Health "facts" that you believe to be myths and why. See if you can change my mind.

[TattyDevine]

Anyone got any? I've got a couple.

First one is this bullshit that you have to drink a certain amount of water a day that isn't dictated by your body's thirst or cues, but by some arbitrary amount.

Why the hell would your body not tell you if it needed water? How have we evolved this far not realising we needed to be drinking double or triple the amount of water we feel we need to? Thirsty, have a drink. Not thirsty, don't. Like food. Hungry, eat. Not hungry? Shouldn't eat. What terrible fate will befall us if we don't drink 2 litres of water a day? And how did we evolve for thousands and thousands of years before this bit of knowledge was bestowed upon us?

2nd one - don't eat at night because you won't burn it and it will be stored as fat, but if you eat the same amount but during the day you will burn it.

Well, surely if you have done the same level of activity in a day and had the same amount of food within that day it will even out? Over a 24 hour period, I've taken in x amount of energy and burned y amount. If I took most of it in at night it makes up for the deficit in the morning. If I take it evenly over the day there was no deficit to make up for but I've still taken in the same amount and burned up the same amount.

3rd one - coffee and tea dehydrates you because it is a mild diuretic. Okay so its a mild diuretic but you are still more hydrated drinking it because it doesn't make you piss out more than what you took in in terms of extra fluid by drinking it in the first place. So it still counts as a drink. (In fact my GP surgery has a poster saying about taking plenty of fluids if you have a cold, and that it doesn't have to be water but a cup of tea or coffee is just as good). When I read that, I was so revived by the no nonsense common sense approach I had to restrain myself from licking the poster with delight.

Yours please, and try and convince me otherwise with non bullshitty science if you think I'm wrong (which I'm happy to be with a proper science-boffiny cut-down)

By he way by the time your body tells you that you are thirsty, you are already seriously dehydrated.

If that was the case, your body was seriously not working properly.
Our bodies are designed to survive by themselves. Thirst is the way for your body to tell you you need more water.
We'd do better to learn to listen more to our bodies, rather.

Yeah I don't reckon hair is self cleansing.

Its not a vagina

Also, and as I pointed out earlier, if you need 2L of water a day, you don't need to drink 2L of water a day. We get lots of water from normal food, and that is not only in the form of drinks. Solid food has a lot of water.

I have some good experience from cough medicines when I had pneumonia. No, they don't get rid of the reason you have a cough, and I don't think the "expectorant" types do much (they have mucas thinning ingredients in them, but when you have a mega congested chest that's a drop in the ocean) but the ones with cough suppressants do something.

There are only 2 I know of that have these ingredients. One is cough nurse and is hard to get hold of, it is green and has codeine in it. As that is hard to get hold of, a paracodal or a co-codamol (paramol) does the trick - codeine and other opiates are a cough suppressant. These can make a huge difference when you are trying to get to sleep and a cough is stopping you. It dapens the cough reflex thing for a while and if you can get some decent quality sleep, it makes a huge difference in your recovery.

The other one is Benelyn Dry Coughs Original (over the counter only) which has 2 ingredients, one is diphenhydramine (that stuff that was in Medised) and the other one is something I can't spell and would have to look up which is a cough suppressant and the 2 together can be the difference between getting yourself off to sleep and having a decent rest and not. Its not just the drowsiness, its the cough suppressant. Total godsend.

In terms of children though I think they are right - kids cough meds don't contain these tasty ingredients, so don't do much. You can argue that suppressing a cough isn't a good thing, but I think personally if the cough is stopping you resting, it's a good thing. You can do your coughing in the day and your sleeping at night.

Dextromethorphan!

So if you are ever totally desperate for a good night's sleep when you have a nasty cough, take some with some codeine and you will sleep really well. Hopefully you will wake up in the morning too!

JAC25 Sun 01-Mar-15 15:17:47
"Aspartame is a neurotoxin and neuro suppressant. It can lead to many serious health problems and one can die of aspartame syndrome"

One can also die of an excess of DiHydrogen Monoxide. It is especially dangerous if inhaled.

Where did you find your Aspartmine information?

Well Countess here is just one published clinical trial (double-blind, placebo-controlled) and this took me less than 5 minutes to find.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23565943]

But there is none so blind as s/he who will not see.

And for your information, clinical trials do record every reported side effect.

Sorry link fail:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23565943

One can also die of an excess of DiHydrogen Monoxide. It is especially dangerous if inhaled.

Bollocks.
Only if it reaches the lungs.
I have inhaled previously without any serious effects.
but you still need 2 cubic decimetres of it every day.

Very small sample size, Argy.

