Pod Insights This Podcast Will Kill You Ep 196 Health Myths: Fact or fiction? About this episode Did your grandma ever warn you against going out in the cold with wet hair because “you’ll catch your death”? Or have you ever tossed a few more carrots into your shopping basket in the hope that they’ll improve your vision? There are countless health myths about how to prevent or treat disease, what food will give you superhuman powers or turn your kid into a whirlwind of energy. But is there any truth to them? Let’s find out. In this episode, we review a handful of the most popular health myths, exploring their origins and scouring them for any scrap of truth. Tune in to learn whether these myths are fact, fiction, or somewhere in between!
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Transcript 12,115 words · 7 speakers
0:01 Speaker 00 This is Exactly Right.
0:06 Speaker 01 Dry hands can be uncomfortable and frustrating, especially when frequent hand washing, changing weather, and everyday wear and tear take their toll. O'Keefe's Working Hands is here to help keep dry hands feeling hydrated and comfortable. O'Keefe's Working Hands creates a soothing barrier on the skin that locks in moisture and prevents further dryness. It's concentrated and non-gracey, and you start to feel relief in one use. Go to O'Keefe'sCompany.com to get yours today. That's O-K-E-E-F-F-E-S company dot com for guaranteed relief. O'Keefe's Working Hands. Yeah, it works.
0:38 Speaker 02 Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:10 Speaker 03 Your business operates under pressure, and you need control over your data. But IBM Research shows only 9% of companies have real oversight of their technology. IBM's Open Hybrid Cloud approach is designed to give you visibility with built-in governance tools, data sovereignty, and compliance reporting. It's another way IBM helps you stay in control of your data. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Visit IBM.com to learn more.
2:23 Speaker 04 Hi, I'm Erin Welsh.
2:25 Speaker 01 And I'm Erin O'Munupdike.
2:26 Speaker 04 And this is This Podcast Will Kill You.
2:29 Speaker 01 Welcome.
2:30 Speaker 04 Welcome. It feels so weird. I know that if you're watching this on YouTube, the firsthand account usually comes later. Spoilers, there won't be one.
2:40 Speaker 01 No.
2:40 Speaker 04 We didn't have one. We're not having one. It feels weird.
2:44 Speaker 01 It feels weird to just start out being like, here we go.
2:48 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:49 Speaker 01 But we're doing it because we want to.
2:52 Speaker 04 Yeah. Well, also, this episode is a little bit different.
2:55 Speaker 01 It's weird.
2:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's weird. It's gonna be so much fun. This week, we are exploring just a handful of health myths, or are they myths?
3:06 Speaker 01 Are they? Let's find out. Old wives tales, if you may.
3:10 Speaker 04 If you may, if you would so like.
3:15 Speaker 04 Well, it was really, because I was like, okay, well, what should we do? What about health myths? And then, literally, it was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
3:23 Speaker 01 Right. We came up with such a long list.
3:25 Speaker 04 Yeah. So I think this will be a repeating episode segment, maybe.
3:30 Speaker 01 Unless you all hate it, and then let us know. But if you like it.
3:33 Speaker 04 Please do let us know.
3:34 Speaker 01 Which I feel like you will.
3:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:37 Speaker 01 Because it's gonna be fun.
3:39 Speaker 04 I had fun.
3:40 Speaker 01 We'll do it again sometime.
3:41 Speaker 04 Yeah. And in honor of the fact that we are doing health myths today, just a handful, our quarantini is named, what, Erin?
3:50 Speaker 01 The Miracle Cure?
3:53 Speaker 04 Is that a question?
3:55 Speaker 01 Is that what we decided on?
3:56 Speaker 04 I think so. There were a few other ones and we were like, sure, miracle cure.
4:00 Speaker 01 Yeah. Let me say it again. Let me say it again. The miracle cure.
4:03 Speaker 04 Oh, I loved it. That was a perfect snake oil salesman pitch right there.
4:07 Speaker 01 Thank you.
4:08 Speaker 04 That tone was, yeah.
4:09 Speaker 01 I feel like this jacket really works for that, too.
4:11 Speaker 04 Honestly, I feel like you're right. It does. Yeah. For those who are listening, it is a green and cream striped, vertical striped blazer.
4:20 Speaker 01 It's a little like Beetlejuice, but green.
4:23 Speaker 04 Beetlejuice, yes.
4:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, so it's a very, "Come buy your miracle cure, Erin. Tell him what's in it."
4:31 Speaker 04 It is ginger ale and carrot juice and lime juice. Believe it or not, we've actually done this, like, something similar before, which is funny.
4:41 Speaker 01 We don't have to give ourselves away like that, but we just did.
4:45 Speaker 04 I, Erin, honesty, transparency, first and foremost, you know?
4:49 Speaker 01 Anyways, this one, it's delicious, probably.
4:53 Speaker 04 It's delicious. We will post the full recipe on our socials and maybe on our website, just depending on how that goes. If you're not following us on our socials, you really should. We're on Blue Sky, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook, we're on TikTok. And also check out our website. Do you want to do this spiel or do you want me to?
5:14 Speaker 01 Sure, yeah. On our website, you can find really incredible things, including a link to our merch, holiday merch.
5:21 Speaker 04 Yes, holiday merch.
5:22 Speaker 01 You can find transcripts from all of our episodes, sources from every single one of our episodes, including this one, a link to Bloodmobile, who does the music, our Goodreads list, our bookshop.org affiliate account, a contact us form, a submit your firsthand account form, and so much more.
5:38 Speaker 04 So much more. Check it out.
5:40 Speaker 01 Oh, our Patreon. Thanks, everyone.
5:42 Speaker 04 Yes, yes. And also, you know, we're on YouTube.
5:46 Speaker 01 Or on YouTube on the Exactly Right Network. So make sure that you're subscribed so that you can watch this and see the cool jacket and Erin's incredible squirrel sweater because listen, you don't want to miss her sweaters.
5:57 Speaker 04 I mean, if you're selling snake oil with that blazer, what am I selling with my squirrel, giant squirrel sweater?
6:06 Speaker 01 Grandma's cookies.
6:08 Speaker 04 Thank you. Yes. But like it's like the tin where you think it has cookies and you open it up and it's just a bunch of buttons.
6:14 Speaker 01 Oh, that would be a real bummer.
6:16 Speaker 04 Oh, that was my childhood. Anyway.
6:21 Speaker 01 Anyways.
6:22 Speaker 04 We're playing a little bit fast and loose here and let's just cut ourselves off, take a break and get started on some health myths.
6:29 Speaker 01 Let's do it.
6:57 Speaker 04 So the way we're going to do this is that, well, I mean, I guess we kind of discussed this, but I'm suggesting that this is the way we're going to do it.
7:04 Speaker 01 I'm really glad that you're telling because I was like, I don't really know how this is going to go.
7:07 Speaker 04 In my, I wrote this down and I was like, I'm pretty sure I remember us talking about this. But in any case, we have four health myths that we're going to go through and we're going to go through them one by one. First, I'll go into like how this belief or saying originated. And then Erin, you're going to tell us whether there's any truth to it at all. Like what's, what's the actual low down?
7:28 Speaker 01 I can't wait.
7:29 Speaker 04 It's going to be, it's going to be so much fun. I had such a great time putting, like putting this together. But before we start with our first myth, I wanted to take a minute to talk about the other phrase that is commonly used to describe this ingrained health lore that may or may not have any basis in science. And you already said this, Erin, which is the old wives' tale.
7:51 Speaker 01 Yes.
7:53 Speaker 04 We use old wives' tale to refer to something that is superstitious, outdated, flim flam from a time before science. You know, things like, don't swim after eating. These are ones that definitely have to do on our future list.
8:07 Speaker 01 Oh, yes, yes.
8:08 Speaker 04 Shaving hair will make it grow back darker and thicker.
8:11 Speaker 01 Darker and thicker.
