Almost all of us have, at some time, been chided by a parent or grandparent who has been mislead by an old wives’ tale. Their intentions are always good, but unfortunately they are misguided. There are thousands of old wives’ tales – ranging from the seemingly logical to the outright bizarre.
This is a list of ten of the most common old wives’ tales which are, in fact, bunkum! Feel free to use the comments to tell us about some of the more unusual tales you have come across in your life.
In fact, both colds and fevers cause dehydration – so liquids are essential when suffering from either. In addition, missing out on food when you are sick is never a good idea as food provides the body with the sustenance it needs to get healthy. So, you should feed a fever and feed a cold. This, of course, does not mean to overeat – it means to eat healthy balanced meals.
There is an old wives’ tale that says that if you eat within an hour of swimming you will get cramp. The Red Cross says that eating directly prior to swimming does not increase risk of cramp at all. They do, however, recommend at least waiting for digestion to begin if you have eaten a particularly fatty meal. They also recommend that you not eat gum or food while you are swimming.
There is actually not an iota of evidence to support this tale – no food type (not just chocolate) can cause acne or bad skin. Needless to say, eating too much chocolate or sugary food is unhealthy for the body, but it will not cause skin problems. Acne is actually caused by changes in the lower layers of the skin surrounding hair follicles.
It is possible that this tale came about due to allied propaganda during the second world war when rumors were spread that the British airmen had excellent night vision due to eating carrots. The myth was spread to stop the Germans from discovering that the British were using Radar. While carrots contain vitamin A which is good for healthy eyes, eating lots of them will do nothing to improve your vision.
There are a huge number of myths about how to catch a cold, but in fact there is only one way to catch a cold virus – by direct contact with the virus itself. You can stand outside on a cold night with wet hair and your chances of getting a cold do not increase at all. The reason that colds seem to spread more in Winter is not from the cold itself, but the fact that people tend to live more often indoors and this increases your chances of coming in to contact with a sufferer. It is also worth mentioning that if you get a cold in your nose, you can not stop it from spreading to your chest if the virus is programmed to attack you there. Most cold medicines are completely pointless and do nothing to help except alleviate the pain through the inclusion of painkillers.
My parents constantly told me off for sitting too close to the television when I was a kid – I was told that my eyesight would deteriorate from doing so. The same was also said of reading in dim light. In fact, neither of these things do any damage to the eyes. It should be noted, however, that spending too much time in front of the TV is not good for children (regardless of how close they sit) as research has shown that children who spend 10 hours or more in front of the television each week are more likely to become overweight, aggressive, and slower in school.
The tale states that masturbation will cause blindness (in France it is said it will cause deafness). This is not true (at least not completely) and the idea has probably been spread in order to prevent children from masturbating for religious reasons. Curiously, sperm contains quite a lot of zinc, and a serious zinc deficiency can cause a decline in vision. However, it is nearly impossible to cause a zinc deficiency through masturbating.
While it is true that constant knuckle cracking can reduce the strength of your grip and cause swelling, it does not lead to arthritis. There are many causes of arthritis (such as trauma or infection of a joint, or old age), but knuckle cracking is not one of them.
If a person suffers from an ulcer, spicy food can often aggravate it; however, ulcers are not caused by spicy food at all – if they were, ulcers would be pandemic in many eastern nations. An ulcer is usually caused by overuse of medications like aspirin and anti-inflammatories.
It is almost certain that this strange old wives’ tale has come about because of the appearance of wart-like growths on many toads. In fact, these growths are not human compatible at all. Warts are caused by viruses and they are almost always exclusive to a particular genus of creature. Human’s cannot catch warts from other animals, and animals can not catch human warts. The most common human wart virus is called the human papillomavirus.
