Don't Swallow Your Gum!: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health

By Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS and Dr. Rachel C. Vreeman, MD

People have more access to medical information than ever before, and yet we still believe "facts" about our bodies and health that are just plain wrong. DON'T SWALLOW YOUR GUM! takes on these myths and misconceptions, and exposes the truth behind some of those weird and worrisome things we think about our bodies. Entries dispel the following myths and more:

- You need to drink 8 glasses of water a day
- Chewing gum stays in your stomach for seven years
- You can catch poison ivy from someone who has it
- If you drop food on the floor and pick it up within five seconds, it's safe to eat
- Strangers have poisoned kids' Halloween candy

With the perfect blend of authoritative research and a breezy, accessible tone, DON'T SWALLOW YOUR GUM is full of enlightening, practical, and quirky facts that will debunk some of the most perennial misconceptions we believe about our health and well-being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 26, 2009
• ISBN: 9781429969499

Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS

Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS, is an associate professor of Pediatrics in the Children's Health Services Research Program at the Indiana University School of Medicine, and the Director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research. Dr. Carroll's current research interest include the use of information technology in pediatric health care, decision analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis, and health policy and professionalism. Aaron Carroll and Rachel Vreeman's research has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, Newsweek, and many other national publications. They have appeared on Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, and ABC News NOW.

Book preview

Don’t Swallow Your Gum!

DR. AARON E. CARROLL AND

DR. RACHEL C. VREEMAN

DON’T

SWALLOW

YOUR GUM!

MYTHS, HALF-TRUTHS, AND

OUTRIGHT LIES ABOUT YOUR

BODY AND HEALTH

ST. MARTIN’S GRIFFIN NEW YORK

DON’T SWALLOW YOUR GUM! Copyright © 2009 by Aaron E. Carroll and Rachel C. Vreeman. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carroll, Aaron E.

Don’t swallow your gum! : myths, half-truths, and outright lies about your body and health / Aaron E. Carroll and Rachel C. Vreeman.—1st ed.

       p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-53387-8

ISBN-10: 0-312-53387-X

  1. Medicine—Miscellanea. 2. Human physiology—Miscellanea.

 I. Vreeman, Rachel C. II. Title.

R706.C37 2009

612—dc22

2009007363

First Edition: June 2009

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

FOR

Aimee,

who actually believes that there is nothing I cannot do

AND

Joe,

L of my L, who wanted to get us myth-busting capes

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Look at the size of his feet! Myths about your body

Men with big feet have bigger penises You only use 10 percent of your brain Your hair and fingernails continue to grow after you die If you shave your hair, it will grow back faster, darker, and thicker You’ll ruin your eyesight if you read in the dark The average person swallows eight spiders per year You should poop at least once a day Your urine should be almost clear You can beat a Breathalyzer test You should never wake a sleepwalker

Part II: Do you want to catch pneumonia out there? Myths about how we contract and treat diseases

Cold or wet weather makes you sick You can get a hernia from lifting something heavy You can catch poison ivy from someone who has it If you have allergies, you should only own a short-haired or non-shedding dog A dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s Green mucus indicates a sinus infection Using underarm antiperspirants causes breast cancer Flu shots can cause the flu You need to stay awake if you’ve had a concussion If you donate your organs, doctors won’t work as hard to save your life You lose most of your body heat through your head Use the highest SPF sunscreen, and you won’t get burned Vitamin C, echinacea, and zinc will keep you from getting a cold Airborne is your best option for cold prevention Breast milk can cure ear infections Acupuncture doesn’t really work

Part III: But I was on the pill! Myths about sex and pregnancy

Men think about sex every seven seconds Condoms will protect you from all STDs Singles have much better sex lives than married people Virgins don’t have openings in their hymens You can’t get pregnant using the pull out method Birth control pills don’t work as well if you’re on antibiotics You’re more likely to have a baby boy if you have sex in the middle of your cycle You can predict the sex of your baby without a doctor Twins skip a generation Flying on a plane is dangerous for your unborn baby Bed rest prevents preterm labor

Part IV: He won’t get into Harvard without Baby Einstein. Myths about babies and children

Baby Einstein will make my baby smarter Adding cereal to your baby’s diet will help him sleep longer Teething causes a fever It is safe for babies to sleep in bed with their parents Women who are breast-feeding can drink alcohol Over-the-counter cold and cough medicine is safe for babies and toddlers Walkers help your baby learn to walk earlier The iron in baby formula causes constipation Sugar makes kids hyper

Part V: Don’t swallow your gum! Myths about what we eat and drink

Chewing gum stays in your stomach for seven years Eating turkey makes you sleepy Milk makes you phlegmy Eating grapefruit burns calories Eating at night makes you fat You should drink at least eight glasses of water a day If you pick up food within five seconds of it hitting the floor, it’s safe You can chew gum instead of brushing your teeth You should wait an hour after eating before you go swimming It’s safe to double dip

Part VI: Shots made my baby autistic. Myths that spark controversy and debate

Strangers have poisoned kids’ Halloween candy The fluoride in your water is dangerous More people commit suicide around the holidays More women are abused the day of the Super Bowl than on any other day Newer drugs are always better Vaccines cause autism

Boring research terms that you might see in this book

References

Acknowledgments

Index

Don’t Swallow Your Gum!