8:12 Speaker 04 Mm hmm. Gum stays in your stomach for seven years before it's digested.
8:16 Speaker 01 Seven years at least.
8:17 Speaker 04 At least, minimum.
8:19 Speaker 01 You'll grow a watermelon in your tummy if you swallow watermelon seeds?
8:22 Speaker 04 I mean, literally a childhood fear of mine.
8:26 Speaker 04 But these old wives' tales often refer to, kind of like these quaint beliefs that are probably mostly false, but have nevertheless remained in public consciousness for decades or even centuries. Maybe not gum. I don't know when gum was invented. Ooh. That would be fun. All right.
8:44 Speaker 01 That would be fun.
8:45 Speaker 04 But like, Erin, can you, like, you have heard of all of the ones I just listed.
8:50 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
8:50 Speaker 04 Yeah. Where did you learn them?
8:53 Speaker 01 Oh, I just knew them.
8:54 Speaker 04 Right. You were born knowing them.
8:56 Speaker 01 I was born knowing.
8:59 Speaker 04 Well, like, I, yeah, I was trying to think and I was like, I don't remember. I mean, probably, like, honestly, my parents were like, don't swallow gum.
9:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:07 Speaker 04 You swim after whatever.
9:09 Speaker 01 It's just like things that you were told in childhood that like, so many adults told it to you or influential enough that it's just like, yeah, this is a thing.
9:17 Speaker 04 Or your friend was like, oh, my mom said, you know? Uh, that, we didn't learn these things from a book in school, right? Like in traditional learning methods, educational methods. And this shows us like how much old wives' tales are a long part of the oral tradition. Knowledge that has been carried down from person to person, most commonly historically, woman to woman, through storytelling, through rhymes, through recipes, through like whispered wisdom, right? That you didn't want to get out there. From a time when women were the primary healers, before midwives were replaced by male physicians and prohibited from doing what had long been considered women's work.
10:00 Speaker 04 And finding the particular origin of many old wives tales, it poses a real challenge because for much of history, women were much less likely to be literate, and the knowledge that they possessed was often disparaged, rarely seen as important enough to be written down by those who were doing the writing, which was primarily men. And this contributed to the connotations that are associated with the term, you know, dismissive, condescending, ridiculing even, like, that's just an old wives' tale. Instantly dismissive, instantly like, how could you even believe that? Yeah. And so, the advice that is in some of these old wives tales is shrugged off
10:41 Speaker 04 as mostly harmless and mostly false, only occasionally containing the tiniest nugget of truth. And this disdain for the knowledge held or generated by women, it extends back centuries, like, long before the scientific method had been established. As far back as the 14th century, old wives' tale was synonymous with making stuff up. Like, that's how far back it goes. Really? Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. And things really haven't changed much since then. And because of these prejudices, when science and biology and medicine became more formalized and systematic, primarily, you know, done this, established by men, these old wives'
11:26 Speaker 04 tales were rarely considered or examined for any nugget of truth. And while it is the case that many of these old wives tales, like, it doesn't take seven years to digest gum, you know, spoilers for a future episode, many of these are not backed by science, but others might be, or they might have some sort of glimmer of, you know, scientific basis in there. And as we learned when we were recently at UIC, University of Illinois Chicago, for a talk, 50% of all currently available pharmaceuticals come from natural products, either directly or inspired by nature.
12:04 Speaker 04 Again, it bears repeating that natural doesn't equate to healthy or curative and isn't inherently better than synthetic. And also, like, there's issue of dose, there's issues of allergies. Like, there's no, there's no, like, natural is better, right?
12:19 Speaker 01 No.
12:20 Speaker 04 But, that being said, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss traditional knowledge. At least, we should test it first. Because where does that knowledge come from? What was the basis for it? And also, we should maybe give credit where credit is due. So, with all that said, now, let's turn to our first myth.
12:41 Speaker 01 I can't wait.
12:42 Speaker 04 Okay. Number one, you'll catch your death if you go out in the cold with wet hair. Yeah, like, or kind of alongside that, you lose 50% of your body heat through your head. You know, things, things like that. Like, you'll catch your death.
13:00 Speaker 01 Right. Just going outside in the cold, you'll get sacked.
13:03 Speaker 04 Yes, yes.
13:04 Speaker 01 Good, because that's, that's mostly what I focused on just up for you.
13:08 Speaker 04 I mean, it's all, it's all, honestly, it's, it's all the same as, as we hear. So,
13:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:12 Speaker 04 If you have ever read or watched any Jane Austen, you know that it's only a matter of time before someone recklessly mounts a horse and then tears off into the pelting rain, only to later come down with, like, a most severe fever hovering on death's door for weeks on end, preferably at, like, the local rich hunk's estate, looking at you, Jane Bennett. Pride and Prejudice, just saying.
13:37 Speaker 01 I love that I don't get that reference, but so many people will.
13:41 Speaker 04 You've seen Pride and Prejudice, right?
13:43 Speaker 01 I don't know that I have, honestly.
13:45 Speaker 04 I feel like, Erin, you and I have watched it together, the Keira Knightley one.
13:49 Speaker 01 Keira Knightley, I've seen most of her films.
13:51 Speaker 04 Yeah. Anyway, there is a part where I don't think her sister recklessly tears off. This is not a Jane Austen podcast.
14:01 Speaker 04 We would be a terrible what if it were because we don't know enough. But this is something that does happen in at least one or two or more Jane Austen novels. And it wasn't Jane Austen alone who was obsessed with weather. Plenty of other 19th century literature spends an inordinate amount of time discussing the local weather or the quote unquote climate. Weather and climate, they act as like a useful plot device. Charles Dickens's own Oliver Twist catches a fever and ague from the wet and cold, quote unquote. Ague, by the way, I think was often, but maybe not always referred to like, it was like a cyclic fever. So it was often thought to be like malaria.
14:44 Speaker 01 Malaria, okay.
14:45 Speaker 04 There was a character in George Eliot's Middlemarch who comes down with typhoid fever after a quote unquote nasty damp ride through unsanitary streets. And Marian in Wilkie Collins, the woman in white is said to have quote, unhappily exposed herself to be wetted through with a heavy rain. The cold that followed was of an aggravated kind and it has now brought with it the worst consequence, fever, end quote. Happened a lot. And climate, by the way, the way that I like earlier when I said quote unquote climate, that is, the reason I pointed that out or the reason I like highlighted it is because climate carried with it different connotations than what we think of it today in terms of like just long-term weather patterns.
15:29 Speaker 04 Climate was more like the general atmosphere, right? Which also different connotations, but like being like living or being raised in a certain climate was thought to shape who you were as a person, how you thought. Yeah, but it's like the political climate, right? Your moods, your behavior, and of course, your health. All of this was supposed to shape who you were. If you were brought up in the English climate and it wasn't the same as like culture either.
15:55 Speaker 01 No, it was like based on what, what like types of things you were exposed to like environmentally and how that shaped who you were.
16:04 Speaker 04 Yeah. And it was like the people of this climate type of a thing.
16:08 Speaker 01 Okay, interesting.
16:09 Speaker 04 And weather was kind of thought to do the same thing, just over a shorter time scale. So weather could predispose an entire area to certain diseases, like sowing the seeds of fever. And the this pervasive preoccupation with weather in Victorian novels, it reflects contemporary beliefs about its influence on a person or population. This is a time before germ theory, when miasma was thought to drive the spread of disease. Contagion was recognized, but it tended to play a backseat to miasma, particularly in rural locations, like industrialization was more tied to contagion and thus lower on like the moral ladder.