Well, look at what it says right below the question you quoted:
“Colds and flu are definitely seasonal, with more colds in the colder weather but there is no real agreement as to why colds are seasonal. Most textbooks state that there are more colds in cold weather because we tend to crowd indoors in poorly ventilated rooms. This crowding theory has been around for over a hundred years but it does not really make sense, as our cities are just as crowded in summer as winter. A new theory that has been put forward to explain the seasonality of colds and flu, and this theory puts forward the idea that our noses are colder in winter than summer and that cooling of the nose lowers resistance to infection. If the weather is freezing outside we wrap up in winter clothes but we still leave our nose exposed to the freezing air. Every time we breathe in we cool the nasal lining and weaken our local defences against infection. If this theory is correct then [b]covering our nose with a scarf in cold weather could help prevent colds.[/b]”
So it seems WE’RE JUST NOT SURE.
Kreachure – I am neither supporting nor opposing the Cardiff “results”. I was responding to the misleading (actually, wrong) interpretations of this “experiment” that people were providing.
In fact, from what I have read about this particular study (ie. as detailed on the Cardiff Univ. page we are quoting), there appears to be no robust science behind either the experiment or the results. It reads more like a high-school project.
Also, regarding your follow up quote from the Cardiff site that This crowding theory has been around for over a hundred years but it does not really make sense, as our cities are just as crowded in summer as winter.
…that statement is shallow and wholly open to challenge. For example, people spend more time in enclosed spaces during the winter (eg. it’s cold outside, so you stay inside). And so on…
So it seems WE’RE JUST NOT SURE.
Well, actually, I think we can be fairly sure. I’m happy to take the word of the Mayo Clinic and generally held medical opinion over those who appear to have conducted a sloppily executed experiment (ie. Cardiff). Having said that, I’m always prepared to be open-minded.
In any event. what we are most definitely sure about takes us back to where this discussion began : you must have the cold virus in your system in order to have a cold. End of story.
I’m not sure where to start, dick jokes or the people who still believe the tales.
StudentBiology … #113 … I stopped reading your post after the first sentence when you said the Inuit were natives of Antarctica.
63. PregnantMomma: My sister’s first two pregnancies were carried out in front and they were both boys. Her third was carried across the body and…yep..a girl. She declined to further the experiment by having a fourth.
Studentbiology:
What school? I’m making damn sure my kids don’t go there. The Inuit didn’t need glasses because they weren’t reading before we came along. When the lady Inuit’s eyes became too poor for the close work sewing required, their daughters took over. And if they’re eyes weren’t suited from the git-go they performed other womanly duties. It’s not that their eyes deteriorated once they began reading, its that it wasn’t an issue UNTIL they began reading.
Pay more attention in class!
Dana (92) – It’s more like 10% chance that the individual hair will never grow back… not more in its place.
MPW (95) – It depends on which hand you use
StudentBiology (113) – the reason the Inuit did not have vision problems in their old age was because they did not live long enough to ‘see’ the degeneration happen… poor vision lead to falling through the hole in the ice or being eaten by the polar bear they could not see… Now they have polarized prescription sun glasses and rifles.
Okay… I’m done inciting riots.
I used to drive my grandmother crazy by going outside in winter with wet hair! (And I very, very rarely had colds when I was younger.) In fairness to her, she was a young teenager in Philadelphia during the flu epidemic in 1918 when 13,000 Philadelphians died within about a month. She remembered seeing corpses left on front porches of houses; the hospitals were full, one could hardly leave them in the house, and they could not dig graves fast enough. I imagine after living through something like that while people are dying all around you that one would have a “better safe than sorry” attitude about preventing illness, and I wonder if that’s not the same for a lot of others.
My favorite is how when one must wear a hat when outdoors in cold weather because “you lose half of your body heat from your head”. Apparently this came about because of a study which said that up to half of the body heat was lost via the head – except that the participants were fully clothed EXCEPT for their heads. So it is not any worse to wear a coat with no hat than to wear a thin or short sleeved shirt or sweater and shorts with a big thick ski cap! You’re still going to be cold.
