turn Fat into Muscle? You’ve Heard the Phrase a Million Times, but Can You Really Turn Fat into Muscle?” Muscle & Fitness, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0801/is_10_65/ai_n6237325/?tag=content.
10)Burkhart, C. N., and C. G. Burkhart. “Fomite Transmission in Head Lice.” J Am Acad Dermatol 56, no. 6 (2007): 1044–7.
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wow... I didn't knew that.