Don't Cross Your Eyes...They'll Get Stuck That Way!: And 75 Other Health Myths Debunked (11 page)

We’re not saying that crossing your eyes for a long time is the best thing for the muscles of your eyes. It can cause strain in these muscles, which may result in a temporary pain or even in some eye spasms and blurring of your vision. Thankfully, these effects are temporary; when you stop crossing your eyes, the muscles have a chance to rest and the pain or spasms should subside. Your eyes will not be stuck in the crossed position. In the same way, if you use the muscles in your arm to curl a heavy weight, your biceps might feel tired, sore, and even somewhat crampy, but your arm will not be stuck in the curled position. The muscles just need a break to return to feeling normal.

Rubbing your eyes is bad for you—TRUE

With the exception of busting the myth on reading in the dark, no myth was going to be as satisfying to throw in our mothers’ faces as this one. Aaron especially was looking forward to rubbing his eyes in abandon and gleefully ignoring his mother’s pleas to stop.

We are heartbroken to report that we won’t have that pleasure.

The medical literature is shockingly full of bad things that happen to people who rub their eyes too much. One woman is described as having recurrent keratoconus (a really bad eye disease) because of too much vigorous rubbing of her eyes. Another patient was shown to develop migraine headaches because of eye-rubbing.

Similar studies of animals don’t help our cause either. One study of rats showed that five minutes of eye-rubbing significantly disrupted the cells lining the conjunctivae (the pink part of eyelids) and caused changes to the cells.

Reviews of the medical literature report that eye-rubbing can double the pressure inside your eyes. If you close your eyes tightly and rub hard, you can increase the pressure in your eyes tenfold. Researchers conclude that eye-rubbing can lead to bad things in individuals susceptible to certain disorders of the eye.

When there is no evidence that something is bad, we are more than happy to tell you. But here is a case where such evidence does seem to exist. The overall risks may be low, but they are real. Your mom was right. Don’t rub your eyes.

Fever

Feed a cold, starve a fever

There’s a great Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where the little boy is staring at a cow, particularly its udder. And he remarks that you have to wonder who looked at that and thought, whatever comes out of that, I’m going to drink it.

Where do some of these things come from?

We ask because eating is pretty simple when you come down to it. If you’re hungry, eat. If you’re not, don’t. Humans (and animals) have been doing it for years. And there are no animals out there giving each other instructions on how to eat if they’re sick. We imagine if they’re hungry, they eat, and if they aren’t hungry, they don’t.

Anyway, at some point, we humans decided we knew better. And we started dispensing this gem. Some believe the origins of this date back to the 1500s, when John Withals, who wrote dictionaries, penned, “Fasting is a great remedie of feuer.” Others have hypothesized that eating generates heat, which would be bad in a fever (when you’re hot), but good when you’re cold. Unfortunately, when you have a cold, you’re not necessarily cold in temperature, but logic never stopped any of these myths before.

This is an amazing thing about some of these myths. Even though there is no good reason to believe the idea at face value and no reason to think that the rest of the animal world has been suffering because they lacked such wisdom, we believe in the idea so strongly that we try to prove it true.

This has led to a number of studies trying to see if eating or not eating affects the immune system. A study of six (yes, only six) healthy men found that nutritional status did change the balance of T helper 1 (Th1)–Th2 cells. Moreover, eating resulted in increased levels of gamma interferon, while food deprivation increased interleukin-4 release. In this small study, eating did result in some small changes in the cells of the immune system.

This study did not look at people who had colds or fevers, it did not test any hard outcomes such as whether people get better or not, and, we reiterate, it was a study of just six healthy males. To counter it, we would offer hundreds of millions of years of evolution of animals eating when they are hungry and not eating when they are not.

We suspect that many people will continue to believe this myth. In fact, if you search the literature thoroughly—and we did—you will find a number of articles that continue to offer hypotheses for why this advice is sound. It’s important to note, though, that nearly all of these articles state right up front that they are guesses. They aren’t studies proving this myth is true. They are attempts to imagine scenarios as to why it might be true.