16:48 Speaker 04 You know, so it was like, yeah, contagion was thought to be just a product of unsanitary conditions, kind of. And so it was like, hmm, you know, this, again, why like tuberculosis and blah, blah, blah. Anyway. And miasma didn't act by itself. It worked in conjunction with the humoral theory of disease, where everything had to be in balance. Cold weather was thought to make things congeal and obstruct. So you get a cough. And then moisture, quote unquote, destroys the elasticity of solids, thereby causing aegy, AKA malaria. And so in 1801, in a book called Domestic Medicine by William Buken, he writes that,
17:33 Speaker 04 quote, "Wet clothes, not only by their coldness obstruct the perspiration, but their moisture, by being absorbed or taken up into the body, greatly increases the danger. The most robust constitution is not proof against the danger arising from wet clothes. They daily occasion fevers, rheumatisms, and other fatal disorders, even in the young and healthy," end quote. And he goes on to say that, quote, "Even wet feet often occasional fatal diseases," end quote. So keep your feet dry.
18:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:06 Speaker 04 And so the long story short is that this health myth, the reason that we see so many of Jane Austen's characters running off into the cold with wet hair and then dying, is that it's deeply rooted in ancient Greek and Roman medical ideas, like the humoral theory of disease. And it also reflects how people thought at that time and the lack of knowledge about germ theory. And so it's just what people thought. And that has somehow, to explain why it has lingered, I mean, ideas are sticky. So Erin, tell me, is there any truth to this one?
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19:14 Speaker 02 Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.
19:32 Speaker 05 Man, I'm a Black and Mexican kid from San Pedro, and I grew up in Inglewood as well. I never liked to be boxed in. Both of my parents colored outside of the line. I mean, even them being together at the time in L.A. was just not typical. And so I think that has always been a part of my DNA. There's a defiant something in me that feels like what we get to do with what we're given that's greater than us is to maybe connect people to ideas that they wouldn't naturally connect to. That's really me. I'm just kind of defiant with love, though.
20:08 Speaker 02 Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
20:17 Speaker 06 Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI. AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So. You have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing and where. Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.
21:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I would add actually that I think part of the reason that maybe some of this has stuck around is because we do in temperate regions see a strong seasonality of a lot of respiratory illnesses, especially where in the colder months, we see more of these illnesses. So I maybe should have coordinated with you better, Erin, to make sure I was researching the right things. Because most of what I'm going to talk about is what data we have on weather cold specifically, rather than the wet part of it. But weather cold, because I think that that is sort of what has stuck with us the most, right? Yes, if you go outside in wet hair, it's thought, oh, you're going to be colder. But it's the cold part. If you go out in the cold, you're going to catch a cold.
21:45 Speaker 01 You're going to get sick.
21:47 Speaker 04 See, to me, like, it was like my, my grandma would tell me, don't go outside with wet hair. Don't sleep with wet hair. It was all about the moisture. And it was always like, if you like, make sure you grab a jacket, because you'll catch your cold, you'll catch your death if you're not bundled up adequately, not just being in the cold, but it was like, yeah, the combination of moisture.
22:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, yes. Interestingly, I only found like one paper looking specifically at wet hair and cold. And it was from like the 1960s and it was somebody's like bachelor thesis. But it showed absolutely no association between wet hair. It was people who swim in the winter and they looked at hair drying methods. And whether people who either towel dried or didn't dry their hair at all, were more likely to catch a cold than those who blow dried their hair. And the answer was no.
22:36 Speaker 04 Fascinating, hilarious.
22:38 Speaker 01 But there's been a lot more study trying to unpack this idea that the cold, going out in the cold without a jacket, being outside in the cold, cold weather giving you a cold, is there any truth to this idea? And I think in part, it does stem from this, why are we, why do we see these spikes in upper respiratory viruses during cold and flu season, which tends to be colder weather in temperate regions?
23:07 Speaker 04 Right.
23:08 Speaker 01 So is there any truth to any of this? The easiest, shortest way to answer is just to say no, because the damp or the cold is not what gives us colds.
23:20 Speaker 04 Right.
23:21 Speaker 01 Is not what gives us fevers, it's viruses, right?
23:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
23:24 Speaker 01 But we can go a little bit further because people have tried to look at, okay, so is there anything that happens with exposure to cold that makes us more susceptible to these viruses?
23:37 Speaker 04 Right, or like lack of sunlight because cold indicates winter and shorter day lengths.
23:42 Speaker 01 Right, and no one's looking at sunlight. I know nothing about sunlight exposure. Because we also, this is all complicated because in tropical regions, we have just as many of these viruses floating around.
23:52 Speaker 04 We do, and also rainy, rainy periods where the sun might not be out and blah, blah, blah.
23:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So what we, what do we actually see? There are some studies that show that cooling our body temperature, so studies that have looked at like immersing our feet in cold water or breathing cold air through our nose, some of these studies show an increase in cold symptoms in the days that follow these type of exposures.
24:17 Speaker 04 Okay.
24:18 Speaker 01 There are others that do not show these type of associations of cold exposure and cold symptoms. So what are some of the possible explanations that people have laid out for this? There are some, especially mouse model studies, that suggest that some of the viruses that commonly cause colds and flu, like influenza virus, rhinovirus, some of these might replicate more efficiently at lower temperatures, which has been proposed as to why they replicate so well in our nasal passages, which are at a lower temperature to begin with compared to body temperature. But that perhaps exposure to certain environmental or weather conditions might change the temperature
24:59 Speaker 01 in our respiratory system enough, not necessarily to impact our immune system, because there's like eh, messy data on whether or not that's the case.
25:10 Speaker 04 Okay.
25:11 Speaker 01 But could affect the survivability of viruses that are already there.
25:17 Speaker 04 So it's like potentially an energetics thing.
25:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, potentially these exposures to certain weather patterns or environmental conditions might allow for increased growth or replication of viruses that we have already been exposed to. And that might at least in part explain some of the seasonality trends that we see with these viruses and explain why exposure to certain environmental conditions might predispose us to viral infections. Because another thing that's interesting about looking at the seasonality is that it's not directly correlated to temperature. Humidity actually seems to be a bigger driver, especially for some viral infections.
26:04 Speaker 04 That makes sense.
26:06 Speaker 01 Where drier air is actually more risky, which is the opposite of this idea that the wet and cold is going to make you sick.
26:14 Speaker 04 Right.
26:15 Speaker 01 But it's also that a relative change in the temperature. So when we see, as it starts to get into autumn and winter, when you see an abrupt drop in temperature and humidity, then shortly thereafter is when we tend to see a spike in these respiratory viruses.
26:31 Speaker 04 I mean, I also thought that it was tied to people being inside more and crowding.
26:37 Speaker 01 I'm so glad that you brought that up because that is often cited as a reason that we have these infections. There's no data to support that whatsoever.
26:44 Speaker 04 That's so funny because school time, you see these spike, like when school begins, you see these spikes.
26:50 Speaker 01 Yes. So, and school begins often in the fall. When we also see spikes, virinovirus actually peaks in the fall and the spring, and then influenza viruses tend to peak in the winter, and RSV also peaks in the winter. But especially in like the US, for example, we spend 90% of our time indoors regardless of the season. And there is like a less than 10% difference in how much we congregate indoors in cold weather compared to hot weather.
27:16 Speaker 04 Fascinating.
27:18 Speaker 01 And people tend to have substantially more contacts just on weekdays compared to weekends. And local weather conditions tend to have minor effects on the total number of contacts on average that we have compared to just like the days of the week changes. Isn't that fascinating?
27:33 Speaker 04 Fascinating.
27:35 Speaker 04 Fascinating.
27:35 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. So there's not any data for that, which I love because I love that you brought that up.
27:41 Speaker 04 Yeah.
27:41 Speaker 01 Um, and then you also mentioned this myth that we lose so much heat from your head. If you don't go outside without a hat on, you will definitely get sick because you lose too much heat from your head. There's absolutely no data of this whatsoever. And from what I could tell, it came from, like, this concept came from old army survival manuals, where the army was studying survival. And so they put subjects in these, like, Arctic survival suits without any hats on, and they measured heat loss, and they lost most of their heat through their head because it was the only part of their body that was uncovered.
