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Medical myths
contents
- The healthy nature
- The healing arts of the Middle Ages were superior to modern medicine
- We use only ten percent of our brain
- Drugs are more dangerous than alcohol
- Alcohol warms
- wisdom teeth
- The iron bomb spinach
- Disinfect hands?
- Drink three liters of water a day?
- Cold causes cold
- Fresh vegetables are healthier than frozen ones
- Raw vegetables are healthier than cooked ones
- Purify once a year?
- Early sleep is healthy?
- Who eats at night, gets fat?
- Sport burns calories?
- Carbohydrates make you fat?
- Testosterone makes you aggressive
- Cholesterol is poison
- Pulling up on the nose is harmful
- Fingernails and hair continue to grow after death
- Literature:
Today, few people believe that mistletoe helps against epilepsy because it does not fall off the tree and therefore the "epileptic" also stops, and we think it's ridiculous for Chinese people to believe that eating turtles increases potency, because her wrinkled head with the round head, which she raises and reminds of the erection of the penis.
But many false ideas persist, sometimes even among doctors, and new urban fairytales come along.
The healthy nature
In naturopathy, there is sometimes a notion that naturally means healthy, and artificially unhealthy. Organic and inorganic nature is by no means only remedies. Tuberous mushrooms are just as natural as sage tea; The rabies virus is as much a part of nature as the venom of the rattlesnake.
There are many medical myths that persist. Image: Thomas Reimer - fotolia Living things use countless methods to defend themselves against predators or prey, and millions of toxins are a successful method of survival. Nature can heal us as well as kill us.
The healing arts of the Middle Ages were superior to modern medicine
Among esotericists and sometimes even among reputable naturopaths, there is often a romantic idea of a Middle Ages, in which wise women and men with the knowledge of the healing power of nature heal diseases to which "conventional medicine" stands helpless.
If people criticize the promises of the pharmaceutical industry and reject the anonymity of today's major clinics, that is all too understandable. Naturopathy can be an accessible as well as traditional correction to the "gods in white".
Unfortunately, many critics of the "medical apparatus" myths about the Middle Ages are completely uncritical and ignore the findings of historiography. The life expectancy in today's Germany was in the high Middle Ages namely half as high as today, or even lower.
Starvation and wars did their part; however, the main causes were the catastrophic hygienic conditions, the false interpretations of diseases and the wrong methods of treating them.
This does not mean that there were no capable doctors and herbalists, and certain curious practices made sense. Doctors treated open wounds with sheep feces, whose mold is similar to penicillin.
But for example, viruses and bacteria were unknown, mental disorders were demon possessions, and analogy led to therapies that were useless at best.
If forgotten medicinal herbs are rediscovered today, that's a good thing. Unfortunately, even the wrong methods as "alternative to conventional medicine" find their followers again.
We use only ten percent of our brain
No medical myth is so prevalent that we use only 10% of our brains, usually associated with deceitful promises to drag the "silent reserve" of those who fall into the trap into the darkness.
In social networks, this fairytale is often quoted as a quote by Albert Einstein, who never said so.
For anyone who has been short on life, or at least feels that way, the "unused brain" docks on the desire to achieve anything if, yes, if the real potential were only activated.
Neurobiology refutes the myth of the unused brain: Magnetic resonance imaging reveals that every part of the brain is active and that the brain works in sleep as well. Everything else biologically would hardly be possible, because evolution can not give away anything.
The human brain is an extremely developed organ, similar to the giraffe's neck. It consumes much of the energy that we put into the body. To be sure, living things sometimes retain rudiments of organs that no longer have meaning, such as the appendix or flightless birds the useless wings - but the jaw bones did not recede, and the skull did not expand to accommodate a brain that did not is being used. In short, if we only used 10% of our brain, the other 90% would not have developed.
The "unused brain" is a biologized version of neo-liberal propaganda, according to which anyone who "really wants it" could achieve anything, regardless of social and social conditions.
