Don't Cross Your Eyes...They'll Get Stuck That Way!: And 75 Other Health Myths Debunked (3 page)

First of all, the air in the cabin of an airplane is really quite clean. The cabin air originally comes from the air outside the plane, which is at very high altitude. High altitude air starts off with very few bacteria and viruses in it. Then, the air is compressed and heated before it gets sent into the cabin, a process that should also kill remaining bacteria or viruses. So the air that comes into the airplane for you to breathe is actually very clean. Of course, the next step is for that clean air to start recirculating in a cabin that may include sick people. Some risk enters the picture with the recirculation, but the risk is really very low. Within an airplane’s recirculation system, the air is filtered through a system of high efficiency particulate air (HEPA)–type filters. These filters are very good at removing bacteria and even viruses from the air; they are better than the filters in most buildings, and are the same kinds of filters used to clean the air in hospital wards or operating rooms. Therefore, both the air coming into the plane from outside and the recirculated air once inside are very clean overall.

To make the ride in the plane even safer, the air in the cabin is exchanged very frequently, typically twenty times in an hour. This is much better than most office buildings, where air is exchanged twelve times in an hour, or most houses, where air is exchanged five times in an hour. The air circulation system also tries to avoid sending the air all around the plane. Instead, the air that leaves from a particular row, after being cleaned, comes back to that particular row. The air exchange moves from the top to the bottom of the plane, rather than from the front to the back. If any germs manage to get into the air, they stay pretty close to the infected person, instead of traveling all through the plane. The current airplane recirculation systems seem to work pretty well. In fact, in a study of airplane air circulation, there was no difference in how many respiratory symptoms passengers developed if they were on a plane that recirculated air compared to a plane that had no recirculation and only used new air from outside.

But perhaps you’ve felt ill in other ways after you’ve flown. While the plane may not be a dangerous incubator for colds, there are some other ways in which flying might affect you. While it’s quite clean, the air on the plane is also very dry. This actually helps prevent infections because bacteria and viruses like to live in tiny water droplets in more humid air, but the dry air might make your nose and throat dry too. Having a dry nose and throat could lead to bothersome irritation of your sinuses and respiratory system. Some researchers speculate that dry, irritated mucus membranes might make it easier for you to get infected with a cold later on, but this has not been proven.

Traveling on long flights in an airplane can also put you at risk for developing a blood clot in your leg (called a deep vein thrombosis or DVT). DVT can result from long periods of time where you have to sit still or are not able to move as much, such as being in bed after surgery or sitting still on a long airplane ride. Flexing your legs frequently and walking around when you can on a long plane ride are smart ways to try to prevent developing DVT.

There have also been cases where people on a particular flight later developed diarrhea and vomiting after one passenger had been very sick in the airplane bathroom. Unfortunately, contamination of the bathroom and subsequent poor hand-washing by others caused this infection to spread. You can imagine how gross that bathroom must have been! Contaminated bathrooms anywhere can cause infections to spread, so wash your hands and try not to touch obviously dirty stuff.

So, as it turns out, airplanes are not so icky after all. People worry about the quality of air in airplanes and about how likely they are to get sick from their time on the plane, but the studies of airplane ventilation systems and of who gets sick after air travel both suggest that we are a lot more worried than we need to be. Although it is possible to have infections pass among passengers on airplanes, there are many precautions in place that help make this a low risk. The heating of almost sterile outside air, the filtration systems, the low humidity, and the patterns of airflow in the plane all minimize the chance of spreading infections among passengers. Even for frequent fliers, the risk of being on a plane does not seem to be any greater than the risk of being on a train or bus or even the risk from going to the office.

Aloe Vera

Aloe vera will heal a burn—TRUE

Aaron was
sure
this one would turn out to be a myth. So many of the home remedies or cures we hear about do not work when they are tested scientifically. He thought aloe vera would turn out to be another of those good-sounding but not-working remedies. But after carefully reviewing the medical literature, it does appear to be true, that aloe vera is good for burns.

There have been a number of excellent studies that have looked at how aloe vera works on burns. In one of these, published in
Surgery Today
in 2009, thirty patients with two second degree burns on their bodies had one burn treated with aloe vera and the other treated with silver sulfadiazine (a long accepted cream for burns). The rate of developing new skin cells and the time to complete healing were about three days faster for those burns treated with aloe vera. Aloe vera worked!

This confirmed the findings from earlier studies, like one published in the
Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand.
Patients with significant burns called partial thickness burns were treated with aloe vera or standard Vaseline gauze. Those who used the aloe vera saw their wounds heal six days faster.

In fact, there have been enough studies of burn-healing with aloe vera that a systematic review and meta-analysis has been published. In these types of studies, researchers compile all the studies that have been done to evaluate whether something does or does not work, and draw a conclusion from the combined data. By looking at the total evidence, the researchers concluded that aloe vera led to burns healing almost nine days faster on average.

Additionally, aloe vera doesn’t seem to have any significant side effects. Sure, it’s not the treatment of choice for very severe burns, or those requiring a hospitalization, but for most first and second degree burns it seems to work really well. Go ahead and use it!

Antibiotics

Antibiotics kill the germs that cause colds and the flu

Antibiotics kill bacteria or stop them from growing so that our bodies can be cleared of bacterial infections. They are, without a doubt, one of the best advances of modern medicine. Bacteria can cause infections in many different places in our bodies, and some of these infections can be serious. Antibiotics (you can think of the name as meaning “anti-bacteria”) help our bodies to fight off bacterial infections that the body might not be able to handle by itself. Different antibiotics work for different types of bacteria. When you are sick with an infection from a bacterium, your doctor has to think about what kinds of bacteria usually cause that kind of infection and then pick an antibiotic that should work to kill those particular bacteria. So, antibiotics CAN kill a lot of germs, if you think of germs as bacteria.

