There are more health-related myths about the holiday season than about any other time of year.
We just made that up, but it has the kernel of reasonableness that helps such untruths endure. After all, the holidays coincide with that other font of mythinformation – the cold and flu season.
How does medical lore get started? Are any old wives’ tales scientifically valid? It’s the season to consider some popular misconceptions, bearing in mind that ongoing research may yet show today’s myth to be tomorrow’s gospel. Americans gain several pounds over the holidays
Not true, or at least it wasn’t six years ago. The average weight gain between Thanksgiving and New Year’s was less than a pound, based on a study of 195 adults who were repeatedly weighed from September to mid-January by researchers at the National Institutes of Health.
It has been confirmed, however, that Americans think they gain more. In a 2004 survey of 1,000 adults by the Kaiser Permanente health plan, 43 percent of men and 49 percent of women said they tended to gain “a few pounds” during the holiday season.
If you catch a chill, you’ll catch a cold
The theory is that being chilled reduces the body’s ability to fight infection. While mothers of coat-spurning children may attest to this, studies were unable to verify it – until last year. The Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University in Wales observed 90 people who soaked their feet in ice-cold water 20 minutes a day for a week and compared them with an uncooled control group. Sure enough, frosty-footed subjects were more likely to develop cold symptoms during that week.
But critics gave the study the cold shoulder, pointing out that the participants simply filled out symptom questionnaires, rather than being checked for infection before and during the study.
Feed a cold, starve a fever
This advice is probably rooted in the observation that feverish people have no appetite, say researchers at the Palo Alto Institute, a health research think tank.
Last year in the journal Medical Hypotheses, they speculated that not eating – or, depending on the infection, eating – evolved as a way for the gut to help regulate the body’s mix of infection-fighting white blood cells. Some cells are better at tackling cold viruses, others at battling fever-causing bacteria, explained Stanford researcher Anthony J. Yun.
But now that we have antibiotics and fever-reducing medicines, the whole starve-a-fever thing “may be less adaptive today” than in prehistoric times, he wrote.
Suicides increase around the holidays
This is a myth, says the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It has been perpetuated, the center says on its website, “by reporters reluctant to give up the ultimate, counterintuitive take on the season of good cheer.”
Of course, reporters might be influenced by mental health experts’ annual warnings about holiday blues, stress, and seasonal affective disorder.
In any case, since the Annenberg Center began tracking the media’s erroneous reportage, stories about holiday suicides have gotten smarter.
Eighteen percent debunked the myth in 1999 vs. 36 percent last Christmas.
Suicide rates are actually at their lowest in December, and peak in the spring and early fall, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
You can get a cold from licking your fingers
Among those who mistakenly think so is the publicist for Natural Dentist Healthy Gums rinse, a mouthwash. A recent news release pitched the product as a way to kill those nasty cold germs that “can enter the mouth through nail-biting, touching your lips or licking your fingers.”
Hand-washing is an excellent defense against cold viruses because fingers can spread the bug to the nose or eyes. That’s where germs normally gets access to your upper respiratory tract – not through your mouth.
Doctors say the virus most often spreads in droplets that are sneezed or coughed into the air, then inhaled or touched by the next victim.
An apple a day keeps
the doctor away
Apples are not a magic food, said Jeanes Hospital dietitian Jennifer Lynn-Pullman, but they are an excellent source of phytochemicals – biologically active compounds that have been linked to a reduced risk of heart disease and cancer.
In laboratory studies, apples, especially the peels, have been shown to inhibit cancer-cell growth, lower cholesterol, and scavenge harmful oxygen molecules. Apples also are a good source of constipation-fighting fiber.