This propaganda is particularly effective if every link with society is ignored, and the unused biology is responsible: therefore, anyone who suffers from living from Hartz IV and can not buy presents for Christmas at Christmas does not use 90% of his brain.
The fairy tale of the unused 90%, however, does not mean to renounce brain training - on the contrary. If we engage our brains with advertising promises, addiction to status symbols, or fears suggested, then they lack the energy to make sense.
So our brain can be cleared away psychologically by throwing useless things away, separating ourselves from acquaintances who rob our energy, learning to say "no" when we say "no", or by not wasting our workforce by underspired overtime.
Instead of a "dormant potential," our brain develops patterns that it resorts to. It does not distinguish between real or fictitious experiences nor between useful and harmful habits. On the contrary, our unconscious mind works extremely conservatively, meaning it saves energy. Habitual patterns call it, no matter if they do us good or not.
That's probably where the wrong idea comes from, that we would not use the mass of our brain. Our consciousness recognizes that we could do much more with our lives, and it refuses, for example, to accept the impositions of the boss.
But if the unconscious mind has adjusted to it, we continue to do things that we consciously reject and hate ourselves for it.
In addition: Whoever does the same, stays in the same place, sticks to traditional structures of life, not only has the right not to use his potential, he also gives the brain no possibility to do so.
Namely, the brain can and must learn new patterns, and we can consciously control them, even in simple activities: we can take a different route to work instead of using the bicycle instead of having to watch TV, read a book, or in the evening Nature walks, dealing with a subject of which we have no idea, visit museums or travel.
All of this literally brings us to other thoughts, meaning that the synapses build up new patterns, which we then resort to later.
The unused brain, on the other hand, suggests that we could have everything and achieve everything if we tap into this resource. That's not true: even "super-thinkers" have no infinite resources, but they have learned to use their resources effectively.
Obama has only gray jackets in his closet to keep his brain occupied with what he puts on and more important things to do, and Churchill was notorious for not making phone calls before noon. Although Einstein did not spread the fable of the largely unused brain, but was known that he also came on official occasions with the same old sweater; he, too, was thinking about things other than his wardrobe.
So it's not about activating the "sleeping" brain, but meaningfully using the constant work of our "think tank". For example, by not running after suggestions like the alleged unused 90%, and thus stuffing our brains with futility.
Drugs are more dangerous than alcohol
The late political scientist Ingolf Ahlers said: "In capitalism, every drug is a commodity, and every commodity a drug," and the critical ethnology adds, "every war against a drug is a war of one culture against another.".
Separating alcohol from illicit drugs such as cannabis, cocaine or heroin is part of the cultural history of Europe, where alcohol is a drug. With the real danger, from physical dependence to harmful behavior to a shortened life expectancy and substance-related diseases, this separation has nothing to do.
If we put the same bar on alcohol as on illegal substances, then alcohol is a hard drug; The illegal cannabis products harm the organism to a much lesser extent.
Alcohol addiction is the third leading cause of death in the EU. Alcoholism destroys social relationships, causes financial problems, even ruin and has massive physical consequences: The alcoholism destroys the liver and kidneys, is responsible for severe heart disease, is associated with malnutrition and plays both in psychosomatic and mental disorders.
Mental disorders that trigger alcoholism include memory loss, depression, baseless aggression, loss of control, mood extremes that resemble bipolarity, delusions such as paranoid schizophrenia, listlessness, and suicidal thoughts.
The alcoholic usually knows about the catastrophic effects of alcohol, but is compelled to add alcohol to his body.
Cannabis products, on the other hand, do not have such catastrophic consequences. Although permanent consumers may become psychically addicted to hashish, episodes may include listlessness, indifference, and rarely paranoia.
However, cannabis does not have the physical consequences of alcoholism, even though joints made in cigarette tobacco contain a large amount of toxins and thus promote lung cancer.
Even morphine-infested morphine, such as morphine and heroin, is considered to cause less harm to the body than alcoholism, taken alone. All morphines quickly lead to physical dependence, but the physical deterioration of the user is due to the concomitants of addiction, not the substance: contaminated syringes lead to hepatitis and destroy the liver, due to malnutrition the body does not get the necessary vitamins, minerals and nutrients, Misery prostitution, crime and jail traumatize the sick.
