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If you read in the dark, will you ruin your eyesight?
If you go swimming within a half hour of eating a meal, will you be stricken with cramps?
Those are just two of the issues that are addressed by Aaron Carroll and Rachel Vreeman, Indiana University Medical School doctors, who have written a pair of fascinating books that debunk common medical myths.
Their titles – Don’t Cross Your Eyes! and Don’t Swallow Your Gum! – are giveaways that they’ve decided to take on the kinds of things your grandmother used to tell you.
For example: Do kids become hyperactive when you give them sugar? Numerous studies have demonstrated that just isn’t true. Most parents find that impossible to believe. In one famous study, parents were told that one group of kids had been given a snack loaded with sugar, while another group had received a sugar-free snack. Which group of kids became more manic afterwards?
The parents overwhelmingly voted for the first group. What the parents didn’t know is that both groups of kids had been given a sugar-free snack. In other words, sugar=chaos is mostly something in the minds of Moms and Dads.
Then there’s the German scientist Emil von Wolff, who in 1870 declared that spinach is a super vegetable because it has 10 times the amount of iron found in other leafy plants. Without spinach, after all, Popeye would be little more than a slacker.
Unfortunately, when other scientists tried to reproduce Dr. von Wolff’s results, they discovered he had accidentally moved a decimal point. Thus he was off by a factor of 10. Despite the fact that you may have eaten mass quantities as a child, spinach is essentially identical to every other leafy green vegetable.
Somewhere right now, Bluto (and the Kale Producers Association) are very, very happy.
The word on the street is that if you swallow your gum, it will stay in your stomach for seven years. The truth is that chewing gum exits our bodies right on schedule in about 1-2 days.
Tryptophan-rich turkey puts people to sleep, right? “Turkey coma” is something we hear about every Thanksgiving. But it’s just a myth. You’d have to mainline a great deal of tryptophan just to become drowsy. Besides, there’s more tryptophan in pepperoni than turkey (something Pizza Hut is probably not intending to mention in their ads).
According to the Five Second Rule, if you drop something on the floor and pick it up within five seconds, you can still eat it without any concern. Seriously? Studies show that dropped food is instantaneously coated with whatever microbiological organisms are in the line of fire.
If you pray, God will hear your prayers and respond to them personally.
Yeah, right. That’s gotta be a myth. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true?
Actually, Carroll and Vreeman didn’t tackle this issue. But the Bible’s authors certainly did.
Consider Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Philippians 4:6-7: “Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”
Everyone would agree there’s no way to produce scientific confirmation of that statement.
What we do have, however, are centuries of personal testimonies that God is not only real, but intimately responsive to people who call on his name.
Would you be interested in helping to bust the myth of a silent or absent God?
God is open and enthusiastic about people finding out for themselves.
Which can only mean one thing: It’s your move.