Separating Fact from Fiction
Local doctors’ new book debunks popular health myths
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An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Eating sugar causes diabetes. And vitamin E can help heal that scar on your knee.
Right?
Not so fast, according to two professors of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. These widely believed myths are among the dozens that Dr. Aaron E. Carroll and Dr. Rachel C. Vreeman set straight in their latest book, Don’t Cross Your Eyes … They’ll Get Stuck That Way and 75 Other Health Myths Debunked.
It’s a subject with which the pair is familiar. They co-authored the 2009 book, Don’t Swallow Your Gum!: Myths, Half-Truths and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health.
The idea for setting the facts straight came after Carroll heard a radio interview about protecting kids from Halloween candy poisoned by strangers — something that, according to one man’s research of police records, has never happened in the United States.
“Yet, this is something we focus on every year,” says Carroll, director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research at the IU School of Medicine. “We ignore real dangers, like a child is more likely to be hit by a car on Halloween night than on any night of the year.
“There are lots of these things where we think we know the danger or the problem but it turns out we’re wrong or there’s no evidence of it,” he says.
So where do these myths come from?
“It’s an interesting combination of having some element of truth and then when we hear them from someone we trust, we stick to them,” Vreeman says. “They’re so ingrained that they’re really hard to debunk.”
“They’re stories that explain the world,” Carroll adds. “We come to trust them and assume them to be true.”
Even he and Vreeman believed some of these myths, such as eating too much cheese leads to constipation.
“Studies show there’s no relationship,” Carroll points out.
They also thought that exposing wounds would lead to quicker healing.
“It turns out there have been really great trials that show it’s the worst thing you can do with wounds,” he says.
What else turned out to be false? Carroll and Vreeman explain five myths detailed in their new book.
Air dryers will keep your hands cleaner than paper towels.
Even though it seems placing your hands under an automatic dryer — where you don’t have to touch anything — would lead to fewer germs, this is not the case.
One study out of London found that paper towels reduced the number of all types of bacteria on both palms and fingertips, whereas air dryers actually increased bacteria.
“When you look at how germs are spread, air dryers blow them on you,” Carroll says. “Paper towels wipe them off.”
Air dryers also are not cleaned very often, he points out, which can lead to more germs being pushed around and onto your hands.
“You’re not likely to get sick from either one,” he says.
Hydrogen peroxide is good for a wound.
When your child scrapes his or her knee, do you clean it with hydrogen peroxide?
It turns out this method has the opposite effect of your good intentions.
“It was definitely a surprise to us that hydrogen peroxide was not the great wound cleaner that we thought it was,” Vreeman says. “As it turns out, hydrogen peroxide does not prevent infection from developing in wounds.”
On the contrary, the solution can reduce how fast a wound heals. The bubbles that appear when hydrogen peroxide touches your skin are actually destroying skin cells.
“It kills some of the good cells as well, and that leads to slow healing,” Vreeman says.
A glass of warm milk will help you fall asleep.
After a big Thanksgiving meal, you often feel sleepy and probably attribute that to the tryptophan in turkey. And because milk also contains tryptophan, it follows that a glass can help you fall asleep faster, right?
Wrong.
“High doses (of tryptophan) given medicinally can help you sleep,” Carroll says.
Unfortunately, there’s not enough tryptophan in milk — or turkey, for that matter — to help you snooze. Instead, retrain yourself to associate your bed with being tired.
Tilt back your head to stop a nosebleed.
The only thing this method is good for is keeping blood off your carpet or couch, Vreeman says.
“It’s not the most effective way, and it causes blood to go back into the throat. There’s some risk you can breath that in,” she explains.
Having blood go down your throat raises your risk of choking, vomiting or bleeding for longer. Instead, it’s recommended to sit or stand up and apply pressure by pinching the nose, allowing the blood to drain out.
Vitamin C can prevent and treat colds.
When you feel a cold coming on, there are better preventative measures than reaching for vitamin C.
“This is another one where there’s just no evidence for it,” Carroll says.
In one study, more than 11,000 people took 200 mg or more of vitamin C per day, but doing so did not prevent colds. In seven studies that looked at the treatment of the common cold, scientists found that vitamin C did not improve subjects’ symptoms.
What may help you get rid of that cold? Chicken soup. Although it’s not a cure for the common cold, chicken soup is a good source of hydration and may lessen your body’s inflammatory response to infections.
Don’t Cross Your Eyes … They’ll Get Stuck That Way and 75 Other Health Myths Debunked by Dr. Aaron E. Carroll and Dr. Rachel C. Vreeman, Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health pediatricians, retails for $13.99 at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com. A version compatible for the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch is $9.99 from iTunes.