Physical dependency not only characterizes morphine, but also alcoholism; Alcohol is no less dangerous than substances that fall under the Narcotics Act.
Alcohol warms
A mulled wine at the Christmas market, tea with rum while fishing? That alcohol from the inside warms, belongs to the custom. In fact, it just feels that way, because that feeling is deceptive.
Alcohol "warms" us mentally by bringing us pleasant moods, so we also perceive less coldness. But in fact, not only does not alcohol warm, it cools the body; Alcohol extends the blood vessels of the skin.
As we feel warmer, we are actually losing body heat. This misperception can have fatal consequences. Thus a little girl became a half-orphan because her father had drunk too much of his thirst at the village's shooting fair.
Homeless people die again and again because they do not feel the cold at first due to the excessive consumption of alcohol. Image: Thomas Reimer - fotolia It was the end of April, and there was still frost at night. Obviously the father had forgotten the key and slumbered in the doorway with a warm feeling in his stomach. There his mother found him in the morning; the diagnosis was: he died of hypothermia.
So if you really want to warm up, you should drink non-alcoholic hot drinks at the Christmas market, hot tea or non-alcoholic punch is a good choice. If it is still seasoned with ginger, chili or cinnamon, so much the better, because these spices promote blood circulation and the body stores real heat rather than just to feel.
wisdom teeth
Wisdom teeth have a bad reputation, and the rumor persists, they should be removed prophylactically. However, when wisdom teeth are healthy, there are as few reasons to pull them as with other teeth. Even more: In rare cases, pulling the lower wisdom teeth causes the nerves in the tongue to remain disturbed.
The iron bomb spinach
Those who suffer from iron deficiency, should eat spinach - this myth has lasted for over a hundred years. In 1890, Gustav von Bunge, a doctor, studied spinach and found 35 milligrams of iron per 100 grams of vegetables, a quantity many times greater than that of other vegetables.
The doctor had measured correctly, but he referred to dried spinach - the powder from which we mix smoothies today. It contains ten times as much iron as fresh spinach.
The comic-muscle man Popeye popularized this myth: he eats spinach in bulk, whereupon his muscles swell.
Although spinach is healthy because of its vitamins, minerals and protein, the body can not even use the excess iron.
Disinfect hands?
Germs seem to be omnipresent, so worried voices advise not to wash their hands with soap after using the toilet, but to use disinfectants. This is not only unnecessary but harmful.
Firstly, disinfectants dry out the skin, secondly they make it tabula rasa: they kill not only the germs but also all other bacteria and thus harm the skin while protecting itself.
Drink three liters of water a day?
The body needs water, otherwise we will die of thirst. Not only that, long before we suffer from headaches, we get tired, feel uncomfortable and spread bad mood, we feel dizzy. A glass of water in between is also good to lose weight, because often the cravings actually a thirst.
But do we all drink too little and drink at least three liters a day? Older people often forget to drink, as do those who suffer from nervous and metabolic disorders: they no longer feel that information is thirsty.
But if you have a healthy organism, the body tells you if it needs water: we get thirsty. Then we should drink something, so much that we are not thirsty anymore.
Cold causes cold
When the cold, the myth is already in the name, because in itself it should be called "mucosal inflammation". It is a viral infection. It is true that we get these infections especially when it is cold and humid. This is because a northern German February weather weakens the immune system and we are therefore more susceptible to the virus.
The myth seems to be confirmed by the cold feet associated with a cold, and we think we need to wear thick socks so as not to "catch a cold". But the cold feet are in fact already a symptom of the virus infection.
Fresh vegetables are healthier than frozen ones
In general, we should prefer freshly prepared food to finished products because the finished products go through many processes, lose nutrients and contain additives that are neither nutritious nor very healthy. In particular, many finished products have a much too high content of salt and sugar.