28:17 Speaker 04 Okay.
28:19 Speaker 01 Okay. Um, but like, just you lose a proportional amount of heat through any unexposed part of your body.
28:27 Speaker 04 Right.
28:28 Speaker 01 So your head is about 10% of your body's surface area, so you lose about 10% of your body heat through your head if that's uncovered. Um, kids are gonna lose a little more because they have giant heads compared to their body size. Um, but it's nowhere near like 40 or 50%. If you went out without pants on, you would lose a lot more heat through your legs than you do through your head. It's just that if your head is the only part that's uncovered, then yes, you're losing heat through your head quicker than the covered parts of your body.
28:53 Speaker 04 And it's more likely in the winter to forget a hat than to forget your pants, I think.
28:57 Speaker 01 More likely in most scenarios.
29:02 Speaker 01 And that, Arian, is this health myth busted.
29:06 Speaker 04 Busted.
29:10 Speaker 04 Hilarious. I love it. Okay. Are we ready for number two?
29:14 Speaker 01 I think so. Give it to me.
29:15 Speaker 04 Okay, great. Eating carrots gives you night vision.
29:19 Speaker 01 Gives you night vision.
29:21 Speaker 04 100% truth, right?
29:22 Speaker 01 My dad is like still on this train.
29:25 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. I mean, I grew up believing this.
29:28 Speaker 01 He only eats carrots because he thinks that it's gonna give him night vision because I don't even think he likes carrots.
29:33 Speaker 04 Well, I also, I don't have great eyesight. And so when I first, when I was like in middle school and I had put glasses on for the first time, and I was like, oh my God, this is what other people see? This is, I can see. Leaves on trees like it was it blew my mind.
29:47 Speaker 01 So sad.
29:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, I know. Well, I had one my one one eye was better than like it was better than 2020 and then but the other eye was like trash. And so now now that I've corrected it, they're both trash. So good stuff. Plus, I stayed at a computer all day. So awesome. Really, really going well. But when I first had realized that I had to wear glasses and then later contacts, I middle school, I was like, I'm gonna eat carrots and see if this helps.
30:14 Speaker 01 See if that makes a difference.
30:15 Speaker 04 It didn't, unfortunately.
30:17 Speaker 01 I'm shocked.
30:18 Speaker 04 You know, lifetime contact user, maybe Lasik someday. Anyway, back to carrots. So
30:24 Speaker 01 Back to carrots.
30:25 Speaker 04 To trace the origin of this myth, let's take a trip to the World Carrot Museum.
30:32 Speaker 01 Stop it.
30:33 Speaker 04 Okay, this is a real thing. Actually, it was a real thing. It was a virtual museum. And I don't believe it's maintained any longer. I think it ended in 2022, but it was curated and maintained by John Stolarzic. And so you can still access it on the Wayback Machine. So that's where I found it. This myth originated during World War II. And the typical explanation, like if someone repeats this myth in the wild, what you'll often hear is that the British government invented it to explain why their pilots newly equipped with highly confidential radar onboard were able to shoot down so many German planes. And so they were like, oh, it's we don't have radar. We just give them carrots.
31:20 Speaker 01 I love that. I had no idea that that's where that came from.
31:23 Speaker 04 Okay, so that is okay.
31:25 Speaker 01 That's the myth of the myth?
31:26 Speaker 04 That's the myth of the myth.
31:31 Speaker 04 There are layers. This is an onion, girl.
31:34 Speaker 01 An onion, not a carrot.
31:36 Speaker 04 Exactly. Okay, so the the true story behind this myth, it's a little bit more complicated. There are elements of the real story in that myth that I just described. Okay, so during World War II. Food shortages were quite common and people living in Great Britain were under strict food rationing and this sometimes led them to use alternative foods as a substitute for the ones that weren't available. The carrot was one of these alternate foods, like they, the carrot became wildly popular and it was used often as like a sweetener. Carrots are pretty sweet, you know?
32:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:11 Speaker 04 I love carrots. The hype surrounding carrots was really strong. It was bolstered by propaganda posters featuring Dr. Carrot. It was a real, you know, cartoon guy will maybe try to post a picture.
32:24 Speaker 01 Okay.
32:24 Speaker 04 Recipe books with lots of carrot-heavy dishes and incentives for people who grew carrots. Cause they were like carrots are, it's, they're easy to grow, they're easy to get, we can grow them here.
32:36 Speaker 01 Right.
32:37 Speaker 04 Everyone should be eating more carrots.
32:38 Speaker 01 Okay.
32:39 Speaker 04 And so by 1942, during the war, there was actually a carrot surplus. And so the British government was like, we need, we need you all to eat more carrots. And the Ministry of Food came up with this See in the Dark campaign with posters like, "Night sight can mean life or death. Eat carrots and leafy green or yellow vegetables rich in vitamin A." End quote. That's like one, a poster.
33:03 Speaker 01 Yeah. Okay.
33:05 Speaker 04 Essential for night sight. Yeah. So, okay, at, why night sight? At the time, there were lots of blackouts to conceal cities from aerial bombing campaigns. And so the carrot night vision link was primarily intended for civilians to maybe like feel more confident about these scary times while also eating, taking care of the excess carrots that had accumulated. And there was the fact that, I know you'll talk about this later on, but like there's the fact that if you lack beta carotene, then your night vision can suffer as a result. And so then the inverse must be true, right? Like more beta carotene will give you night vision.
33:42 Speaker 01 As always.
33:43 Speaker 04 Perfect. Super, superpower. And there were at the time during the war, a few studies on a high carot, a high beta carotene diet and night vision in British fighter pilots, but they didn't amount to anything. But yeah, but those studies were kept under wraps because if this had been found out, then, you know, they didn't want Germans feeding their pilots carrots as well, I guess.
34:06 Speaker 01 Right. Then their, their Dr. Carrot posters would come to nothing.
34:10 Speaker 04 Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So where does radar fit into all of this? That's the other piece of the puzzle. So in 1940, the first onboard, like on planes, radar was used by RAF pilots. Radar stations had been in place since the start of the war. And soon after the introduction of onboard radar, night attacks on German planes grew much more successful. This was a pretty big deal. And the British Air Ministry wanted to keep it under wraps for as long as possible. And so, the "See in the Dark" campaign, which was from the Ministry of Food, helped to some extent, but they didn't, like, the British military didn't create any propaganda intentionally for this. And the secret radar,
34:55 Speaker 04 it didn't stay secret for very long. Like, it was a matter of months, I think. And it was before a lot of these campaigns started. So it was like, you know, what the curator of the RAF Museum in London said is, quote, "Whilst the British Air Ministry were happy to go along with the story, they never set out to use it to fool the Germans. The German intelligence service were well aware of our ground-based radar installations and would not be surprised by the existence of radar in aircraft," end quote. So, there you go. Not to hide radar technology, but to encourage people to eat more carrots, and maybe, you know, a little bit of that lack of beta carotene hurts night vision. So, Erin, give me the
35:38 Speaker 04 nitty gritty on beta carotene, and night vision, and carrots, and all of the things.
35:42 Speaker 01 I can't wait. So, it is true that vitamin A is essential for our eye function, especially our, like, night vision or dark vision, but really just our vision more generally. And it is also true that beta carotene, which is in relatively high concentration in carrots, as well as many other vegetables and fruits, is one of the most biologically active carotenoids. And carotenoids are the plant pigments that serve as vitamin A precursors in our diet.
36:17 Speaker 01 So yes, it is true that a deficiency in vitamin A can lead to a condition called night blindness, where your rods and cones are not working well and you really cannot see at night. And this is a really big problem in populations that are deficient in vitamin A. And in those populations, vitamin A supplementation, though not necessarily beta-carotene supplementation, or at least not to the same degree, can help to reverse at least some part of night blindness, though it's not always 100% curative.
36:49 Speaker 04 Huh.
