Health Myths From Aaron Carroll
Lessons from Don’t Cross Your Eyes…They’ll Get Stuck That Way: and 75 Other Health Myths Debunked as interpreted by Austin Frakt:
- Aloe Vera will heal a burn. True.
- The door handle is the dirtiest fixture in the bathroom. False. The floor is. Duh!
- Air dryers keep your hands cleaner than paper towels. False. They blow bacteria all over the place.
- Celery has negative calories. Kind of true, if you include the energy needed to pass the cellulose it contains.
- Raw eggs will give you salmonella. False. It’s the shells and only 1 in 30,000 eggs is contaminated.
- Tilt your head back to stop a nose bleed. False. Bad idea.
- Vomit after swallowing something poisonous. False. Bad idea. It is not helpful.
- You should stretch before you exercise. False. Not helpful.
- Don’t get vaccinated when you are sick. Some degree of truthiness. However, for mild illness, it’s fine to get vaccinated.
- You should uncover a wound at night to let it air out. False. It’ll heal faster if it is covered, even all night.
Sounds like solid info.
No stretching before exercise? Someone may need to inform the American College of Sports Medicine, which is still advocating stretching and flexibility training.
Who knew that debunking old myths involved creating new ones?
From Gast et al. Poultry Science, August 2010: “…Although deposition of Salmonella Enteritidis inside yolks is less common than deposition in albumen or on the vitelline (yolk) membrane in naturally contaminated eggs laid by infected hens…”
In short, the eggs are contaminated before the shells are formed because Salmonella enteritidis infects the ovaries of hens. Most infected hens are found in the northeastern United States where approximately one in 10,000 eggs may be internally contaminated. An infected hen can lay many normal eggs while only occasionally laying an infected one.
Infection caused by external fecal contamination of egg shells is extremely rare due to procedures for claining and inspecting eggs that were implemented in the 1970s.
For a representative CDC publication that doesn’t replace old myths with new ones, see http://courses.cals.uidaho.edu/avs/avs471/Additional%20Readings%202010/Disease_Listing,_Salmonella_enteritidis,_Generall_Information___CDC_Bacteria%5B1%5D.pdf
I am only 20 years old and I remember being told by teachers to hold your head back during a nose bleed.
I don’t know why you cannot vomit after swallowing something poisonous. If you have undigested food in your stomach, I would think you could get rid of some of the point that way.