This does not apply to fresh frozen vegetables without seasoning. When frozen with modern methods, it stays fresher in the freezer than the "fresh vegetables", which, by the time it reaches the market counter, are much older than the frozen food at the time of freezing.
Raw vegetables are healthier than cooked ones
This rule sounds logical because vitamins are lost during cooking. That's true, but we can not digest all the vitamins in raw food. Vitamins E, D, K and A are only soluble by fat.
Especially carrots go through the intestine without effect, if we take them raw. They serve at most as fiber. We eat carrots best, if we simmer with a little oil, do not overcook. Thus, the vitamins are retained, but are available to the body in dissolved form.
Purify once a year?
Do we have to cleanse the body internally every year, with special cures and diets, laxatives and herbal tea? If our metabolism, our kidneys, livers and intestines work, not. Because the task of these organs is, among other things, to cleanse the body.
Purify once a year? Picture: Johanna Mühlbauer - fotolia Fasting, drinking vegetable broth and relaxing once a year, relieves stress, helps to focus on the essentials and thus has a positive effect. But to "cleanse" a healthy body, it is pointless.
It looks different with intestinal problems, diseases of the liver or kidney damage. Then a special diet is not only helpful but necessary. A medical diagnosis and an exact knowledge of the disease are at the beginning.
Early sleep is healthy?
Not only does one abstain from alcohol, cigarettes and fatty food, but also go to bed early and get up early. Some decades ago church attendance on Sunday morning would have rounded off the way of life.
The myth that sleep before midnight is healthier than later probably developed in the Protestant ethic: anyone who went to bed late and therefore stayed in bed in the morning was considered a lazybones, and since worship meant work for Luther and Calvin, such was Idleness of all vice beginning.
What's more, the night belonged to the "dark figures," who, when "all cats are gray," pursued their dark desires. So it was a moral judgment of a way of life.
Even in the early modern period, however, most people were unfamiliar with the night as a mere bedtime. Farmers got up in the middle of the night, worked a few hours and then went to bed again; Hunters and gatherers go out hunting at night, as they do during the day, unless they have good reasons to avoid the dark, for example because of lions. Even then, they sit together for hours at night and tell each other stories.
The modern sleep research recognizes has no connection between the time of going to bed and the health of sleep. The decisive factor is the regularity and duration of sleep.
Anyone who goes to bed every night around 2:00 am and then sleeps until 9:00 am will regenerate just like someone who generally falls asleep at 8:00 pm and wakes up at 4:00 am.
Essential for the sleep rhythm are the phases from drowsiness to the Rapid Eye Movement, in which the dramas of our symbolic dreams run, and so we train for everyday life.
But if these phases are disturbed chronically, through constant interruptions or insomnia, then we actually lose our mental and physical stability.
Changing early, late and night shifts quickly lead to chronic fatigue, because the body has problems getting used to the changing sleep periods.
Pure night shifts can only affect well-being to the extent that they lead to a lack of sunlight, which in turn causes depression. With the time of falling asleep, these negative feelings have nothing to do.
Who eats at night, gets fat?
A folk wisdom to lose weight is eating at night, which is often associated with the rule: have plenty of breakfast in the morning, eat a little less at lunch, have an early and light meal, and preferably go to bed with an empty stomach.
A Swedish study seemed to prove this: Obese women ate more at night than normal weight. However, this study lacked important parameters: it did not examine what these women did during the day and at night, nor did it elucidate what and how much the overweight women otherwise ate.
Maybe they ate more, more, more fat, carbohydrate and sugar, and they did not move enough.
In general, when the body gets more energy and stores it than it consumes, people use fat. So if you hit your stomach with fat, sugar-rich food at night and then fall directly into bed, it increases. However, anyone who gets his stomach full with such food in the morning and then lies around in bed also increases.
However, anyone who drags stones in the night shift after a late meal or dances their hoes at the club probably does not gain as much weight as one who goes for a long run after a sumptuous breakfast.
Sport burns calories?
Sport makes you slim, everyone knows that, and those who want to lose weight often make the effort to cycle, jog, or otherwise occupy their body after meals.