36:51 Speaker 01 But does eating carrots alone, I mean, the short answer is, again, no.
37:00 Speaker 01 Right? It's not going to give you any night vision.
37:04 Speaker 04 Right.
37:04 Speaker 01 To like, uh, to like supplement your diet with extra carrots.
37:08 Speaker 04 Unfortunately.
37:09 Speaker 01 All of the studies that have been done at this, and there are quite a bit, they're not even looking at like carrots directly. They're looking at like excessive beta-carotene or other carotenoids. So, uh, zeaxanthin and lutein are the other two big ones.
37:25 Speaker 04 Okay.
37:25 Speaker 01 And lycopene is a smaller one as well, too. These are all carotenoids that people have looked at to try and see, can excess supplementation, so like above and beyond the recommended daily amount for people who are not deficient in vitamin A, can these help prevent things like age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, or other issues?
37:51 Speaker 01 And the answer is mostly no.
37:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, okay.
37:53 Speaker 01 But I say mostly no because there is a little bit of nuance here. Um, there are some studies that suggest that maybe supplementation with some carotenoids, usually in combination with other antioxidants like vitamin E, vitamin C, and even minerals like zinc, might help to delay the progression of age-related macular degeneration. So can help to delay the development of more severe blindness. And age-related macular degeneration, by the way, is like responsible for 50% of blindness in high-income countries. So this is a really big deal if we, and we don't really have anything to reverse it or prevent it necessarily. So a lot of people have been looking into this. There are some studies that suggest that certain
38:38 Speaker 01 Supplement combinations that include beta carotene might help to reduce this regression. But when they've then done studies to look at, you know, the other types of carotenoids compared to beta carotene, there's not really that big of an improvement. Beta carotene supplementation also in people who smoke cigarettes actually can substantially increase the risk of lung cancer.
39:03 Speaker 04 What?
39:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, I know. That's like a whole, we should do a whole episode on beta carotene because it's interesting.
39:08 Speaker 04 What the heck?
39:09 Speaker 01 I know.
39:10 Speaker 04 Why? How, Erin?
39:11 Speaker 01 What is that? I don't know. I didn't go in there, but that is what, that is what the studies bear out.
39:15 Speaker 04 Okay.
39:16 Speaker 01 Um, and so it's a little bit messy. There's also some studies of like subjective improvement in older adults who have reported poor night vision, but no like notable pathology on like retinal scans, that if you supplement them in the short term with something like beta carotene, they subjectively report an improvement in their night vision compared to placebo. But again, that's short term and we don't necessarily see a delay in progression. And certainly nothing that I saw suggests that if you do not have eye disease, if you do not have cataracts or age-related macular degeneration, which are two different things, but if you do not have those, there's no data that supplementation with any of these
40:01 Speaker 01 carotenoids helps to delay the like initial onset of these diseases.
40:09 Speaker 01 Does that make sense?
40:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
40:11 Speaker 01 But on the whole, adequate levels of vitamin A are important and carrots are a perfectly adequate source of beta carotene, which is what we use to make vitamin A. So there you go.
40:23 Speaker 04 There you go.
40:23 Speaker 01 Health myth eh.
40:25 Speaker 04 Kinda busted?
40:27 Speaker 01 Kinda busted, but like. You know, though, though it's fine to eat carrots.
40:34 Speaker 04 Right. This, I feel like this is the one where it's like, it's not, it's not harm. Well, I mean, I guess there is a point at which eating too many carrots cannot be too much of anything is, you know?
40:43 Speaker 01 Yes.
40:44 Speaker 04 Also in our episode, a future episode on carrots or beta carotene, we'll, we'll cover that maybe.
40:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:50 Speaker 04 But I feel like this is one where it's like, just don't get your hopes up that you will have.
40:54 Speaker 01 Right. And I will say too, in like larger scale, like more nutrition based studies, there's not really any association between like, if you look at just people and their diet spectrum, people who eat more carrots or more beta carotene containing like fruits and vegetables, aren't any less likely to develop age-related macular degeneration later on. So, so there's not like a, if you eat your carrots, you won't get this. There's no data to support that.
41:21 Speaker 04 Why haven't we done any eye episodes?
41:25 Speaker 01 Because eyes are hard and they don't teach us enough about them in med school. So I'd have to do a lot of work for that, but we should do it.
41:33 Speaker 04 Because we don't want to is the answer you just said.
41:36 Speaker 01 Because it's hard.
41:38 Speaker 04 Well, I'm proposing macular degeneration at least.
41:41 Speaker 01 I know. That would be a great one. It really would be.
41:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
41:46 Speaker 01 Next one, Erin.
41:47 Speaker 04 Okay.
41:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:48 Speaker 04 The sugar rush.
41:50 Speaker 01 Ooh, I think this is my favorite.
41:51 Speaker 04 Yep. Yep.
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42:26 Speaker 02 Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Ledge. How does music actually enter your mind?
42:48 Speaker 05 I'm not sure why or how the music comes to me, but I think people who love music and write music, our brains are just filled with music.
42:57 Speaker 02 Right.
42:58 Speaker 05 Like, we have listened to so much music. We've been a part of so much music. I think of the story that I want to tell, the mood that I want to create with the music, start playing chords, see where they lead me.
43:09 Speaker 02 Sometimes, I'm just not even thinking about music, right? And I hear this little thing, and I go, oh, that could be this.
43:19 Speaker 05 You know, you just have to be ready for when the inspiration hits.
43:22 Speaker 02 And it comes. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
43:33 Speaker 06 I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment.
43:46 Speaker 01 The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.
44:20 Speaker 06 Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.
44:49 Speaker 04 Okay, I'm sure that we have all heard this one.
44:51 Speaker 01 Yes.
44:51 Speaker 04 Someone's like, "Oh, my kid doesn't need any more cookies. Please don't feed him more cookies. I don't want them all wired up, running all around the place, like knocking things over, you know, acting like a crazy, you know, whirlwind."
45:03 Speaker 01 Yes.
45:04 Speaker 04 Or you're like, "Oh, I should not have had all those nerds clusters. Now I'm totally crashing out."
45:12 Speaker 04 Speaking from experience. But this is such a deeply ingrained belief that it has become like a TV show and movie trope. There are episodes, like it's like a plot point where kids somehow find like the bag of Halloween candy and then they're all like sleeping after being crazy and wrecking the place, right?
45:28 Speaker 01 Yes.
45:29 Speaker 04 Like, yeah. And yet, this, even though it feels so ingrained, like it's like common knowledge, right? This is a relatively new myth, at least among the ones that we have explored.
45:42 Speaker 01 Okay.
45:42 Speaker 04 Only originating in the 1970s.
45:45 Speaker 01 I mean, that's, I feel like somehow that doesn't surprise me because I feel like no one was like that up in arms about sugar until...
45:52 Speaker 04 Well, you'd be wrong about that, but...
45:54 Speaker 01 Oh, okay. Oh, we should do an episode on sugar.
45:56 Speaker 04 We would have to do multiple episodes on sugar. Let's do it. I've been wanting to do that, yeah.
46:02 Speaker 01 We did two on salt, Aaron. Let's, let's do it.
46:04 Speaker 04 Salt and sugar. Delicious. This, but what happened was in the 1970s, there was a book that promoted this idea of the sugar rush without the evidence to back it up. And before I get into the specific origins of the sugar rush, I think it's worth exploring the perception of sugar and candy in the US in the decades leading up to that. In part to explain why this book may have resonated with so many people. There is so much to this story, like of how candy became food and not just candy and how food became more like candy, like sugary cereals.
46:43 Speaker 04 Yeah, but the short version is that candy production really only began in the mid 19th century or so. Another thing we can thank the Industrial Revolution for. But it remained kind of like an occasional treat for decades, not a food staple to be found in most or many pantries. By the end of World War II, that had changed. In the 1920s, a couple of the major candy companies were established in the US, Mars and Hershey. And soldiers in the Second World War carried with them candy like Hershey's bars, Baby Ruth's, and Tootsie Rolls. They were actually issued in their rations. They were like part of their rations. And part of this was like, you know, here's something to keep your energy up.