I may be mad
but I have asked MNHQ why they have a vaccines discussion board
which seems to attract anti-vac nutters like moths to a flame

I know that the record every reported side effect. But that isn't at all what you said! You're talking in circles and making little sense.
By the way your study is laughable as an argument. I'm not engaging with you any further.

JAC25 Pretty much every single thing you have written is completely untrue.

What is it about medicine that makes the totally uneducated think their opinions are worth anything? You wouldn't tell an engineer that they are lying about how they build bridges, and suggest you know better how to build one. Happy enough to take your GCSE in Science and think you know better than All-Of-The-Scientists. What is that about? Mass delusion?

Google are currently resetting their algorithm to push down sites that are full of factual inaccuracies

WHOOP
WHOOP
YAY
YAY

How do animals know when to drink if thirst doesn't kick until severe dehydration?

LLweji Very small sample size, Argy.

Can you explain why that's a problem? If they have done their stats correctly (and I haven't read the paper, so I'm not asserting that they have, simply saying if they have) then the small sample size is taken into account in the statistical test. In fact, a significant effect found with a small sample is likely to be larger in size than one found with a large sample.

Although on a pedantic point:
What ArgyMargy linked is technically-speaking not a clinical trial.

In fact, a significant effect found with a small sample is likely to be larger in size than one found with a large sample.

Google are currently resetting their algorithm to push down sites that are full of factual inaccuracies

That is some of the best news I've heard for a while!

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

14 out of a population of billions is hardly representative.
Some people have specific intolerances, but they are hardly representative of the population.

In addition to differences is percentages, it's important to calculate the minimum sample size so that the trial has enough statistical power. (not a statistics buff, but still, 14 is very low).

I wonder if the same results would be replicated else where. They may well be, but I'd be very careful about drawing any conclusions from that one study.

It was merely an example, Lweji, and the first one I found within a few minutes of looking. It wasn't google, it was a scientific database, as many people would know from the URL. Small sample sizes are not ideal, I agree, but you really don't need thousands for something like this. I also agree that you would want a range of studies to show similar conclusions to back up any robust argument. Countess has asserted that MSG does not cause headaches; I was suggesting that there is probably evidence that it may. I think I'm right and she evidently thinks that she is right.

I know the database. I am an author and paper reviewer.

The problem with publication of such studies is that only the positives are published. It's incredibly hard to publish negative results.

I had read the materials and methods, but it's worth pointing out a comment by the authors at the end of their own Discussion
"Although the MSG was dissolved in sugar free lemon soda, which we have previously found masks the taste of MSG [13], the vast majority of subjects correctly identified the substance administered to them when asked at the end of each 5?days session. Considering the significant increase in adverse effects, which occurred during MSG ingestion, this result is understandable. Nevertheless, it does mean that we cannot consider this study truly blind, and this lack of subject blinding might have influenced findings that relied on psychophysical assessments, such as PPT and PPTol, and reporting of side effects. "

My favourite is and remains the woman I mentioned recently on another thread: on an LBC phone-in she said that she was smoking while pregnant because it would make her baby immune to lung cancer!

There may be evidence that it can indeed cause headaches: I'm a scientist and always open to evidence, and happy to be proved wrong. However that study you cited is proof of no such thing, being both tiny and poorly planned, with inherently unreliable results.
So my position has not changed.

When I was at university several male friends of mine tried the hair is self-cleaning thing. Even after several months they still reeked, so I'm not buying it - even if it's technically true, naturally clean hair isn't clean to our artificial standards.

Neither me or my 2 children have used shampoo in years and I promise you, you wouldn't know. My dd2 has very curly hair and was getting really dry and frizzy. I tried some afro products on it but they made it too greasy. So after some googling decided to try not using shampoo, I still wash it by massaging the scalp with water and a little conditioner, and then condition as normal. She now has beautiful ringlet curls rather than wild frizz. It made such a difference I decided to try it with my hair which is also curly and dry, though not as curly as hers. Mine took longer to adapt and spent a good few weeks just scraped back in a ponytail, but my hair looks so much healthier it was worth it.

Fwiw, I also agree breakfast is not necessary, and the starvation mode is bs.

I was going to say I did the no shampoo thing too - for over a year -8 yrs ago now. It took a good 6 months for it to sort itself out ...was horrible for months...really grim - but then actually it was fine. As far I know it wasn't smelly etc...and made having a shower much quicker.
Then in my post giving birth shower I wanted a really good scrub - found I had shampoo in my soap bag (my DD1s from holidays) ...I think for mainly psychological reasons used it ...then found that just that once had messed up the 'balance' - after a week my hair was greasy again - I haven't been able to face going through that first 6 months again since...do occasionally think I should ...

I have never used shampoo on my kids. They are 9and 5 now and their hair is perfectly fine just being rinsed with water.

Mine, however, is not