As great as antibiotics are for killing bacteria, antibiotics cannot kill viruses. Viruses and bacteria are not the same. While both are germs that can make us sick, they look and act in very different ways. Viruses are teeny-tiny little, special, small machines that can enter into the cells in your body and use your body’s own equipment to make you sick. You could imagine a virus like a special computer that has been programmed to take over the master controls of a big ship just by being hooked up to the control panel. In contrast, a bacterium would be more like an evil person who snuck inside the ship’s control room and is making decisions about what to sabotage and how to maneuver the ship. Bacteria are full-fledged organisms in a way that viruses are not; a virus is more like a nefariously programmed computer, whereas bacteria are more like evil villains. As you might imagine, the methods you would use to stop or kill that evil person are different from the methods you would use to deal with the computer. Antibiotics cannot kill the “computer” even if they work great against the “villain.”

Antibiotics cannot kill viruses. Antibiotics only kill infections caused by bacteria, fungi, and some parasites. Because antibiotics work for some infections (those caused by bacteria) and not for other infections (those cause by viruses), it is important to know what is causing your infection. Colds and the flu are caused by viruses, not by bacteria. Viruses also cause most coughs and sore throats.

Since colds and the flu are caused by viruses, antibiotics do not treat them. If you have a cold or the flu, an antibiotic will not help you feel any better. It will not make you better faster. It will not prevent you from spreading the cold or flu to anyone else. It will not kill your germs.

If you are infected with a virus, the only thing that an antibiotic might do is make you feel worse. Why is that? The antibiotic is not going to do a thing to help with your cough or cold symptoms, but it might cause some unpleasant side effects, such as diarrhea or rashes. It could also kill off the good bacteria that normally live inside your digestive tract or other parts of your body, leaving you with a yeast infection or an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the place of your body’s usual good bacteria.

When we use antibiotics when they are not needed, bacteria that are in your body but not causing disease can learn to be resistant to them. Bacteria that have not been killed off by an antibiotic may learn how to survive against it. If you think of the evil person trying to take control of your ship, it would be like that person saw your fighting style once, but you did not kill him, and so now he knows how to defend himself against you in the future. Using antibiotics when they are not needed or using them improperly, by not taking enough of them, or not taking them for as long as you are supposed to, allows resistant bacteria to develop. When you get infected by one of these resistant bacteria, it can cause serious problems because our usual antibiotics do not work.

So the bottom line here is that it really is important to use antibiotics properly. If your doctor says that you do not need an antibiotic, you shouldn’t demand one. You should not be taking an antibiotic for a viral infection like a cold or for most sore throats or coughs. If the doctor is not sure whether your infection is caused by a bacterium or a virus, this is something you can talk about together in order to decide on a plan.

Additionally, you should never take antibiotics that are prescribed for someone else. As we mentioned, antibiotics are not all the same. They work in very particular ways for particular bugs. An antibiotic prescribed for someone else might not work for your infection, even if your infection is caused by bacteria. It might also make your bacteria mutate into resistant bacteria. And it might make it difficult for your doctor to know what is infecting you.

Taking antibiotics properly also means taking an antibiotic for the entire prescribed period. Even if you or your child feels much better, you should take the antibiotic for the entire time that the doctor suggests. Do your very best not to skip any doses of the medicine. When you skip doses, the bacteria have a chance to grow and become resistant when less of the drug is present in your body.

Antibiotics are wonderful medicines. People used to die from simple infections that we can easily treat today. We should not expect antibiotics to work for things that they are not designed to kill, and we should not use antibiotics in ways that will ruin their usefulness by causing resistance. If you have a cold or the flu, antibiotics will not work! Never, ever, ever! Taking an antibiotic for a virus might even do more harm than good.

Once an individual has started a course of antibiotics, he is no longer contagious

When one child in the playgroup is sick with something, the other parents often go into hyperalert mode. They want to make sure their children stay far away from a contagious child or anything that he or she might touch. Once that child is on an antibiotic, though, the vigilance relaxes. Once the antibiotic starts, schools and day cares and colleagues relax. Just the words “I’m on an antibiotic” are enough to make most of the hypochondriacs around you relax.

Being contagious means that you are able to spread your disease to other people. Unfortunately for people trying hard to avoid getting sick, it is not always simple to determine when someone is contagious and when they are not. Antibiotics might help, but they often don’t.

First of all, for viral infections, especially the viruses that cause most of our colds and the flu, antibiotics will never, ever make you less contagious. Antibiotics only work against bacteria; they do not work against viruses. If a person is sick with a virus, an antibiotic will do nothing to make them less contagious. Another problem is that the time period when you are contagious varies according to what type of sickness you have. An ill person can be contagious before they show any symptoms. When you are infected with a virus, you typically shed or spread the virus for at least a day or two before you have any idea you’re sick. The virus is in anything coming out of your mouth or nose during this time, even before you are coughing and sneezing. Then, when your nose first starts running or you have any other symptoms, you shed even more of the virus. Even as you start feeling better, you might still be contagious and spreading the virus eight or ten days after your sickness starts.

This type of spread is true for both the viruses that cause coughs and colds, as well as viruses that cause infections like herpes. The virus can spread before you have any signs of the infection. Infections such as chickenpox, fifth disease, and some forms of meningitis may all be contagious before you have any symptoms. On the other hand, other viral infections, such as the main virus that causes pinkeye, do not spread before the person actually develops symptoms.