Medical ‘Old Wives Tales’

…and the Doctors Who Believe Them

Newsweek Magazine published an article on its web page last week entitled Top Seven Health Myths, citing a study that demonstrated even doctors often fall prey to common medical misconceptions. And they do, too, sometimes for the basest of self-interested reasons.

I recall sitting at the breakfast table with my Mother-in-Law one morning back in the early 1980s, reading the daily newspaper. I came across an article about a formal position statement from the American Medical Association’s annual enclave, which stated as clearly and simply as possible that…

There Is No Evidence That Diet Is Related To Health.

Mom of course denied it vehemently even as I handed her the story on page whatever, in her own favorite newspaper. She’d been a medical transcriptionist all her working life, spent her days around doctors and medical laboratories and test results and autopsy reports and diagnostic conferences, so she knew a lot about doctors and a hefty amount about medicine. She simply couldn’t believe the AMA would make such an outrageous statement denying something that “Every Mother Knows.”

I tried to explain to her the political affiliations of the AMA as a professional lobby with ties to some notorious and insidious industries - pharmaceuticals, Big Tobacco and the increasingly monopolistic food/drink processing conglomerates peddling nutritional garbage to our children. To make the industry lobbyists happy, those doctors would swear on a stack of Bibles that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer, that drugs are good for you, and that your diet has nothing to do with your health. You’ve just gotta take all lobbying organizations with a large grain of salt, because their political back-room dealings often completely contradict what their individual members know for a fact to be true.

Let’s face it… the primary health care provider in this world is mostly Mom. Grandmas, Aunts and even wise nurse-ly neighbors can help, but Mom is who mostly gets to kiss the boo-boos, bandage the cuts and scrapes, dish out the medicine and try to balance the family’s diet so they can be as healthy as possible while avoiding gross obesity or other nutritional deficits that lead to disease. Thus any Mom would have laughed (or indignantly sputtered) about the AMA’s ridiculously self-serving lie that year. And by the next year’s enclave the position was completely reversed based on rank-and-file objections to the lie.

The study Newsweek focuses upon was published in the British Medical Journal in December. It identifies the top medical myths and reports that a surprising (to them) number of practicing physicians believe in those myths…

Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight. This one has very little scientific support. It can cause temporary eyestrain, but that disappears quickly in the presence of bright light.

Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death. Nope. After death the skin begins to contract, which gives an illusion that hair and nails are growing. They are not.

We only use 10% of our brains. This one really is the product of snake-oil salesmen peddling magical elixirs of life from the back of wagons in the early 20th century. That supposed 90% of useless brain has never been identified by neuroscientists, who find our brains tend to be active no matter where they look.

Using cell phones in hospitals is dangerous. Despite the fact that hospitals have almost universally bought into this myth, studies have shown that normal cell phone use has little to no interference effect with medical devices. In 2007 a study using 300 tests in 75 different treatment rooms found exactly zero interference from cell phones.

You should drink at least 8 glasses of water per day. Actually, we get an ample supply of fluid in a typical daily diet including juice, milk and even coffee or soda. Drinking too much water can cause severe electrolyte imbalance and has been known to cause death. If you’re thirsty, drink. If you’re not, don’t worry about it.

Shaved hair grows back faster and coarser. Oddly enough, I found this one surprising. But research does show that the texture, color and growth habits of hair - even on ladies’ legs! - doesn’t change when it’s cut, shaved, waxed or chemically removed.

So there you have it. Old Wives’ Tales we can go ahead and leave behind us. Happy mothering!

Related Ads:

Filed under History, Medicine, Nutrition, Old Wives' Tales, Research, Science |