Introduction

Have you ever walked past a cemetery and thought for just a moment about the growing, curling fingernails of the corpses underneath? When you saw that man with enormous feet, did you wonder if other parts of him were just as large? Did the Thanksgiving turkey make you fall asleep before the football game? Have you switched to waxing your legs because shaving made the hair grow back faster and thicker? Is it a struggle for you to drink the recommended eight glasses of water a day?

Every day, you hear or think things about your body and health that are not true. Maybe these ideas are simply unproven. Or maybe these ideas about your body and how to keep it healthy have actually been proven through scientific evidence to be false.

And yet, we still see these things on TV, read them in magazines, or hear them from our friends. Your doctor may have even told you one of these myths.

One of the dirty little secrets in the practice of medicine is how little of what we physicians do is actually proven. People assume that if doctors recommend something, then it must be correct. To actually know something is true, however, requires scientific research, and good research requires time and money. Although there are millions of people and billions of dollars invested in scientific research, there just isn’t enough to go around to answer every question; especially since the focus of modern research is usually on the most serious problems and the most advanced drugs and procedures.

So, oftentimes, when a doctor tells you to do something, it’s just his best guess. And that’s okay. A good doctor builds on his training, experience, and knowledge to give you his best advice, so most of the time this medical advice is going to be useful and helpful. However, another doctor may give you different advice. Who’s right? How do you know whom to trust?

If this is happening with important medical issues, what about those things that are less critical—the things your mother warned you about? Or the things your friends told you they saw on TV, or even the stuff you read in popular health books?

The truth is that oftentimes you just don’t know what’s true. That’s where the idea for this book began. Many things you believe about your health, things you were told as a child, are simply unproven. Again, that’s okay, but unproven ideas should not be given the same weight and credence as those that are proven. It’s in our best interest to understand where these unproven beliefs came from, and then judge for ourselves whether they are true.

Some myths have actually been studied. We can see what the studies say and decide what is true. How do we decide whether to trust scientific studies? We are both physicians and researchers. In our professional lives, we spend a good deal of our time teaching people, from parents to other physicians, how to understand health research. As researchers, we strive to maintain a sense of fairness in our work; we are careful not to make any decisions before the experiments are complete. Therefore, we are able to accept whatever the science tells us, regardless of what we might have believed before. We want to give you a crash course in health research and scientific studies so that you will understand how science helps us decide whether a belief is right or wrong. For part of this crash course, we would suggest a quick look at the section Boring Research Terms That You Might See in This Book. We don’t want you to believe something is a myth just because we said so. We want you to understand why we said so.

The best possible type of study is what the scientific world calls a randomized, controlled trial. (Again, see the Boring Terms section.) In these studies, people are secretly given one of two or more treatments. In the best research, no one in the study knows which person is getting what treatment. By looking at what happens to people in this kind of study, we can tell what effect the treatment or situation caused. Randomized, controlled trials are the only way to prove causation. You should be skeptical of anyone who tells you something has been proven to work or proven to cause something unless the outcome was the result of a randomized, controlled trial. These types of trials are pretty rare in the medical world because of how expensive and complicated they are. Sometimes, they are even unethical. You may hear tobacco companies say that smoking has never been proven to cause cancer. This is because there has never been a randomized, controlled trial of smoking and cancer. And there never will be. Can you imagine anyone approving a study that secretly forced some people to smoke so that we could see if they get cancer? That’s crazy! And wrong!

When we simply can’t get a randomized, controlled trial, we have to look at the next best thing. Through other types of studies, called epidemiological or cohort studies, we can look at associations. An association tells us if something has a relationship with something else. Association and causation are not the same. While we can’t prove smoking causes cancer (because we can’t do the randomized, controlled trial to prove it), there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that smoking is associated with cancer. With evidence that reveals an association between smoking and cancer, we can’t say we are 100 percent sure that smoking causes cancer, but we are as close to being sure as we are ever going to get. The scientific studies that tell us about associations usually involve big groups of people (the bigger, the better), where we can best see if these people have certain things in common (like smoking and getting cancer).

