medical myths

[gicts]

I'm not going to post every source I found for each of these, but here's a couple for each of them. (Just google "medical myths" if you want to find more.)

Eating Late


But after 6 or so hours your food has been absorbed, converting it into additional nutrients and fat, correct? And if you eat at night you ensure 8+ hours (if your lucky) of inactivity and because you have an overabundance of calories, won't it be stored? Therefore after breakfast you would need to burn your caloric breakfast intake in order to reach your dinner, which has become absorbed?

I'm not sure I could be convinced otherwise h34r:

I will agree 3400 calories equal approximately 1 pound of fat for what it is worth.

 

[R.O.P.]

That you're safer not wearing a seatbelt, so that you don't get trapped in a bad TC. People around here still believe that one with some regularity, even as the evening news tells us about another weekly set of vehicle ejection fatalities.
Go figure.

 

[R.O.P.]

Oh, and that the Zombie Virus is real, and to be feared.
Superstitious folk down here in the Borderland.

 

[ptemt]

Step on a crack and break your mother's back!

 

[JPINFV]

Step on a crack and break your mother's back!

Does jumping on cracks work? h34r:

 

[WolfmanHarris]

All my favorite medical myths have some variation of:
"I don't care what the research says, I've seen _____ work."

Nothing like folksy wisdom and anecdotal "evidence" trumping EBM to hold a profession back.

 

[VentMedic]

All my favorite medical myths have some variation of:
"I don't care what the research says, I've seen _____ work."

Nothing like folksy wisdom and anecdotal "evidence" trumping EBM to hold a profession back.

"Because we've always done it this way".

 

[WolfmanHarris]

"Because we've always done it this way".

Ahhh the co-dependent partner to "I've seen it work."

 

[downunderwunda]

Sex cures acne.

You mean it doesnt. Damn.

Does that mean masterbation doesnt make you blind?

 

[downunderwunda]

I think the biggest Medical Myth is perpetrated by Medic who like to think they are Doctors & can Diagnose & cure pre hospital

 

[lightsandsirens5]

You get colds from being in the cold. Complete B.S.

That is my all time favorite.

 

[Sasha]

A big medical myth that I was reminded of thanks to the forum...

Driving really really fast saves lives!

 

[nicolel3440]

I tell my daughter all the time that if she dont brush her hair that the knots will turn to spider webs and the spiders will come live in her hair.
Works every time.

 

[firetender]

Without getting too far out there, consider this. "Standard medical procedure" is always changing, evolving, and in some cases devolving when we don't even know it. So many of these changes are determined by political and economic forces; You gotta wonder.

Back around the early 1900's there were a few competing "philosophies" of medical care, including Chiropractic, Osteopathic, Homeopathic and Allopathic. Chiropractic/Osteopathic deals with the nervous system, more specifically the spinal column and it's alignment and relationship to nerve pathways. Homeopathic deals with the body's own immune system. Allopathic modalities use drugs and surgery as intervention.

There were wars for domination. The AMA had superior organization, developed an advertising arm to attract more practitioners (the Journal of the AMA) and had tremendous financial backing through accepting that advertising from any Quack with a buck!

They won and then began what some people would consider vicious smear campaigns against their competitors. One example here from the AMA itself:

[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]JAMA. 1961;177(11):779. [/FONT](http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/summary/177/11/779)
[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]"Heretofore, in resolving problems concerning relations between doctors of medicine and doctors of osteopathy, the Judicial Council and the House of Delegates have maintained that osteopathy as promulgated and originally practiced was a cult system of healing."[/FONT]

That was an admission in 1961.

If you want to read how that system assaulted a series of cancer treatments that literally saved THOUSANDS of lives, check this out; it gives a great early history of the AMA and how it ascended.

Ausubel, Kenny (2000). When Healing Becomes a Crime. Rochester, Vermont: Healing Arts Press. p. 480 pages. ISBN 978-0892819256.

(Wikipedia, from today's vantage point, lists a litany of studies debunking the treatment. The book's real value is in showing how the AMA, at the time, suppressed any attempts at real study and literally hounded the opposition to death.)

If you listed the litany of "cures" that cured thousands, then were debunked, you'd fill up a Bible-sized book. So many things have been described as "placebo effect" but it doesn't matter, they worked. Perhaps the biggest variable that the scientific community is ignoring is the individual's belief system and connection with the individual providing the treatment. Scientifically this stuff doesn't work, but that doesn't stop a lot of it from working.

