Don't Cross Your Eyes...They'll Get Stuck That Way!: And 75 Other Health Myths Debunked (18 page)

Poison

If you swallow something poisonous, you need to vomit as soon as possible

Finding out your child has swallowed something potentially poisonous can be a harrowing experience. Unfortunately, many people’s first instinct is to try and get them to vomit it up. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If the poison is bad, get it out of the stomach as quickly as possible.

There are so many reasons that this is a bad idea. First of all, when you vomit up a substance, you seriously increase the chance that it can go into the lungs. This is very, very bad. And, with some substances, like products made from petroleum, the vapor can cause a bad pneumonia. Moreover, sometimes children and adults can have an altered consciousness after swallowing something bad, which can greatly increase the risk of having things go into their lungs that should not.

A lot of things that children unintentionally swallow are very likely to burn their throats. Anything alkaline, including many dish-washing and cleaning products, is likely to chemically burn tissues with which it comes into contact. Vomiting these products increases the exposure to the throat an additional time (while also putting the lungs at risk). Vomiting is a terrible idea with these.

And there are other reasons not to induce vomiting. Vomiting increases the pressure in the stomach, which can increase absorption of stomach contents. You definitely do not want the person to absorb more of what they swallowed. Vomiting, once begun, can be hard to control and stop. Some of the methods to induce vomiting can also be dangerous themselves. People have been known to force the swallowing of salt water, which is not a good idea. Salt water can actually irritate the lining of your stomach and intestines, possibly even making you absorb more of the poison, and too much salt water without other fluids can lead to dehydration. Moreover, using salt water to make someone vomit is a bad idea for many of the same reasons that using ipecac to force vomiting is bad—which we’ll get to momentarily. The chemical that was swallowed might cause worse burns as it comes back up, and the vomiting could cause you to aspirate or to breathe in the chemicals or poisons that were swallowed. Shoving your fingers into another’s throat can also cause harm.

And all of this ignores the fact that vomiting isn’t a particularly good way to completely evacuate or clear out the stomach.

This all brings us to ipecac. Once again, the medical field is partly to blame for perpetuating a medical myth. For decades, we advised parents and families to have a bottle of ipecac on hand, in case we ever wanted a person to induce vomiting in just this situation. The problem is that ipecac doesn’t really do any good (for many of the reasons mentioned above), and it can potentially do a lot of harm (again, see above). Ipecac makes people vomit, but there are far too many reasons why vomiting that poison up might be a bad idea.

In a landmark study published in
Pediatrics
in 2003, Dr. Gary Bond showed that in a review of sixty-four U.S. poison centers and over 750,000 calls to poison centers, the use of ipecac did nothing to prevent resource utilization including hospitalizations. It also did nothing to improve patient outcomes at all. Even if you used ipecac, you still had to come to the hospital. And it did not prevent any of the harms that come when you swallow something you should not. The American Academy of Pediatrics, and many other organizations, subsequently changed their recommendations and told people to throw out the ipecac. We would advise you to do the same! If you think your child, or anyone else, has swallowed something poisonous or harmful, you should always, and we mean
always
, call a poison control center. The phone number for the national center is 1-800-222-1222.

Protein

Eating extra protein after you work out will help you build muscles

This one is a half-truth. Eating protein does help you build muscles; a process called protein synthesis is key to that. Protein supplements do seem to help people to build bigger, stronger muscles.

In studies in which people are randomized to consume protein supplements or carbohydrate supplements before and after exercise, the people who take the protein supplements do build more muscle mass and have greater muscle strength. Combining protein supplements with resistance training does boost muscle protein synthesis and improve muscle performance in small studies.

However, you don’t need to take in huge amounts of protein in order to do this. Experts say that you do not need more than 0.9 to 1.25 grams of protein per pound of body weight. If you take in any more than that, your body will just convert the protein into other things that are stored up for energy or else you will excrete the extra out.