But that’s not research. That’s not evidence. There are no studies whatsoever showing that feeding a cold or starving a fever does any more good than harm. The body continues to need fluids when it is sick, but food it can do without for short periods of time. So we say, when you are sick, you should eat when you’re hungry! If you’re not hungry, wait until you are. Common sense.

If your temperature hits 104, you are going to have brain damage

Of all the symptoms of illness, none seems to inspire panic and concern more than a fever. Parents especially seem madly concerned with the temperature of their children. While some are willing to ignore all sorts of complaints and issues, almost no parent will ignore a bump in temperature.

This problem with fixating on the temperature as a number is that it misses the holistic picture of health and illness. It also causes plenty of needless worry as mothers and fathers watch over their children with rising temperatures, as if by will they could cool them.

In general, fever is just one more symptom of being sick. Like a cough, it is part of the body’s armament for fighting infection, not some evil harm dreamed up by devilish germs. The body is usually kept in the range of 98–99 degrees; the idea that all humans exist at 98.6 degrees at all times is actually a myth. In fact, the normal temperature of babies and small children can vary from 97 to 100 degrees depending on the time of day, whether they have eaten recently, or what activities they are engaging in. Anything below 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit is usually not acknowledged as a fever by medical personnel.

The hypothalamus is part of your brain that works (among other things) as your body’s thermostat. Fever is caused when the hypothalamus resets your body’s temperature. When you are infected with bacteria or viruses, your white blood cells will release a compound called interleukin-1, which alerts the hypothalamus to raise the temperature in your body. Those chills you feel? That shivering that concerns so many of you? Those are part of the way the body gets the job done to fight infections. Raising the temperature is thought to help weaken the germs’ capabilities and bring about their death.

Antipyretics, or drugs that help bring down a fever, do so by lowering the hypothalamus’s thermostat. The usual drugs to lower fevers are acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen. And there is usually nothing wrong with giving these drugs to someone who has a fever. If you have a young baby, you should always talk to a doctor before giving them medicines, but in general, no studies have shown that using medicines to lower your temperature back toward normal will hinder your body’s immune system.

Now, back to the numbers. Generally, adults feel worse when they have fevers than do children. An adult with a fever of 104 will usually feel very ill, but 104 is still not high enough to cause concern about potential brain damage. It is highly unlikely that brain damage will occur until your temperature goes over 107.5 for an adult and 106.5 for a child.

That almost never happens. That’s because your hypothalamus is in control of your body’s temperature. It’s not that the infection is driving your temperature up and your body is fighting it. Your body is driving the temperature up on purpose, on its own. And the temperature is not going to be set that high by the hypothalamus. In order to hit temperatures that high, usually something else has to be seriously wrong. If you’re seriously dehydrated, for example, your body may not be able to cool itself. If you wrap a child in tons of blankets, then the child also could be in danger because they would not have the ability to cool themselves adequately.

This brings us to some things you should
not
do in an attempt to bring down fever:

Do not try to cool a child with rubbing alcohol. Children can actually absorb the alcohol through their skin, and that is bad.

Do not try to cool a person down with ice water; that’s counterproductive.

Do not even try to cool them down with lukewarm water until some time after you’ve given them antipyretics. If you try and cool them before the hypothalamus has reset itself, you will just be fighting the body as it works in the opposite direction to get the temperature back up.

People do worry that if a temperature goes too high that they might have a seizure. It is true that febrile seizures do occur, but most people now believe that the actual value of the temperature has little to do with seizing. The vast majority of febrile seizures occur at temperatures below 104.

Most important, don’t become so fixated on the temperature that you forget to look at the whole picture. Some children with a temperature of 104 can look amazingly well and just have a mild illness. Others can have a temperature of 102 and be seriously ill. Don’t overemphasize the fever. It’s just one more symptom, and it’s very unlikely to cause harm.

Flu

The flu is just a bad cold

We are big fans of flu shots. If you want to debate about whether the flu shot might give you the flu, head to the chapter on vaccines after we try to convince you why you should get a flu shot. One of the arguments we hear most often by people who don’t want to get immunized is that the flu just isn’t a big deal; it’s just a bad cold.