We are beings created from fuzzy thinking as well as scientific principles.

A significant number of therapies I used back in the 1980's in the field have been debunked. I've seen all the flak MAST gets here and you know what? I feel confident that it "helped" to stabilize blood pressure on people bleeding out. I can't verify that scientifically, but my patients were functionally dead when I got there and alive by the time they got to the hospital and it wasn't the IVs because I couldn't get anything larger than 20 gauge needles in due to vascular collapse. In one case, a young man with a traumatic leg amputation, negligible BP on arrival was trwsted with small bore IV and MAST, had a pressure of about 80/50 on arrival and the receiving orthopod ripped the trousers off the patient to see the wound. End of story for the kid and my rant.

 

[JPINFV]

Back around the early 1900's there were a few competing "philosophies" of medical care, including Chiropractic, Osteopathic, Homeopathic and Allopathic. Chiropractic/Osteopathic deals with the nervous system, more specifically the spinal column and it's alignment and relationship to nerve pathways.

Quick note of clarification, osteopathy deals with the interplay of the nerves, muscles, and skeletal system, not just the spinal column and spinal nerves, like chiropractors.

Also, just to put people in the right mind set when looking at different healing systems in the late 1800s, early 1900s, all were just as likely to kill you as to cure you. The medicine of today (heck, medicine post-Flexner report) can't be compared to the medicine back then.

 

[Shishkabob]

I think the biggest Medical Myth is perpetrated by Medic who like to think they are Doctors & can Diagnose & cure pre hospital

Um... you believe we CAN'T diagnose something pre-hospital?


You see a bone sticking out of a leg after a fall. Don't call it a fracture! That would be a diagnosis!

 

[firetender]

Quick note of clarification, osteopathy deals with the interplay of the nerves, muscles, and skeletal system, not just the spinal column and spinal nerves, like chiropractors.

Also, just to put people in the right mind set when looking at different healing systems in the late 1800s, early 1900s, all were just as likely to kill you as to cure you. The medicine of today (heck, medicine post-Flexner report) can't be compared to the medicine back then.

Thanks for the clarification!

Come the year 2100, I betcha a buck the same proportion that killed rather than cured will be in evidence with what is used today. Look at deaths IN HOSPITALS from pathogens transmitted within the facility. 100 years from now, will we even have hospitals?

 

[JPINFV]

That's probably very true, and I hope the commentators of the future show some understanding that we did the best with what we knew at the time, which was a hell of a lot less than what we will know a 100 years from now.

 

[Epi-do]

Eating Late


But after 6 or so hours your food has been absorbed, converting it into additional nutrients and fat, correct? And if you eat at night you ensure 8+ hours (if your lucky) of inactivity and because you have an overabundance of calories, won't it be stored? Therefore after breakfast you would need to burn your caloric breakfast intake in order to reach your dinner, which has become absorbed?

I'm not sure I could be convinced otherwise h34r:

I will agree 3400 calories equal approximately 1 pound of fat for what it is worth.

So all of the studies that say weight gain is caused by taking in more calories than you burn over the course of the day are wrong. Yes, I understand how the body stores excess calories. However, you won't convince me that the calories from a cookie at 8 am are significantly different than the calories from a cookie at 8 pm.

To use your example, if you are wanting to maintain weight, and not gain or loose, if you haven't taken in many calories during the course of the day, and have done some sort of strenuous activity, isn't it possible that your total calories for the day are "in the negative" (as in, you have burned more than you have consumed)? Therefore, if you eat a snack later in the evening, those calories would just help to "even things out" so to speak.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one.

 

[JPINFV]

I think a thing to look at with weight gain and eating also is appetite. Yea, a cookie isn't going to make a difference between 9am and 9pm. However, if you eat a large meal right before going to bed, then the period of feeling full is going to be mostly while you sleep instead of why you're awake. Unless you're starving (and when I say "starving," I mean like going 2 days without eating type starving), you shouldn't be constantly waking up in the middle of the night hungry. Sure, you will be in a fasting state when you wake up after a full nights sleep, but you don't wake up as your body enters the fasting state.

As such, eating right before you go to bed (again. meals, not snacks) won't change the basics of calories in vs calories out issue of weight gain, it could end up changing what your body preceives as meal time, thus affecting the calories in part of the equation.