It is also important to remember that eating protein alone is not going to build up your muscles. You need to exercise your muscles AND eat the protein if you are going to see any effects from your bodybuilding. And if you were going to do only one of those things, it would have to be the exercising. Taking in extra protein-based calories is just going to lead to an excess of calories otherwise. The body stores extra calories as fat, not as protein.

The effectiveness of protein supplements needs to be balanced against the risks. Bodybuilders who take in huge amounts of protein can actually create other problems for their body. Too much protein can make the body dehydrated. The kidneys have to work hard to get rid of all the extra, which places an added stress on them. There is evidence that taking a low dose of a supplement such as creatine does not hurt the kidneys, but the long-term effects of taking higher doses of these supplements are not known. Higher-protein diets can also cause digestive problems, such as more gas, indigestion, and heartburn. And regularly eating a high-protein diet has been connected with a higher risk of developing heart disease in some studies.

Saunas

Saunas or sweat lodges will cleanse your body of toxins

Sweat lodges have traditionally been used for religious purposes and purification ceremonies. People continue to go to sweat lodges for a spiritual experience or in an effort to detoxify their body. Saunas are often used for similar purposes; many people find them relaxing, but also hope that the heat and sweating will cleanse their bodies.

Sweating is not the way to release toxins from the body. The main role of sweating is to cool your body. The moisture produced by your sweat glands evaporates, and this evaporation process cools the body. The primary role of sweating is for cooling you off. Water, electrolytes, and some other chemicals are released through your sweat, but detoxifying is not the main role of sweating. Many people don’t realize that their sweat glands are not directly connected to other systems in their body, like their digestive track or their lymph nodes.

Sweat is mostly water, but it does contain some other chemicals dissolved in it—minerals (small amounts of sodium, lactate, urea, potassium, calcium, magnesium), trace elements (very small amounts of zinc, copper, nickel, iron, chromium), and some chemicals that smell (2-methylphenol and 4-methylphenol). Sodium (salt) is the most common mineral in sweat and the concentration of sodium in sweat varies based on how hot a person is and how much they are exercising.

Even though sweat has some chemicals in it, you should not rely on sweating to detoxify your body. Although small amounts of minerals and trace elements are eliminated from the body through sweating, this is not the main purpose of sweating. The purpose of sweating is to cool the body—not to cleanse the body. You mostly just lose water through sweat.

Saunas are not necessarily bad for the body. There is some evidence that saunas improve blood pressure and enhance blood flow and cardiac function. However, the medical literature does not provide very clear scientific evidence of health benefits to sweat lodges, steam rooms, or saunas.

A sweat lodge can be more of a danger than a benefit to your body if proper precautions are not taken. One of the biggest risks is getting overheated. Being overheated can lead to heat exhaustion or more severe problems such as heat stroke or hyperthermia. This is probably what happened recently when several people died after their experience in a sweat lodge in Arizona. Your body always works to try to balance how much heat it makes and how much it loses, but if you are in conditions that are too hot for too long, your body may not be able to cool you off well enough. In addition to feeling thirsty and hot, you may begin to feel dizzy, weak, clumsy, and sick to your stomach. These are signs that you need to move to a cool place, drink fluids, and seek medical care. People with heart conditions should always talk to their doctors before trying a sweat lodge or sauna.

To avoid other risks in sweat lodges, you should not take part in a ceremony where hot river rocks or other rocks with air pockets are used. These rocks can occasionally explode in the heat, injuring people around them. You should also make sure not to wear metal jewelry that could heat up and burn you in very hot conditions.

The body is great at detoxifying itself. Your liver specializes in breaking down substances within the body, including many of the chemicals that your body cannot use or that would be considered toxins. Your kidneys also do a lot of work to get rid of toxic substances like urea—much more work than your sweat glands do. Your entire digestive system, including your colon, is designed to get rid of what your body cannot use and to keep what it needs. Your body does not rely on sweating to keep itself healthy, and neither should you.

