10 Foolish Health Rumours You Should Ignore; No. 2 Is Such a Relief!

Urban legends and rumours have been doing the rounds of human society for millennia. One of the many things people spread strange assumptions and beliefs about is health.

Right since fashionable society in Victorian England believed that opium ingestion was great to fight ageing (spoiler: it’s not) to when the Elizabethans thought applying lead to their faces was cool (again it’s not); health rumours seem to have a life of their own in the fashionable society.

That’s why Everyday Health tracked down some of the silliest, strangest, and just plain wrong health myths and urban legends which are doing the rounds today. Can you get any of your friends to fall for them?

Urban legends and health myths are certainly nothing new — we’re pretty sure even our Neanderthal ancestors passed some version of them around their cave fires. But the Internet has certainly helped outdated advice die hard, so it’s no wonder these fake facts keep popping up in our inboxes.

We picked our favourites from such myth-busting sites as Snopes, the authors of Don’t Swallow Your Gum! Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health, and more.

Here are some of them:

1. Chewing gum takes seven years to pass through your digestive tract.

Truth: This is an old one. It’s the ultimate way for parents to get their kids to not swallow their gum. But gum addicts can relax. Although your body can’t digest chewing gum, it doesn’t just sit in your stomach, according to Snopes.com, you eliminate it when you go to the bathroom just like other food you haven’t digested.

2. Plucking grey hair causes two to grow back.

Truth: It’s fine to tweeze that errant hair. Genetics plays a key role in when you go grey, regardless of how often you pluck. It can take six months from the time a hair falls out until it grows back long enough for you to notice it; during that time, you’ll automatically see more grey hair as part of the aging process.

3. Antiperspirant deodorants cause breast cancer.

Truth: Going au naturel won’t protect your breasts from cancer. This myth probably came about because some antiperspirants contain aluminium, which can show up as a false-positive finding on a mammogram. This means you should skip the white stuff before a breast cancer screening. Though concerns have been raised about parabens in deodorant raising oestrogen levels — and thus possibly increasing cancer risk — there’s never been any conclusive evidence to prove a link, according to the National Cancer Institute and FDA.

4. Cats can steal the air from a baby’s mouth.

Truth: There’s no need to send Fluffy away when baby moves in. This myth dates back hundreds of years to an era when cats were associated with witchcraft, but KidsHealth.org notes that it’s anatomically impossible for a cat or other animal to suffocate a baby by sealing the infant’s mouth with its own.

5. Mountain Dew can shrink a man’s testicles.

Truth: Mountain Dew-drinking guys everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief. The alleged culprit is food colouring Yellow No. 5, and the myth that it has a harmful effect on the male reproductive system is unfounded, the site says.

6. You can catch a cold from being outside too long.

Truth: “Going outside — with or without a wet head — is one of the best things you can do to prevent catching a cold,” D.J. Verret, MD, a Dallas otolaryngologist, told WomansDay.com. “Colds are caused by viruses or bacteria, which are more often spread in the winter because of close contact from everyone being indoors.”

7. Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis.

Truth: The sound can be extremely grating, but this uncouth habit won’t harm your joints. Researchers found no difference in instances of arthritis when they compared a group of long time knuckle crackers with those who left their hands alone, according to Prevention.com.

8. Drinking cold water after meals can lead to cancer.

Truth: Water is one of the healthiest things you can drink with any meal — hot, cold, or tepid. This rumour first surfaced in early 2006, according to Snopes.com, and still makes its way into various email chains. It posits that cold water helps solidify oily fats from your meal into a “sludge” that lines the intestines and can lead to cancer. But there’s zero evidence from medical literature to support this theory.

9. It’s okay to follow the five-second rule for dropped food.

Truth: The five-second rule should actually be the “zero-second rule,” Roy M. Gulick, MD, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medical College, recently told The New York Times. “Eating dropped food poses a risk for ingestion of bacteria and subsequent gastrointestinal disease, and the time the food sits on the floor does not change the risk.”

10. You only use 10 percent of your brain.

Truth:  Aaron Carroll, MD, and Rachel Vreeman, MD, in their book Don’t Swallow Your Gum: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health wrote, “If this myth were true, it would not be a big deal to hurt various parts of your brain.” You’re using 100 percent of your brain — or at least we hope so.

Image source: Greg Williams/Wikimedia