So I personally will continue to go outside for nice long walks in the winter, with my damp uncovered head sticking out, and I will bet that I get fewer colds than someone sitting in a nice warm toasty bar watching football with a bunch of random strangers and their strange germs.
sitting too close to the tv…..my mother thought I had bad eye problems and made me wear BIG eyeglasses even though I didn’t need it…for five years. Now she has eye problems….
even though i am a righty my left arm is more muscular
i must workout
MPW: Don’t work out too hard now.
JayArr; You are mistaken, read my post just before yours. The Inuit, in general had a fairly long life-span. Well into the macular degeneration years. It just wasn’t an issue.
121. Kreachure – “our cities are just as crowded in summer as in winter.” No, they arent. Look at all the people going for walks on their work breaks, extended smoking periods out of doors, people sitting outside restraunts, all in summer. these things dont really happen in winter. everyone is cooped up indoors, encouraging the spread of viruses. I work in a hospital as an RN. Right about the time it gets too cold to enjoy yourself outside, thats when I see all the kids start coming in with flu and RSV.
Oh, man, I gotta chime in on the pregnancy myths … I am currently 35 weeks pregnant and I do believe I’ve managed to hear them all, the mexican myths from my family and the U.S. myths from my coworkers. It’s really funny when the mexican and U.S. myths are totally opposite XD
What really surprised me was when my college-educated mother started spouting some of that “wisdom” at me … you think you know a person!
There’s no escape, though, cuz the next chapter is, you guessed it: baby myths! >_
i heard in my biology class that the cracking of knuckles is when a ligament, catch on the top of a bone then snap back into place, this wears the ligaments. we were also told that this can cause arthritis. im gonna trust my biology teacher on this one. shes a doctor
doctor schmoctor:)
MPW: How is the work out going?
its all good
RE: losing heat from head -
Well, your head is very badly insulated, and you’ve got a bunch of big blood vessels going through your neck. I’m not sure if that’s going to make up FIFTY PERCENT of heat loss, but it’s probably going to be more than your abdomen loses, right?
RE: the Inuits-in-Canada argument -
That doesn’t address the temporarily-lowered-immune-defenses argument. Of course you have to have the virus PRESENT before anyone can get sick from it… is this not obvious?
RE: the Bio-teacher-said-so argument -
Yeah, well, if the AP Bio teacher in the US’s top sci/tech high school can say with all seriousness that “cold blooded” means “adapts well to cold conditions”…
RE: shaving/cutting hair
I can’t back this claim at all, but I’ve read that while cutting doesn’t have any effect on hair thickness, close shaving may irritate the follicles (indirectly, I guess?) and thus cause thicker hair to grow.
RE:
Oh, and RE: the first sentence of this article -
The past tense of “mislead” should be “misled”. But that’s not important.
theyre all good except for the one about the tv. both my brothers sat right in front while watching and now they both have glasses. i never sat close to the tv and i have perfect vision. i dont care what anyone says i still believe in that one
gatorboy: not a very good argument
I don’t think he was trying to argue anything. Sounds like an affirmation of personal whatsit to me.
okey dokey
To not get a cold or flu- Do not touch your eyes or nose during the season, without washing your hands first. This is how docs do not catch as many colds as they should during those months. Its one of the things that you learn during your first few months of clincal training. Its strange that we don’t disseminate that information out there, but it really works.
Mom424(133) – I was joking!
Well… nuff said… time to wreak havoc in another thread…
Aoede: The surface area of a sphere (assuming one’s head is roughly spherical!) is 4 pi r2, whereas the area of, say, a circle of abdomen would only be pi r2. So to have equivalent sized amounts of skin exposed it would probably be closer to having most of one’s abdomen and torso (the front part, anyway) hanging out in the cold. And I’ve got lots of hair so my head is actually pretty well insulated. It’s all because my mom shaved my head as a kid so that it would grow in thicker.
An example of why I come to this site. Good list.
On #4, SCHWEET!
I was always told that if I sat on a stone or any other cold, hard surface for too long, I’d become infertile.