47:26 Speaker 04 Here is something to like make friends with someone, or like if you are helping to like liberate a town or whatever, like share your candy. But when the war ended, it wasn't like candy production stopped, but it wasn't as widely embraced as it had been during those war years when soldiers, there were literally like instructions like enjoy some candy every day. It'll help you with your energy levels. But it was seen as a controversial food post World War II, unhealthy at the minimum, with stronger voices echoing the early 20th century discourse when sugar was said to be as addictive as drugs and alcohol. It was very like the temperance movement, sugar and candy was also bad.
48:10 Speaker 01 We need corn flakes with no sugar on them.
48:12 Speaker 04 Exactly. I mean, there were, there were people who were like, I'm going to do a study about sugary soda and violence. And, you know, try with the hypothesis being that people who drank more soda were violent, more violent. I don't think it wore out.
48:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:28 Speaker 04 But in any case, it was like sugar had, generally speaking, a bad rap. And there's always a moral association with this too, right?
48:35 Speaker 01 Yes.
48:35 Speaker 04 You know?
48:36 Speaker 01 Yes.
48:36 Speaker 04 And in the 1960s and the 1970s, people began warning against eating candy and artificial sweeteners. And the growth of like the health foods market during this time, kind of provided this unwelcome comparison for candy and other junk foods, right? It was like, come on, like, all right, you've got your kale, you've got your Brussels sprouts. I guess, you know, no one really wants these pixie sticks anymore. And then enter, so in this environment, right, in this atmosphere, we're now in 1975. Enter Benjamin Finegold's book, Why Your Child Is Hyperactive. We talked about this book in our food diets episode.
49:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, we did.
49:14 Speaker 04 This is where that link initially comes from, the food dyes and hyperactivity. And so in this book, Finegold links a suite of behavioral issues and allergies in children to food additives, artificial dyes, artificial flavors, and sugary snacks, which often contain a lot of these artificial flavors, dyes, et cetera. And he outlined an elimination diet where if you are supposed, you're supposed to avoid certain foods as a way to treat hyperactivity in children. And even in, like, it wasn't just junk food that was cut out. It was also even some vegetables that contained salicylic acid or something like that. Those were a no-go at the start of the diet, like tomatoes.
49:56 Speaker 01 Interesting.
49:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
49:58 Speaker 01 Tomatoes.
49:59 Speaker 04 I know, even, but like, also, it's a really, it's a really kind of odd. There are some parallels with like the kind of a trad wife stuff today, where a lot of the foods that would be considered, you know, junk food were okay as long as you made them from scratch. So ice cream was totally fine, but you had to make it from scratch.
50:22 Speaker 01 Oh, because ice cream doesn't have any artificial colors in it if you use vanilla.
50:28 Speaker 04 Right.
50:28 Speaker 01 So it's just your raw milk.
50:30 Speaker 04 You could make your, yeah, yeah. You could make your own Fruit Loops with like beet juice and carrot juice and whatever, all that. And sugar, but sugar, right, like sugar was, was pretty much okay. Sugar was allowed. It was mostly the artificial, yeah, it was mostly artificial dyes and flavors, but since candy often contain, it was like, that was like the trigger food. And so in Why Your Child Is Hyperactive, Finegold goes through case studies of a few kids as they're put on the diet, and he describes what he observes like this, quote, "On July 27, Johnny C. sneaked some candy and turned into a whirling dervish for 24 hours. Predictable, I thought," end quote.
51:15 Speaker 01 First of all, love the term whirling dervish. That's a great one.
51:19 Speaker 04 Good one.
51:19 Speaker 01 Second of all, predictable.
51:21 Speaker 04 Predictable, I thought.
51:23 Speaker 01 I mean.
51:24 Speaker 04 He's just like, pat, pat, pat. I knew this would happen.
51:27 Speaker 01 I knew it. Told you so.
51:32 Speaker 04 It is, it is so, yeah, some of these other case studies are honestly just ridiculous. And so this is like, and that was the evidence that he presented.
51:41 Speaker 01 Of course.
51:42 Speaker 04 That was anecdote equals evidence, right? I mean, this, this book sold like hotcakes. I mean, we, we talked about this in our food dies episode. Sold like candy, really. Yeah, but so once, once this came out, a bunch of other studies were created to kind of see like, okay, what's the actual low down on this between sugar or candy and hyperactivity? And they showed no association, but the sugar rush myth persisted. And as to why, and maybe there's truth to it, maybe you'll tell me that there is, but like, as to why, from what my understanding, my cursory look through, there isn't evidence to, to back up as association between eating candy and hyperactivity.
52:26 Speaker 04 But my guess is that it's for the same reasons why supplements are so popular, like why we all want to know that one trick our doctor doesn't want us to know and why we develop like a kale or super green or whatever obsession. We want to optimize and improve our lives in the like, just fine tune everything. It's relatable. It provides an easy explanation and the promise of a cure. And so for people who are desperate for solutions, like it is, not being a parent myself, I don't know what it's like to have a hyperactive kid, but I've been around kids who are running all over the place and I can understand that parents who are like, I'm gonna lose my mind with this. Anything that I can do to prevent this whirling dervish, I will try.
53:11 Speaker 04 And so, and so I think that's part of the reason why it makes such, these ideas have such sticking power. And also because it's just like, you can say it in one sentence, candy causes hyperactivity. Three words, like that's it.
53:24 Speaker 01 It's an easy, it's an easy answer. It's an easy fix.
53:27 Speaker 04 Yep. And it also makes sense because maybe kids are eating candy at times when things are really exciting otherwise, right? But we'll, I'll let you talk about that.
53:34 Speaker 01 We'll get there.
53:35 Speaker 04 But now, before I turn it over to you, Erin, I do just want to point out that these three old wives tales, quote unquote, that we've gone through so far have all been created by men, which is hilarious to me. So now, tell me about Sugar Rush.
53:49 Speaker 01 Listen, this is so shockingly persistent that like you go to any kid's birthday party today and every parent will be like, oh, a lot of sugar, it's gonna be a rough night, da, da, da, da, right? Like, even, even when we know better, it is still what we say at birthday parties, etc.
54:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
54:09 Speaker 01 We have so much evidence against this, against this.
54:13 Speaker 04 That's what I thought.
54:14 Speaker 01 There is a paper that summarized at least 12, and this is an old paper at this point, this isn't new data, there is a paper that summarized at least 12 different, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trials that looked at whether sugar consumption causes hyperactivity in kids, and literally none of them show any actual behavior change after sugar consumption. And that means if we're talking natural sugars, if we're talking chocolate, if we're talking candy, if we're talking kids who have underlying ADHD or hyperactivity, or kids without hyperactivity at baseline, the studies just do not show this association to be true. And they have taken this one step further, because most of the studies that looked at this initially, we're looking at it in the short term, the immediate effects, right?
54:58 Speaker 01 We see very little behavior change on clinical scales in terms of aggressiveness, hyperactivity in attention, when you take kids and you give them sugar and then you watch them.
55:09 Speaker 04 Okay.
55:10 Speaker 01 Okay. So people have taken it one step further and said, okay, but it's not, it's not the short term, it's the long term. Sugar consumption in the long term puts kids at higher risk of developing ADHD. Is that true? Probably not. There are some studies that are not great, many of them don't necessarily have like a, you can't make a causal assumption, because they look at kids with ADHD and kids without ADHD, and look at their sugar consumption, and say, oh, the kids with ADHD are consuming higher amounts of sugar.
55:39 Speaker 04 Right.
55:40 Speaker 01 But that's not causal.
55:41 Speaker 04 Right, right.