Seizures

If someone is having a seizure, you should put something in their mouth

Seizures can be pretty scary for people who aren’t used to seeing them. In a typical grand mal seizure, a person or child will lose all voluntary motor control and shake, sometimes violently. Unfortunately, when these seizures are presented in movies or TV shows, invariably someone offers the following advice: “Put something in his mouth so he can’t swallow his tongue.”

Never, ever do that.

The first thing to do is stay calm. The vast majority of seizures are not life-threatening, and most won’t even need medical intervention. So stay relaxed, and reassure those around you. The next thing to do is make sure there isn’t anything on the ground that could hurt the person having a seizure if he were to hit it. If there are sharp objects, you should move them away. Don’t, however, try to relocate the person. Don’t lift someone having a seizure or try and restrain them. They aren’t going to hurt themselves. Of course, if they are near a cliff or road, you should prevent them from going over. Common sense should still apply.

It is totally reasonable to loosen a tie or anything around a seizing person’s neck. It is also a good idea to turn them gently onto their side so any liquid in the mouth drains out. You can even cushion their head gently as long as you don’t restrain them. It’s also a good idea to time the seizure; you should get more concerned if it lasts five minutes or more.

What you should never, ever do is pry open a person’s mouth or put anything in it while they are having a seizure. Contrary to what you may have heard, a person cannot swallow their tongue while they are having a seizure. Forcing a person’s mouth open could injure their teeth, tongue, or jaw. It could also result in a serious injury to your fingers. Placing anything in their mouth also places them at serious risk for choking.

You should always err on the side of caution when considering calling for help. If you’re concerned, call. That’s what emergency services are for. But most of the time they aren’t necessary. Exceptions include pregnant women, people with diabetes, and seizures that occur in water or last more than five minutes. You should also call if a seizing person stops breathing, starts seizing again before waking up, or if the person comes out of the seizure and says this was his or her first seizure.

Sex

Having sex during pregnancy will hurt the baby

In the movie
Knocked Up
, the main characters are on the brink of reenacting the scenario that got one of them “knocked up” in the first place when the guy becomes paranoid that he cannot have sex with his pregnant romantic interest without doing damage to the baby. Seth Rogen’s character is not alone; many people worry about whether sex will hurt their baby, cause a miscarriage, or cause problems in some way for the pregnancy.

There are plenty of real things to worry about during a pregnancy. Whether or not you can have sex is not one of them! Sex during pregnancy is completely safe if the pregnancy is a normal one. The experience of millions of human beings over time should reinforce how true this is. Most women have sex while they are pregnant, and most babies turn out just fine. Nonetheless, scientists have studied this question.

There is no scientific evidence that sex during any stage of pregnancy will hurt the baby or the mother under normal conditions. There is no evidence that sex causes miscarriages. In studies comparing babies born to mothers who had sex throughout pregnancy with babies born to mothers who stopped having sex at some point in the pregnancy, there were no differences between the babies. There were also no differences in the babies born to mothers who had orgasms during their pregnancies and those who did not have orgasms. Sex is usually perfectly safe for the baby and the mother.

While many people believe that sex might cause a miscarriage, especially early in the pregnancy, there is no evidence to support this. Most miscarriages, particular the early ones, result from an abnormality in how the baby is developing or a chromosomal problem. The miscarriage is not related to anything that you have done or not done. Sex will not make a difference. In fact, a recent study suggests that it is better to try to conceive again in the months soon after a miscarriage than to wait six months or more. Sex did not cause the miscarriage, and you can try again quite soon.

Other people worry that sex might not be good for the baby because of just how close the baby and the penis might be to each other. The baby is actually well protected from the penis during sex. Inside the uterus, the baby is surrounded by amniotic fluid, which offers a good barrier. The entrance to the uterus, the cervix, is a relatively thick cap over the uterus with just a small hole in the middle (until the very end of pregnancy when the cervix starts to dilate or open up a bit). The baby is further protected by a mucus plug that seals off the cervix throughout most of the pregnancy as well. The penis is not going to touch the baby.