I was told that it’s a Russian thing though, so *shrug*
Even though I now know it’s not true, I still always put something down…Just In Case.
cambrex: that beats the hell out of a vesectomy
snip snip
To Mum 424:
First: about the antartica thing: my bad sorry about that
second they needed (what my professor told us)glasses for seeing in the distance not for reading or close work so mum 424 what you say is right but I wasn’t reefering to that,
but to they other comments: I think I will definetly have a word with my professor
Interesting list. As regards #10, which I’ve always heard the other way round — ‘feed a cold, starve a fever’ — it’s not a straightforward recommendation, it’s a warning. The second clause is conditional on the first. Thus: [if you are foolish enough to] feed a cold, [you will find yourself having to] starve a fever. As regards #1, George Orwell mentions somewhere a popular belief that washing your hands in water that’s been used to boil eggs causes warts. (Why anyone would want to do this is of course a mystery.)
ciunas:correct
so…… sitting in front of a computer screen and masturbating while eating a carrot is ok?
I’ve heard all of these!
Can’t help believing one or two of them. Its how I was raised lol!
otay: Suuuure, why not?! lol
if you expose yourself to the cold, you greatly increase your risk of falling sick. your immune system will be less capable of rapid response.
this list is way cool.
it reminds me of being like five and getting yelled at for sitting too close to the tv. hahaha in your face mum!
I have very long hair that takes up to 12 hours to air-dry. So I wash it at night and sleep on it wet. Even in the dead of winter, I walk around with wet hair most evenings. If being wet and cold increased your odds of catching disease, I’d probably have died a long time ago. Instead, I’m unusually healthy.
Actually certain foods can cause acne. The sugar in chocolate, or other foods, causes insulin in the body to spike, which in turn causes the oil glands in the skin to produce more oil. This can lead to acne.
ronRonnie: Take it from some of the regulars. These (Jamies) lists are well researched. If you feel so inclined, like some of us are, try doing your own search and you’ll find the same results. The Wiki, is not the be-all-end-all of info.
About #6:
To catch a cold, you have to be infected with one of the many viruses that cause the common cold. No virus = no cold, no matter how cold you get.
But, and it’s an important but, getting cold may actually increase the likelyhood of the cold-virus establishing an infection. Not because it weakens the immune system (you have to get severely chilled out for that), but because one of the body’s primary lines of defense is our body temperature. Most cold viruses don’t thrive at normal body temperature – let alone at elevated body temperatures, which is why fever is such an important defense against infections.
Breathing the cold winter air temporarily lowers the temperature in the tissues lining the nose and throat, making it easier for the virus to take hold. This is one of the reasons colds are more common in the wintertime, although the crowding factor, which raises the risk of actually being infected, is probably even more important.
Oh, and about #4, here’s another gem for you:
In Sweden, where I live, the old wives tale is that you get hairy palms from masturbating. Or if you don’t develop hairy palms, you’ll become a hunchback. Or go insane (but only if you’re a girl). Scary stuff…
I HATE old wives tales! They are so annoying. And as impossible to kill as many urban legends, which are equally annoying. You cannot spread enough knowledge to convince people that what they want to believe is incorrect. I live in South Texas with a huge hispanic population, so you pretty much can’t talk about any topic without someone adding some tidbit of wisdom like shaving my baby’s head is a good idea because her baby hair is blocking her thicker, prettier hair from coming out. Really?! What?! And I agree with PregnantMama’s comment, when you’re pregnant, you get an endless supply of ways to know what you’re having and what it will look like and blah blah blah. You just have to nod and smile because if you disagree with them, they get offended.
#161: As an insulin-dependant diabetic, I can tell you that insulin spikes in no way, shape or form lead to oily skin. Many diabetics, in fact, need to use artificial moisturizers to keep their skin supple.
Acne is not a food-borne affliction.
If anything related to chocolate is going to give you a few zits, it’s going to be rubbing your face after eating it. Why would you scratch you face with your hand covered in chocolate anyway? Slobs!
What is up with the sign and the kittens.I think that is really sick to even think of!!!!!
i masterbated several times a day when i was a teenager,look at me now.dont listen to this kids.lies.