55:43 Speaker 01 There are some, there's a, at least one study that looked at like a birth cohort, and like, sugar consumption over time in this birth cohort of kids, and showed no association with sugar consumption and the development of ADHD.
55:57 Speaker 01 And there are some others that show maybe some associations with things like sugar sweetened beverages. But again, that's not sugar alone, right? And you can't separate out all of the other things that might be in sodas or Gatorades, or whatever it is, from the sugar that's in there. So the consensus, the overall overarching data is no myth busted. There's no association between sugar and hyperactive behavior, or ADHD and hyperactivity. Now, what's really interesting is that some studies do show that there is a significant effect of sugar on parental perception of behavior.
56:41 Speaker 01 If you tell parents, we just gave your kids a bunch of sugar, they will rate their kids as more hyperactive, regardless of whether or not they ate sugar.
56:52 Speaker 04 That is very interesting.
56:55 Speaker 01 It is. There's only one big study that I saw on this. So like, this is one study, but it is really interesting. And I tried to find, because you mentioned this, Erin, and this is, I think, the explanation that I always hear.
57:07 Speaker 04 Yeah.
57:08 Speaker 01 Is, oh, it's not the sugar, it's the party that causes the, you know, whirling dervish behavior.
57:15 Speaker 04 Sure.
57:16 Speaker 01 It's the situation in which the sugar is consumed that causes these behavior changes. It's not the sugar itself.
57:24 Speaker 01 There's no data on this. Like, that's not a thing that has been studied. So it is one of those, we can now make this a new myth, that it is like, it seems logically to be true, kids are wild at parties, but there's no like, data to be like, if you give a kid, like, you know what I'm saying?
57:40 Speaker 04 Yeah.
57:41 Speaker 01 There's no data on it, but.
57:42 Speaker 04 I mean, it makes sense. Also, it's like, do, do, do we need to study?
57:47 Speaker 01 Do we need to say?
57:48 Speaker 04 Parties make people excited?
57:49 Speaker 01 Parties make you have fun?
57:51 Speaker 04 We need evidence for that. We need a p-value. We need some sort of, yeah.
57:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. But it is not the sugar.
58:01 Speaker 01 It's just your, it's just the kids.
58:03 Speaker 04 I mean, that's, that is really interesting about parental perception. And I wonder how a study like that results from a study like that prior to Fine Gold's book and prior to this myth becoming so persistent and ingrained in our culture.
58:16 Speaker 01 Would it still have been true? Yeah. Cause that study was in the late 90, mid to late 90s.
58:20 Speaker 04 Sugar rush.
58:21 Speaker 01 Sugar rush.
58:22 Speaker 04 Myth busted. Uh, okay. Our last, our last myth.
58:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:28 Speaker 04 Gone by fast. Okay. Probably not for listeners. Just kidding.
58:33 Speaker 04 All right. Our last myth is ginger ale cures tummy aches.
58:38 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
58:38 Speaker 04 Okay. Uh, growing up, when I was sick from, you know, sick and had to stay home from school, I had some sort of stomach bug. My mom would, I would always remember a steady diet of like ginger ale, Sprite, saltines, especially saltines.
58:53 Speaker 01 Saltines.
58:54 Speaker 04 And for years, like I could not taste any of those without instantly feeling nauseous. Especially saltines. I'm just like.
59:03 Speaker 01 I mean, that's fair. Do you need saltines in your diet? Like, you know?
59:06 Speaker 04 I mean, I do really love a saltine with a little dab of peanut butter on there. So good. Yeah.
59:12 Speaker 01 Fair.
59:13 Speaker 04 But that's definitely a desperation snack when I'm like rummaging around my pantry. Like, please, there's got to be something I can eat. But ginger has long been hailed as an aid in digestion, nausea, inflammation, and other GI issues. And the first descriptions of the power of ginger in this way date back thousands of years, at least to 2000 BCE in ancient Indian medical texts. And in the 6th century BCE, Confucius mentioned ginger and recommended to take it with every meal to help with digestion. Ginger as we know it does not exist in the wild. It's cultivated, meaning that humans have intentionally grown it for thousands of years. And it likely originated somewhere from India to China, Southeast Asia, around there.
59:57 Speaker 04 Ginger was a major and early component of the spice trade. And by the turn of the millennium, it was widely used across Southeastern Asia into the Middle East and into the Greek and Roman empires. And soon it had made its way to the rest of Europe. In 14th century England, ginger was all the rage, second in popularity as a spice to pepper. It was number two behind pepper. Isn't that fascinating?
1:00:25 Speaker 01 That is fascinating.
1:00:26 Speaker 04 And it was allegedly quite expensive. So, one pound of ginger costs as much as one sheep. So, for reference, just to help put this into perspective, I looked up contemporary prices of sheep and ginger in Colorado.
1:00:40 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:00:41 Speaker 04 And I found...
1:00:42 Speaker 01 Sorry. How much does a sheep cost in Colorado, man?
1:00:46 Speaker 04 Oh, I'm about to tell you. It's actually much cheaper than I thought. I guess, I guess, you know, people could get a sheep fairly easily. Sheep prices range quite a bit. There's like show sheep and stuff. I don't know anything about sheep. And I didn't learn too much more after Googling this. However, you can go to like Safeway or whatever and find ginger for $3.99 a pound.
1:01:11 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:01:12 Speaker 04 Okay. Sheep prices vary, but you can get, you can get one for as few as like, you know, few hundred bucks. And then some that are like much more expensive, but like, I would say, safe price would be between $400 and $500 for a single sheep. So, safe to say that the cost of ginger has gone down quite substantially since mid 14th century England.
1:01:32 Speaker 01 Probably true.
1:01:33 Speaker 04 While sheep have gone up, something like that, yeah. So, for thousands of years, sheep, sorry, ginger had been used pretty heavily, I guess sheep had been used pretty heavily in foods as well, not beverages. But ginger was used in beverages like ginger tea, for instance. And the first references or records of ginger beer come from England in the mid 18th century.
1:01:57 Speaker 04 This ginger beer was made alcoholic through the fermentation of added sugar in contrast to other beer, which is from fermented grains. And so ginger beer, as it used to be known, you can now buy ginger beer today that is, does not have alcohol in it, but ginger beer historically was alcoholic.
1:02:16 Speaker 01 Like cider.
1:02:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly.
1:02:18 Speaker 01 They call it apple cider, but it's not alcoholic and cider still is sometimes.
1:02:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's confusing. But at some point, most sources suggest in the 1850s in Ireland, people began producing less alcoholic or non-alcoholic versions of ginger beer that they called ginger ale to distinguish it.
1:02:37 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:02:38 Speaker 04 So you know Canada Dry, the ginger ale that burned?
1:02:41 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:02:42 Speaker 04 That dry, the name dry comes from the fact that it was non-alcoholic, like a dry county.
1:02:47 Speaker 01 Oh, I never knew that.
1:02:50 Speaker 04 I know. And then it's also like crisp and stuff.
1:02:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, crisp. That's what I just assumed, but I like that it was.
1:02:56 Speaker 04 You know, it's multipurpose. But so these non-alcoholic ginger ales were made with soda water and had ginger flavoring with added sugar rather than being fermented products. And they were popular as health tonics because ginger helps to aid in digestion. And so ginger ales were often sold as like a healthy beverage. Like I always weirdly thought of ginger ale as like the health soda, which is, does not work.
1:03:23 Speaker 01 Oh yeah, growing up I didn't like it because I was like, it's too spicy and.
1:03:28 Speaker 04 Yeah. It was me. I was like, my tummy hurts and ginger ale makes me feel sick because I'm drinking ginger ale because I'm sick. Yeah.
1:03:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:03:36 Speaker 04 But in addition to being really popular as health tonics, they were also popular as mixers for other alcoholic beverages or cocktails. And ginger ale experienced a huge surge in popularity during prohibition when people used it to hide the nasty taste of like bootleg liquors.
1:03:53 Speaker 01 Oh, that's so funny.
