Don't Cross Your Eyes...They'll Get Stuck That Way!: And 75 Other Health Myths Debunked (2 page)

Many studies have investigated the question of whether ADHD medicines stunt children’s growth. Several studies have found statistically significant changes in the height and weight of children treated for ADHD; children who are taking ADHD medicines do appear to have slower increases in height and weight as they age. However, the medicine’s effect on growth wanes over time. In a review examining twenty studies of children’s growth while taking ADHD medicines, it was learned that there were some delays in the children’s growth in terms of height and weight gain, but these effects became less or went away over time. In other words, the medicines seemed to slow down the children’s growth at first, but then that effect diminished. Several studies also suggested that the dosage is what has the greater effect on the child’s growth. It is important to note that the differences in the children’s growth compared to children not on medicines for ADHD were very small, and some of the studies suggested that the children went on to have normal adult height and weight. The summary of all these studies is that there seems to be some impact from ADHD medicine on children’s growth, but the effect is less over time and may not have any impact on how tall they are as adults.

There are also some studies that suggest that the medicines are not the real culprit for the children’s growth, and that the real issue may be the fact that they have ADHD. In some studies, ADHD itself is associated with alterations in how children grow, even among children who have never received medication for their ADHD. Most of the studies from which scientists try to answer this question were not really intended to see whether ADHD alone affects children’s growth, and so more research is needed in order to provide a definitive answer.

If you are considering ADHD treatment for your child, you should be aware that there is some potential for a temporary growth delay, especially when they first start therapy. However, you should also know that most of these growth delays go away over time and the child usually catches up in terms of their growth. It is also important to weigh any of these risks against the very real problems that children with ADHD have when they are not treated with medication. These problems include not only difficulties in school, but also a higher chance of having issues such as depression, anxiety, and difficulty relating to their peers.

Air

The air you breathe will make you sick … if you’re near a sniffler and sneezer

Your co-worker is coughing and sneezing in the cubicle just down the way. The sniffling and throat-clearing make it difficult to concentrate. You are worried about getting sick yourself, but the etiquette of asking someone to go home or to stay in bed is tricky to navigate. Some of your colleagues are ready to march the snot-nosed sicko out the door, but you wonder just how much of a problem it really is to breathe the same air. You use your hand sanitizer, try to avoid being within sneezing range of their red nose, and you definitely are not shaking hands—but are you still at risk of catching their cold?

Unfortunately, the answer to this one is “maybe.” Sometimes, breathing the same air as a sick person will make you sick. The viruses that most often cause colds in humans are called rhinoviruses. For a long time, it looked like the main way that rhinoviruses were passed from one human being to another was through direct contact. The rhinoviruses most often passed from one person to another by directly touching things that had been contaminated by coughing and sneezing. This is why hand-washing is so important. Your hands typically touch contaminated objects, and when you put your hands in your mouth or nose, the virus creeps in to infect you. A sick person’s hands are also a big culprit of passing on cold viruses. Coughing and sneezing into your hands covers them with tiny (or, sometimes, not so tiny) droplets of mucus that contain the cold virus. When you touch things with your contaminated hands, you leave behind infectious mucus that can get other people sick. Washing hands and avoiding contact with a sick person’s contaminated hands or the things their hands may have touched are still the most important ways to avoid catching another person’s cold.

If cold viruses were only passed from person to person by direct contact, then you would not have to worry much about breathing the same air. You could just wash your hands and keep a little distance, and you would be fine. However, more recent studies have shown that some cold viruses are aerosolized. This means that the virus is sent into the air in small droplets of fluid that come spewing out of your mouth or nose when you cough or sneeze. With this kind of transmission, you’re most at risk if you are very close to that coughing or sneezing person. With some bad luck, you might get these virus-containing droplets of fluid into your nose or mouth.

But what about someone who is not within spitting range? Are you in danger just by breathing in the same air? This is where newer studies give us especially bad news. There is evidence that some viruses get aerosolized into the air in a way that allows them to circulate through buildings, and even to infect people who are not particularly close by. Many of the buildings in which we spend our time are relatively well sealed. They have central heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning, and the indoor air circulates around the building for some time before it is exchanged for the air outside. In these conditions, it appears that some viruses get circulated in the indoor air and cause infections in other people in the building.

It is much more likely that you will be infected by someone near you or by the mucus that someone leaves on your hands or on your phone, but there is a chance that you might get sick from someone on another floor too. Good ventilation systems can do a lot to prevent the spread of sickness through the air. If the system frequently exchanges indoor air for outdoor air, it can prevent most of these infections that spread through the air.

These studies are looking at colds or upper respiratory infections caused by viruses, and not at other types of sicknesses. Many other forms of illness, such as diarrhea or strep throat or skin infections, are not spread through the air. These illnesses are usually spread by direct contact, and so the air around people with these sicknesses is not going to make you sick. And other illnesses are not contagious at all and cannot be passed from one person to another. For example, you cannot get heart failure, diabetes, or leukemia from another person.

Those of us who work in hospitals and breathe in “sick air” all the time can easily avoid getting sick ourselves. There’s no trick to it. We follow the same recommendations we give you in this book and in
Don’t Swallow Your Gum!
: wash your hands frequently, get a flu shot, and if you have to be around someone who has a cold or viral respiratory infection, wear a mask or try to give them more personal space.