My father likes to trot this old wives’ tale out for anyone that will listen. He firmly believes that boys are supposed to take after their maternal grandfathers and girls their paternal grandmothers. Having studied a little bit of genetics in school, I do believe this is bunk. Anyone else heard this?
There’s a lot of misinformation in this post. You wrote: Needless to say, eating too much chocolate or sugary food is unhealthy for the body, but it will not cause skin problems.
This is not true. A number of foods can cause acne. Some people are sensitive to iodine, others sugars and many fried foods, altered fats and dairy products. Also, carrots have been shown to improve vision visa vis its carotenoids and nutrients that support tiny blood vessels of the eye.
So anyone know about being out in the cold with no jacket causing kidney problems? My mother in law always worries about that and I recently heard a nurse mention it, but I can’t find any information on it.
feed a fever,starve a cold – in my nursing class at uni, we interpreted it, as did my lecturer, as feeding a fever more heat and starving a cold of cold. which is only partially debunkable (the fever part only), and then only under certain circumstances.
fever is your body’s way of defending itself from bacteria, most of which will be killed by the raised body temp, and sweating can take some toxins with it. so sometimes its good to keep someone with a fever warm. unfortunately, if allowed to run too long and too hot it will cook you as well. therefore most doctors don’t worry about fevers unless they get too high, which i think is somewhere around the 40 degrees C mark. at which point you can start fitting.
i have never heard it in reference to diet and illness, just in reference to body temp.
as for #5 – it’s like this: does a whisper hurt your ears? No. Neither does reading in dim light.
#4 is disturbing. Does it mean that if you don’t believe in god, masturbate, if you do believe in god, use a kitten instead???
Looking at anything up close for too long will absolutely cause far distance vision issues. I provide vision therapy and I wish it was not true but it is.
Vision involves muscles among other things and it stands to reason that improper use of muscle can and will cause problems.
For the catching a cold thing.
Our body can fight off the cold in the right circumstances. Not everyone who comes in contact gets sick. But when we stand out in the freezing weather with wet hair, it supresses our immune system, increasing the chances that our body will not fight off the virus, in turn, giving us the cold. I may be wrong, but thats what they’re teaching in Med school. Though I agree that you must come in contact with the virus.
178. DIS.AR.RAY
Oy…I recommend dropping out of that school and go to one that teaches you just the facts without the drama.
Wet hair is irrelevant to colds or immune systems. If it were true, then every time it rained would significantly increase the likelihood of catching a cold (another old wives’ tale that is completely false). It could increase the amount of heat lost through the head but it’s still so negligible that it’s highly unlikely to be a cold-inducing culprit.
You can go buck naked and streak down the street in the dead of winter and still have no weaker immune system than that of someone indoors watching you streak. The Polar Bear Clubs of New England and Canada (and I suppose they exist elsewhere) have no alarming rates of suppressed immune systems even though they fully submerge in freezing waters just for the fun of it.
You had it two thirds right… you must come in contact with a virus, the cold weather COULD suppress the immune system BUT ONLY IF exposed long enough to drastically lower your core body temp. Core body temp is vital to maintaining optimum function for the immune system (and for most functions). The human body is not so fragile that it cannot withstand the cold weather for a bit while maintaining healthy function.
There was an article from a newspaper not long ago, that explained that while the “not swimming after eating” was an old wives’tale, it had some points. You shouldn’t have any problems with swimming right after eating if you had a light meal. But if you really eat highly fatty foods then you could have a temperature shock of some sort and loose consciousness. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take a swim right after eating, just make sure you do it safely. That is, slowly entering the pool, making your hair wet, your neck, below your armpits and slowly advancing towards the deeper parts of the pool (the coldest ones). Taking a splash right after an almost bulge eating episode isn’t always the best idea.
But have in mind that this also goes for those terribly hot summer days, when we plan on diving into the pool instead of lowering our body temperature first. That is regardless of the fact that you may have had lunch 1 minute or 3 hours before entering the pool or sea.
Control your body temperature and you’ll be fine