Last week I was bragging to my co-worker, Dave, about how I never get sick anymore– at the time it had been over two years since I’ve gotten the sniffles. I chalked it up to my fruit filled diet, positive energy, and fairly regular sleeping pattern. (If you’re keeping track, it’s been two years since I’ve had a child in diapers, hence the “fairly regular sleeping.”

A bit of karmic irony: I came down was a terrible cold last Friday night and am still recovering. My grandma would have said I became sick because I was bragging about never getting sick. I thought it would be fun to collect all the untrue old wives’ tales about health. Hopefully none will actually apply to you during the holidays.

1. If you go outside with wet hair you’ll catch a cold. Colds come from viruses. Viruses actually spread more easily in warm climates. The reason people catch colds in the winter, is their immune systems are more heavily taxed as you body is trying to stay warm. Wet hair will cause more heat loss, but won’t “give you a cold.”
2. 

   Medieval Humours Theory

   You should starve a fever. This one comes from the medieval theory that health and temperament was determined by the “four humours” (liquids) in the body: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Sickness and bad moods were thought to due to some imbalance of the humours. A fever was supposed due to “too much blood” doctors of the day would prescribe fasting or blood-letting. I’m glad we’ve progressed since then. Today we know fevers can cause dehydration and electrolyte loss from all the sweating. If you don’t want to pass out, you better replace all that water and nutrients.

3. You should feed a cold. This usually goes along with number 2 above. It also comes from the humors theory. They thought colds came from an excess of phlegm. That meant you needed to raise your blood levels by overeating. Eating too much can unnecessarily tax your digestive system and make it harder to focus on fighting the cold.
4. Cracking knuckles causes arthritis. While a pre-cursor to arthritis can be that the failed joints crack on their own, deliberately cracking your knuckles doesn’t cause arthritis.
5. You lose most of your body heat through your head. The major source of this old tale comes from experiments in the arctic where the subjects wore heavy winter gear and no head gear. Well if your entire body is covered except for one spot, where do you think the heat will escape from? Yeah, no kidding. Your head does release more heat than say, your feet, but it doesn’t release much more than your other organs.
6. Sugar makes kids hyper. In the wake of Halloween, I had trouble accepting that this was just an old wives’ tale, but the science seems to make sense. Simple sugars in the bloodstream first go to the muscles to burned as energy. Excess sugar is stored in the liver as reserve energy for easy access. Any excess sugar becomes fat. Kids are already hyper. Eating extra sugar doesn’t suddenly make them more hyper, although the excitement of eating candy certainly can.
7. Vitamin C cures colds. Here’s another one I struggled with adding to this post because I chalked up my previous cold-free streak with eating lots of fruits. This tale comes from chemist Linus Pauling who found that large doses of Vitamin C decreased the average number days a person is affected by cold symptoms in a year from 12 days to 11. While Vitamin C is certainly good for you, overdosing on oranges won’t suddenly make your cold go away.

Anyone have any old wives’ tales to share?