Airborne

I have just the thing for that cold … Airborne

Airborne is a popular supplement among schoolteachers, who claim that it prevents them from picking up the germs spread around their classrooms full of sick children. The Airborne package even tells the story of how it was created by a schoolteacher who was frustrated with just that problem—getting sick all the time during cold and flu season. Rachel flies a lot, and friends and family who want to be helpful are always suggesting that she should take Airborne before she gets on one of her long plane rides. If Airborne works for teachers and travelers, it should work for you, right? The problem is, there is no evidence that it works.

It may surprise you to hear that Airborne has not been studied scientifically. Since Airborne is a herbal supplement, it is not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and its makers are not required to tell us exactly what is in it or whether it is proven to work. We know that Airborne contains a mixture of vitamins, minerals, and herbs, including large amounts of vitamin C and vitamin A, as well as some zinc. In the medical literature, there are no studies of Airborne itself. We can assure you that if someone had done a good scientific study and proved that this worked, it would be published prominently. Of course, some of the components of Airborne have been studied rigorously. As you will see if you skip to some of the later chapters, studies show over and over again that vitamin C, echinacea, and zinc do not prevent or cure colds. If the individual components of Airborne do not work to prevent colds, it seems unlikely that Airborne itself will work.

If you are a fan of Airborne, you may be shocked by our claim that Airborne has not been studied. After all, the package used to talk about the “double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 120 patients” that showed Airborne worked great in helping patients in the early stages of getting a cold. The makers of Airborne had to remove that claim because, as it turns out, the “study” was conducted unscientifically. In fact, as uncovered by an investigative report by ABC News, the scientific team at GNG Pharmaceutical Services were, in fact, two men working in a garage. The scientific studies that we use for evidence in this book are done in clinics and controlled laboratories by scientists and doctors. They are not done by two men in a garage. The makers of Airborne agreed to pay more than $24 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in regard to their false advertising about this garage “study” and the lack of evidence for their product.

As the Federal Trade Commission summarizes, the makers of Airborne cannot make any legitimate claims about the effectiveness of their products: “There is no competent and reliable scientific evidence to support the claims made by the defendants that Airborne tablets can prevent or reduce the risk of colds, sickness, or infection; protect against or help fight germs; reduce the severity or duration of a cold; and protect against colds, sickness, or infection in crowded places such as airplanes, offices, or schools.”

The FTC complaint also states that the individual defendants in the case, company founders Victoria Knight-McDowell and Thomas John McDowell, made false claims that Airborne products are clinically proven to treat colds.

We kind of like the idea of a plucky schoolteacher figuring out a way to treat colds effectively. What we detest is the idea that someone could make a fortune lying to people about whether something works. The Federal Trade Commission reports that lying is exactly what the makers of Airborne did, and they had to pay millions in order to settle the lawsuit caused by those lies.

The other thing we don’t like is that products like Airborne are not without risk. It is bad enough if something doesn’t work, but much worse if it could also make you sick. Since Airborne is not proven to work, we cannot be sure how much risk of a harmful side effect you might have from taking it. In these instances, vulnerable populations like pregnant women and children need to be especially careful because we just don’t know what the impact of this product might be.

Airborne is not proven to work. Existing studies of the components of Airborne suggest that it is unlikely to work even if it was rigorously studied. And the makers of Airborne have consistently lied about its effectiveness. All of these things add up to a product that does not deserve to be trusted (or foisted upon unsuspecting airplane seatmates).

Airplanes

Airplane travel will make you sick

Rachel spends half of the year doing research and caring for children with HIV in Kenya. Going back and forth to Africa several times a year means a lot of time on airplanes (and a lot of frequent flier miles). Does it also mean that Rachel has a lot of extra colds? Rachel’s family is convinced that she is always coming off airplane flights with some sort of sickness. If Airborne is not going to protect her on the plane, is she doomed to exposure to one germ after another?

Many people are convinced that airplanes are guaranteed incubators for coughs and colds. Vice President Joe Biden once warned family members that they should avoid airplanes during the time of the swine flu epidemic because a single sneeze in the confined space of a plane could go “all the way through the aircraft.” The makers of Airborne particularly recommend taking their herbal supplement before you fly on a plane in order to prevent colds. One has to wonder just how significant the health risks are when you fly.

It is easy to imagine how airplanes could be incubators for illness. Airplanes are confined spaces, and they have limited ventilation. People worry that the airplane ventilation systems may recirculate stale cabin air. Plus, if you have a long flight, you may be close to a sick person for a relatively long time.

Studies have found some evidence that traveling on a plane can lead to infections among other air travelers. Studies looking at the transmission of pandemic A/H1N1 influenza (swine flu) in 2009 did show an increased chance of getting swine flu if you were in close proximity to a passenger on an airplane who was already infected. For swine flu, the risk was only increased for those people within two rows of the sick passengers. There are also case reports of diseases such as tuberculosis, measles, and other types of influenza being transmitted from one passenger on a plane to another. We have to admit that air travel can be a risk. (This is also a good reminder to get vaccinated against whatever infections you can since you never know what the person next to you on a plane might have.)

Before you cancel your next flight, though, you should look at the big picture. Air travel is not nearly as risky as it may sound. Bugs and viruses are actually spread during flight very rarely. You put yourself at risk for getting an infection whenever you go out in public. Studies show that you have no more risk of getting sick after being on an airplane than you do if you spend the same amount of time on trains, buses, or in buildings like offices or malls. Airplanes are not the worst culprits. In fact, one study found lower levels of bacteria and fungi in airplanes than in buses, malls, or even in the outside air! Studies that look at cultures from airplanes show very low levels of growing bacteria or viruses. Airplanes have a number of factors in their favor that help to keep them much healthier than you might imagine.