1:03:55 Speaker 04 I think even Al Capone had some sort of ginger ale producing plant or something or like owned shares in it or something like that. So. Long story short, the association between ginger ale and nausea probably stems from ginger's reputation as a nausea reliever and a healthy spice, even though most store bought ginger ales don't contain any real ginger, just ginger flavoring. So Erin, tell me, does ginger ale actually help with nausea or does ginger help with nausea? Where does the truth lie?
1:04:28 Speaker 01 Where does the truth lie? Because it is somewhere right in the middle there. There is a lot of data that have looked at ginger, using ginger to treat nausea and vomiting, whether it's nausea and vomiting associated with pregnancy, nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy induced nausea, post-operative nausea, even seasickness. And while the data for some of these is a little bit heterogeneous, it's not as strong for every type of nausea, ginger likely, based on all of this data, has some benefit in reducing nausea and vomiting associated with a variety of conditions. The data is strongest for pregnancy and chemotherapy.
1:05:09 Speaker 04 Okay.
1:05:10 Speaker 01 What does that mean, though? Ginger, okay, because that's just a root. Most of the studies that looked at this used at least one gram a day of ginger. How does one ingest a gram of ginger? Usually in ginger capsules or ginger powder, although some studies looked at ginger biscuits, which I love.
1:05:30 Speaker 04 Love ginger biscuits. I'm assuming cookies is what biscuit is meaning in this context.
1:05:34 Speaker 01 That's what they meant, yeah. The British biscuit. And so, and in those studies, consuming at least a gram of ginger via capsules or powder or ginger biscuits, in most of them, did show at least some improvement in nausea and vomiting. What is the mechanism of this? We still don't know. There are some studies that suggest that active compounds in ginger might interact with some of our serotonin receptors. Ayo, throwback to our SSRIs episode. We talked a little bit in one of those about how some of our other antiemetics like Zofran or Odansetron also works on serotonin receptors in our brain.
1:06:15 Speaker 01 There's also some other studies that maybe ginger or some of the compounds in ginger help to increase gastric motility. Now, hmm, that is why, I assume that is why people say ginger ale will help. There is no data that I found on ginger ale specifically. And like you said, most ginger ales don't even have any ginger in it. And even if they do, how are you going to get to a gram of ginger a day from drinking, you know, even the ginger ales that have real ginger in them? You're going to be hard pressed to get to a gram.
1:06:47 Speaker 04 And then you're eating, you're also drinking a lot of carbonated beverage, which,
1:06:51 Speaker 01 which is interesting because one of the big side effects of ginger, especially consuming like enough ginger, like in these studies, a gram of ginger, one of the big side effects is acid reflux, which you might also get more of with carbonated beverages.
1:07:05 Speaker 04 Right, so it might not help in that situation.
1:07:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, so you know, ginger may be helpful for nausea and vomiting. And I think one of the issues with this is that you run into the same issue that we talked a lot about in our supplements episode, which is that none of the ways that you would get ginger are licensed drug products. And so whether you're taking capsules, whether you're doing those ginger chews, whether it's a ginger tea or a ginger ale, it's really, you're going to be hard pressed to actually get the amount of ginger that they have done in these studies. And that doesn't mean that it might not help your individual nausea and vomiting. Because there's some data that ginger might be helpful.
1:07:48 Speaker 04 Right.
1:07:48 Speaker 01 Myth, not, I would say not quite busted.
1:07:52 Speaker 04 Myth clarified.
1:07:53 Speaker 01 Clarified.
1:07:55 Speaker 04 The much less exciting conclusion to these stories.
1:08:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:08:03 Speaker 04 That's our last myth for today.
1:08:05 Speaker 01 We have so many more, though.
1:08:07 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:08:08 Speaker 01 You guys, we thought about doing Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever. Do you want to know where that came from? And whether there's any truth to that? We thought about doing, what else was on our list, Erin? There was so many more.
1:08:19 Speaker 04 Let's see, there was joints ache in the cold.
1:08:23 Speaker 01 Joints ache in the cold? Or, ooh, cracking your knuckles causes arthritis?
1:08:28 Speaker 04 Gum in your stomach.
1:08:29 Speaker 01 Gum in your stomach.
1:08:30 Speaker 04 Sitting too close to the TV will make you go blind. Wait to swim, cranberry juice and UTIs. Air hand dryers versus paper towels, hilarious. Zinc, I mean, that's zinc, we should just do a full episode on zinc.
1:08:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
1:08:46 Speaker 04 Dairy products, if you have a cold, because it'll make you all mucousy. Eight spiders a year. Yeah.
1:08:52 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, eight spiders a year that you eat?
1:08:54 Speaker 04 I do want to know that one.
1:08:55 Speaker 01 Chicken soup will cure your colds.
1:08:57 Speaker 04 Chicken soup will cure your colds. If you have more health myths, please send them our way. Because we would love to add them to this ever growing, rapidly growing list.
1:09:07 Speaker 01 If you like, do you like these episodes? Can we do more of these?
1:09:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, tell us, tell us what you think.
1:09:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:09:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:09:13 Speaker 01 And until then?
1:09:14 Speaker 04 Until then, well, we have some sources.
1:09:16 Speaker 01 We sure do.
1:09:17 Speaker 04 I, okay. I'm going to shout out like one for each of these. For wet hair or cold, the cold will make you sick. There were a couple, actually, dissertations that I read. One was called Talking About the Weather, Climate and the Victorian Novel by Joanne Sarah Wa. And then Carrots Give You Night Vision, again, got a shout out, the World Carrot Museum. Several helpful articles there. Sugar Rush. At the, there was a book I read excerpts from called Candy, A Century of Panic and Pleasure by Samira Kaywash. And then from Ginger Ale, there was a, there were a few different sources. Because there's like the history of ginger, plus the history of soda.
1:10:02 Speaker 04 And there's another book I read excerpts of by Tristan Donovan called Fizz, How Soda Shook Up the World, published in 2013.
1:10:10 Speaker 01 Love that. I'll do the same, I'll shout out like one for each, but I've probably got like Five to 10 for each of these, which just seems bananas. But for colds and the cold, one of my favorites was by Stuart in the journal Medical Hypotheses from 2016 titled Seasonality and Selective Trends in Viral Acute Respiratory Tract Infections. But there was a bunch of other ones that were fun, some like from the 60s, these original trials, and then some that much newer. For beta carotene and eyes, I had a number of these, but I think two of the biggest, like most well cited studies are the age-related eye disease studies. So there was one from 2001, and then there was an update in 2013. So both of those are cited.
1:10:53 Speaker 01 For Sugar Rush and Kids, the one that is cited universally, the most well-known, is by Krummel et al. from 1986, and it's titled, "Hyperactivity Is Candy-Causal." And then for ginger and nausea, I've got several different ones. Each of them are specific for the type of nausea and vomiting, but so one was Thompson et al. from 2014, "The Effects of Ginger for Nausea and Vomiting in Early Pregnancy", and another from 2000 by Ernst et al. that was "Efficacy of Ginger for Nausea and Vomiting: A Systemic Review of Randomized Clinical Trials." There's so many more. Erin, for all of these, you can find them on our website, thispodcastwillkillyou.com, under the Episodes tab.
1:11:35 Speaker 04 You can. Thank you to Blood Mobile for providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes.
1:11:41 Speaker 01 Thank you to Leanna and Tom and Brent and Pete and Jessica and everyone else at Exactly Right for everything you do to make this possible.
1:11:49 Speaker 04 Yes, thank you, thank you. And thanks to you listeners for listening, watchers for watching, whoever you are participating in this podcast in some way, we appreciate it, we really do. And a special thank you to our patrons. I mean, we can't express how much we appreciate your support.
1:12:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, thank you.
1:12:09 Speaker 04 Well, until next time, wash your hands.
1:12:12 Speaker 01 You filthy animals.
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