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)

CaptainAnkles this is why its bullshit! Your confusion is your logical brain rebelling against all the bullshit.

You take liquid in, you still have had more liquid than if you hadn't.

Not sure if neat Gin counts in this, but I'm sure everything else must.

Willing to be involved in an experiment researching the Gin thing though. Such is my dedication to science and truth.

I agree with all of yours! The problem is that they are based on some scientific research which gets picked up by the media, who put their spin on it and forget to explain the limitations of the data.

My personal pet hate is that all the kids in my school simply must be allowed to carry water AT ALL TIMES as it helps them concentrate. Well, no, actually. The study that is based on tested concentration levels at varying degrees on dehydration and found that concentration is affected if the person is significantly dehydrated. Not if they simply hadn't had a sip of water in the last 2 minutes.

And don't get me started on "brain gym".

DP is convinced that the gelatine in sweets and jelly puddings will help protect his joints. He will not be told otherwise. He is an otherwise sensible adult. I dispair.

Standing too close to the tv hurts your eyes and damages them what utter nonsense

That eating time is unrelated to "getting fat" is also not the whole truth, not all energy sources are used the same, and the body will choose different ones depending on what is already available in the blood. So by eating before you use it rather than sleep, your energy use mix will differ during the activities and may mean you use less efficient substrates and therefore consume more overall calories for the same output. When sleeping there's not the opportunity to do that. Of course the impact is likely minimal, and there are other much more likely reasons why eating late at night tends to lead to weight gain in some people, but it's dangerous to call things myths if they're just part truths.

Yes to the water thing. Nonsense.

Also: and I have been proved right with this, although i would NOT advocate it to anyone just in case. I gave my babies peanut butter way before 6 months to get them used to the allergens.

Re 1.
There is evidence that physiological processes which produce the sensation of thirst deteriorate in age, so older people are less able to rely on thirst as reliable indicator of a need to drink

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908954/

Furthermore, there is evidence that thirst is a more tightly regulated behaviour than hunger, it is generally easier for a person to suppress the sensation. This is biologically probably due to the need for greater focus on finding water in critical thirst situations. The body needs water urgently, so removes the sensation of thirst to enable greater focus on finding water. Of course, in modern society we can access hydration whenever it is required, and therefore the need to find water is less relevant. However, we retain the ability to shut off thirst to concentrate on other matters, in the same way we can shut off bladder and rectal signals or hunger. For many people, this becomes learned behaviour, shutting down biological signals for reasons of convenience.

The reasoning behind "mandated drinking" is to encourage good hydration where the thirst response may have become dysfunctional. A healthy person's kidneys are capable of dealing with over-ingestion of water caused by mandated drinking and it is hypothesised that this approach normalises water consumption and enables re-learning of thirst responses.

The physiological sensations of hunger and thirst are also very similar and can be mis-interpreted. The practice of drinking a glass of water before eating or when feeling hungry, is designed to help identify the specific sensation being experienced. However, it can be taken to extremes, as there is a certain overlap between the two states (thirst can be mitigated by water contained in food, energy can be provided by calories in drink in place of food).

Apparently once you feel thirsty you are only 1% dehydrated 26.2

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

The idea that random foods or additives cause children to behave like little brats.

Bearhug I'm pretty sure the white cartilidgey bits of chicken drumsticks does though. Serve him up a bowl of that and see if he still wants to eat himself to bouncy joints...

I vaguely remember when I studied biology that by the time you feel physically thirsty you are already quite dehydrated so you should not wait for thirst. Do think the 8 glasses a day thing is bulgur though.

• bullshit. Doh!

Actually with eating if you only eat fats and no carbs or sugars so no fruit you can lose weight as long as you exercise as you store carbs but if you don't consume any you burn through your supply and then move on to the fats

At least two people have assured me that medical emergencies they'd experienced were due to there being 'no blood left in their body'. No trauma causing bleeding, internal or otherwise. I mean, what?

Standing too close to the tv hurts your eyes and damages them what utter nonsense

Used to be true in the early cathode ray days. The brain attempted to focus on the light making up the image, and this put strain on the focussing muscles around the eyes

oo also: Skipping breakfast makes you hungrier.

Not true for me - a bowl of porridge makes me completely STARVING by lunch.

tattydevine I think we can clearly show that the temperature of the head including the nose is influenced by the wetness of hair in cold weather - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22975448 has some mechanisms... You don't need to warm the nose itself to demonstrate the problem.

Cake is fattening / unhealthy. Not in my book.
As a family of 5 we get through a cake most days. We are not overweight.
Caveat - always homemade, usually contains apple or banana, almonds , dried fruit, no icing. We don't have any shop bought biscuits/ cakes or puddings so the homemade cake is our after school snack and /or dessert.

Yes to Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

If you are less hungry at breakfast, why overeat! Save those precious little calorie feckers for when you need them! No, your metabolism will not fire up enough to cancel out an extra 500 calories. Not mine anyway!

I still like laughing at those that for some reason still think that the mmr causes autism. Also feed a cold starve a flu surely food consumption makes no actual difference to a virus

that not all salt is bad for you

after all the health warnings about eatining too much salt, how its bad for you etc I cut it out of my diet, and my dc diet, pretty much completely

And then I have been in hospital 3 times in 6 months and lots of tests - apprently I need more salt and have been advised by my cardiologist to eat crisps and chips - and its worked - I feel much better now.

Now I just need to lose half a stone!

The only thing I would say with drinking tea and coffee, is that, in the same way you pass other fluids you take in, you will wee it out. However, you do not just excrete what you have put in. Diuretics do force diuresis, making your body excrete water and salts from other sources, such as cells. So, they make you urinate more than you put in, which I guess could be argued as dehydrating yourself further (in a delayed sort of way).
I am an absolutely avid coffee drinker though, so I have ignored my gp on these points for years!

Uhm, I can't really think of health facts I don't believe, I just go by what I think mostly, and my family are just fine, so I don't think I am adversely doing them harm.

p.s Sorry about the weird icon at the end of my post, I don't know where it came from and can't seem to delete the bloody thing! --??

Everything can cause cancer..toothpaste loneliness being around too many people fruit meat phones pretty much anything and everything

I heard about the scarf/nose thing round Christmas time on the TV, but it seems OTT and I agree that if you go out in the cold with wet hair, you will have a colder head and quite possibly that would impact your hose, than if you had dry hair.

Ah but is wet hair with a hat worse than dry hair without?

Would your scalp steam away under that hat scaring away those nasty viruses?

Agree with all the points but have issues with getting and catching a cold...
It is controversial - I think they are related - because your body is less able to fight off viruses when you are cold - so you could be exposed to a cold virus and your immune system would have dealt with it before you got any symptoms - whereas if you are cold the virus gets a hold and you can't fight it off ...(And no coincidence that they are the same word...people noticed you got a certain illness after getting cold -so it was called a 'cold') Even researchers argue about this one ...it's covered in this article (near the bottom) www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-to-boost-your-immune-system

See others have said the same...
The thirst thing - also nonsense - (IIRC pushed by bottled water companies -or maybe that was just the water in schools/concentration thing).
As long as you drink when you feel thirsty and you aren't sweating buckets or puking out of either end...you feel thirsty before you get dehydrated ...millions of years of evolution didn't get it wrong, every mammal on the planet would be dead of dehydration if we couldn't rely on thirst as an indicator...
Also Breakfast being the most important meal of the day...bollocks.