Many of the myths in this book have this type of evidence stacked against them. Maybe there aren’t any randomized, controlled trials to dispel the myth, but there are large epidemiological or cohort studies that point to the answer. When scientific evidence for or against something builds up, we would argue that you should believe the science. In this book, you will always see us argue on the side of science.

Keep something else in mind as you read this book. Consider that you cannot prove a negative. Although we can tell you that something has never, ever happened in the history of the world, we cannot offer definitive proof that this thing won’t ever happen. This does not mean you should expect it to happen. It is not logical to believe that something is true or that something is going to occur only because there is no absolute proof that it is false.

For instance, in the history of the world, no one has ever been born who could fly. We can’t prove, or say with 100 percent certainty, that someone won’t be born tomorrow who can, but it is really, really, really unlikely. So it’s okay for us to say, even without absolute proof, that people can’t fly.

In this book, we will examine a lot of beliefs about your body and your health. We will lay out the science as best we can, based on everything we can find in medical and scientific literature. We will argue that you should decide what to believe based on the evidence or lack thereof.

What really concerns us are the times when great, randomized, controlled trials have been done, disproving the myth, and people still believe the myth. These are frustrating situations because the jury is in—there won’t and shouldn’t be any more studies. All the research indicates that the myth is untrue, but people just don’t want to accept it.

We know that people don’t like to hear that they are wrong (Aaron especially—he always thinks he is right). Discovering that something you believed is not true can be disturbing and unsettling. When we published the first of these myths in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in December 2007, we were shocked at how many people had strong reactions. Some people just can’t let a myth go.

Some of you will read this book and still refuse to accept what the studies show you to be true (or false). We have provided extensive references for those of you inclined to investigate further. You may be surprised not only by the scarcity of evidence supporting some of your beliefs, but also by the volume of evidence disproving others. We tried to show you everything; we included all the evidence we could and told you when there was nothing there.

Keep an open mind. More often than not, this book will make your life easier. Moreover, it will give you a number of smart answers for your mother.

PART I

LOOK

AT THE SIZE

OF HIS FEET!

MYTHS ABOUT YOUR BODY

Men with big feet have

bigger penises

Have you ever noticed a man with particularly big feet and wondered if other parts of him were just as large? While some claim that a man’s penis size can be predicted by the size of his feet, others say that it’s the size of his hands or even his nose that really gives away the secret of what’s in his pants. This idea of comparing body parts to estimate hidden assets may have originated with discriminating shoppers, but it may also have its roots in real science. The Hox gene in mammals plays a role in the development of the toes and fingers, as well as the penis or clitoris. Given how rarely one hears gene expression mentioned along with the talk of penises and feet, it seems much more likely that this myth springs from our desire, as humans, to identify patterns—even when the pattern is not really there. We like to have explanations for things we see, and we like to group like things with like things (in this case, appendages on men).

Despite the similar genetic controls for these protuberances, men with big feet do not necessarily have bigger penises. While at first, the prospects for estimating penile length with a quick glance at a man’s feet seemed promising, science now shows us that this is not the case. A study of sixty men in Canada suggested that there was a weak—but statistically significant—relationship between penile length and both body height and foot length (remember—statistically significant doesn’t necessarily mean significant

Reviews for Don't Swallow Your Gum!

[eclecticdodo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An ok book debunking various myths about the human body. Mostly light diversion but with a more serious section on the vaccines-cause-autism fraud. I found it a little light on the science personally, I would have preferred more depth on a narrower range of subjects.

[charlierb3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

About: Doctors Vreeman and Carroll tackle common beliefs about health and the human body including the Five Second Rule, double dipping and how much water one should drink. The book is organized into six groups of myths: the body, diseases, sex and pregnancy, babies and children, what we eat and drink, and myths that spark debate and controversy.Pros: Quick read, interesting, lots of myths tackled, well written, references in back.A Few Things I Found Interesting: * Yellow urine doesn't mean you are dehydrated, neither does being thirsty * You can't "beat" a breathalyzer * A mosquito's buzz is just the flapping of its wings * Once the irritating oils are washed off, you can't get poison ivy from someone's poison ivy rash * Putting butter on a burn is a bad idea * Green mucus from your nose doesn't mean you need antibiotics * Poinsettias aren't that poisonous. No people have died from poinsettia poisoning * Vitamin C doesn't prevent colds * Sugar does not make kids hyper * Twins don't skip a generationCons: No in-text citations, would have liked to see a further reading and other resources section.Grade B+