Sport helps to lose weight, but not by directly consuming the calories accumulated during the meal. 1 to 1, we would have to run for a light meal with rolls, ham and sweetened coffee several kilometers to get rid of them.
To permanently reduce his weight, only helps to change his diet just as durable. The same applies to sport: only regular exercise promotes weight loss, but even during sleep.
Sport itself burns little calories compared to those we absorb. Nevertheless, regular exercise drives a diet: muscles consume up to three times as much energy, that is, calories, than fat.
So when we exercise our muscles through exercise, we burn more calories, even at rest: even when we sleep, the muscles need the energy. Anyone who is well-trained can therefore eat more than someone who suffers from over-fatigue without gaining weight.
The decathlete Thorsten, for example, eats at least six sandwiches every morning so that he gets the energy his muscles need.
Carbohydrates make you fat?
Lifestyle magazines are turning over with new diets. That fat makes fat, is a commonplace - for years, however, are also the carbohydrates as suspects in the rifle scope of the substances that there is absolutely to avoid.
If you want to lose weight, you should not consume any carbohydrates in the evening, and then none at all. It is true that the people in the industrialized countries consume too much sugar, which is currently contained in high-volume finished products.
Wrong is that carbohydrates generally harm. On the contrary: carbohydrates, fats and protein are the three key elements that the organism needs. The carbohydrates are to a certain extent the gasoline without which the engine is not running; we need the energy from the carbohydrates to be able to do any physical work; some professional athletes eat pasta in huge quantities before competitions.
When carbohydrates start, it's because the body can not put them to work. This applies on the one hand to simple carbohydrates, that is, above all to white flour and sugar, and on the other hand, if we do not exert ourselves physically and mentally.
First of all, the body must be able to process the energy of the carbohydrates in order to process it. This works best with complex carbohydrates, for example in wholegrain bread. Here, the organism needs about a day to be available to him and then he can use it for physical activities. Simple carbohydrates, however, settle immediately and are stored.
Second, the human must consume the energy of the "fuel", otherwise it remains in the tank, say in the body memory. Also for complex carbohydrates then applies: If I eat whole-grain bread all day, but dozing only on the sofa, I will not take off.
Testosterone makes you aggressive
Young men are more involved in violent crime than old women. They are killed by risky car rides, beat themselves at village festivals and end up in the hospital after alcohol excesses.
Aggressive by too much testosterone? Picture: klickerminth - fotolia Every kitchen psychologist knows why: "There you can do nothing, they are testosterone-controlled." It is true that the sex hormone testosterone is ten times more common in men than in women.
But so far there is no scientific evidence that testosterone and aggressiveness hang together.
Cholesterol is poison
In the US, the label "No Cholesterol" as evidence of healthy food as in this country, organic certificates, and in Germany, cholesterol is considered harmful. This is a half-truth.
The human body produces cholesterol itself and transports it with proteins, especially HDL and LDL. Not only does the body need HDL, the more it has, the better. Studies have shown that too much LDL promotes cardiovascular disease.
Butter and eggs were henceforth on the list of dangerous foods.
But new studies show that the relationship between LDL cholesterol and heart disease is not clear, and in any case much weaker than expected.
Pulling up on the nose is harmful
In society, we should better not pull up the nose and then spit on the floor, which is not welcome. But is it healthier to snort into a handkerchief??
Doctors doubt that pulling up the nose damages the health. If the Verschnupfte tidy pulls up, it creates a negative pressure in the nose and pulls so the mucus even from the paranasal sinuses. Slime can even be swallowed, and gastric acid destroys germs.
Fingernails and hair continue to grow after death
What was a proof of the existence of vampires for our ancestors, can not be killed in modern times. Corpses apparently continue to grow their nails and hair after death. Open graves reveal dead with claw-like nails.
In fact, nothing grows after death. The meat decomposes faster than nails and hair, so that the nails protrude from the skin and bones. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Literature:
Nancy L. Snyderman: Medical Myths that can kill you: And the 101 truths that will save, extend and improve your life. 2009.