Well, look, there are a number of things the flu and a cold have in common. They both involve the respiratory system and can both include a cough and a runny or stuffy nose. And, of course, they both make you feel sick. But that’s where the similarities end.

Colds are caused by a variety of viruses, mostly rhinoviruses (30 to 50 percent) and coronaviruses (10 to 15 percent). The flu, on the other hand, is caused only by the influenza virus. Colds are defined as a short and mild illness first characterized by headache, sneezing, chills, and sore throat; later on you can get a runny or stuffed nose, cough, and feel ill. Usually, things move fast, and colds are at their worst two to three days after infection. Most people feel better in a week to ten days after the cold starts, but some symptoms can last for weeks. Very few people with colds develop fevers. Influenza, on the other hand, feels more like getting hit by a truck. Influenza comes on fast with more symptoms like fever, cough, sore throat, headaches, muscle pains, stuffy nose, weakness, and even a loss of appetite. You are likely to feel much worse with the flu. A lot of people think of the flu or influenza as a stomach flu. While you might have a loss of your appetite or an upset stomach, the main effect from influenza is to make you achy, weak, and tired, with a bad cough, fever, and congestion.

Colds rarely do more than annoy us and slow us down. We don’t mean to minimize how bad you feel when you’re sick with a cold, but you can be pretty sure as to how bad it will get—after a while, you probably experience the same symptoms time and again. Flu, on the other hand, can kill. In fact, the flu kills up to 500,000 people around the world every year. The number of people who die from colds is almost zero.

While there is no cure for the cold, there actually are antiviral medications that can help the flu go away faster. In order for these medications to work, you need to start taking them in the first day or two after you get the flu. It is therefore important to talk to your doctor as soon as possible after you feel sick in flu season. Once those first few days have passed, the medications will no longer do you any good. Although it is difficult to tell a cold from the flu, the best predictors are cough and fever; having both of these symptoms has a positive predictive value of 80 percent in differentiating flu from a cold. This means that if you have a cough and a fever during the flu season, there is a very good chance you have the flu instead of a cough, so talk to your doctor about getting antiviral medicines for the flu.

Most important—there is a vaccine for the flu. The flu shot works! It prevents illness and saves lives. Not to beat a dead horse, but if your physician recommends that you get a shot, you really should get one. The CDC currently recommends the flu shot for many people. You should get the flu shot if you are at high risk for having complications from the flu. You may not think this includes you, but if you are a child six months to five years old, a pregnant woman, an adult fifty years and older, someone with a chronic medical condition (including asthma), or someone who lives in a nursing home or long-term-care facility, then you should get a flu shot every year. If you live with any of the people on that list, if you live with a child who is less than six months old (since they are too young to get the flu shot), or if you are a health care worker, then you should also get a flu shot every year. This list covers most of us. Get a flu shot! Of course, you should still wash your hands and try to stay away from close contact with sick people to avoid both colds and the flu, but the flu shot may save your life or the life of someone close to you by protecting you against the flu.

Garlic

I have just the thing for that cold … Garlic

Taking garlic to prevent or treat colds requires some serious trade-offs. Is it better to smell terrible and be accused of excessive paranoia about avoiding vampires or to have the occasional cough and cold? The average adult has two to four colds a year. Will garlic stave off those days lost to sniffling and suffering?

In a comprehensive review of scientific trials of garlic, only one of the five studies identified was considered to be of good enough quality to give us any definitive answers about garlic. Remember, we need to use high-quality research to determine whether the results are trustworthy. In the one good study of garlic, 146 volunteers were randomly assigned to take a garlic supplement every day for twelve weeks or to take a placebo pill. Interestingly enough, the volunteers who were taking garlic had significantly fewer colds than the volunteers who were taking the placebo. The garlic group also had fewer days of illness overall, but the number of days it took for people to recover from their illnesses was the same for both groups. Garlic just might work! Of course, those taking garlic did have some side effects; they reported more rashes and, not surprisingly, having a bad odor. Hmm. It really does come down to bad smell versus fewer colds.