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FRESH STUDIES OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ARE BUSTING ALL THOSE HEALTH MYTHS YOU GREW UP WITH
Cold Weather Won’t Make You Sick
Most of your
body heat is lost
through your head.
Untrue. This myth
likely originated
from a 50-year-old military
study; subjects enduring ex-
treme cold lost the most heat
from their heads. But the
head was the only exposed
body part, says Rachel Vree-
man, M.D., coauthor of Don’t
Swallow Your Gum!: Myths,
Half-Truths, and Outright Lies
About Your Body and Health.
The real deal? “You lose heat
from whatever is uncovered,”
Vreeman says. “There is nothing special about the head.”
Illnesses
come from
cold or wet weather.
Colds and flus
come from
viruses, not the climate,
explains Aaron Carroll,
M. D., Vreeman’s co-
author. But because
some viruses are more
common in winter, more
people may get sick
then. Plus, chilly or rainy
weather often results
in more people staying
inside—and then sharing
their icky infections.
Taking vitamin C
and zinc will help
prevent or shorten a cold.
Taking vitamin C
daily won’t prevent
illness, and if you consume
it after feeling sick, it won’t
ease symptoms, studies
show. As for zinc, three of
four well-designed studies
found it ineffective, while a
fourth found that zinc nasal
gel helped relieve symptoms.
But in June the FDA recalled
some zinc nasal products,
since they’re linked to a loss
of sense of smell. Bottom
You should drink
at least eight
cups of water per day.
There’s no medical
reason to follow
this advice. In 1945 the Food
and Nutrition Board of the
get enough H2O from what
they eat and drink: the aver-
age person takes in about
line: There’s no need for
extra C, and zinc may actually harm you.
National Research Council recommended that
adults take in 2. 5 liters of
water per day (about 84. 5
ounces), noting that most
water comes from food.
Many adherents, however,
ignored the last part of that
statement. Drink up if you’d
like, but studies suggest
that most people already
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Drug-Free
Pain Relief
Here’s one more reason to
enjoy your cup of morning
joe. In a University of Illinois
study, 25 cyclists who consumed the equivalent
of about three 8-ounce cups of coffee before
working out had significantly less pain while
training. —Chai Woodham
You’re really
using only 10
percent of your brain.
Brainiacs rejoice—
now you can
sound really smart when
you refute this misconcep-
tion. Images from numerous
studies show that no area
of the brain is completely
shut down, and each region
of the brain has a function.
“Neurons everywhere in
the brain are pretty well
continuously active,” adds
Michael Rugg, Ph.D., director
of the Center for the Neu-robiology of Learning and
Memory at the University
of California, Irvine.
—Lindsey Hollenbaugh
