Written by two American doctors, Dr Aaron Carroll and Rachel Vreeman, the book, aims to debunk some of the common held myths about your health.
According to the book’s blurb, it aims to take “on these myths and misconceptions, and exposes the truth behind some of those weird and worrisome things we think about our bodies”.
Dr Carroll is pediatrics professor at Indiana University School of Medicine, and Dr Vreeman, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the school.
Here are some of the best examples from the book.
• Eating at night makes you fat. People gain weight when they eat far more calories than they burn. Eating more than three times a day, has been linked to being overweight or obese. The authors say it is how much one eats, not when you eat it.
• You need to drink eight glasses of water a day. The recommended amount of fluid every day is also including in food, such as fruits and vegetables, as well as in coffee and soft drink
• Chewing gum stays in your stomach for seven years. The authors say gum is actually indigestible. But the body handles matter it can’t digest, by passing it through the body and into a toilet.
• Men with big feet have big penises. A study of 3,100 men has concluded there is no relationship between the size of a man’s shoes and the size of his manhood.
• Men think about sex every seven seconds: Assuming that a male is awake for 16 hours a day, every man would therefore think about sex more than 57,000 times in 24 hours, making other tasks near impossible.
• Reading in dim light will ruin your eyesight. The authors say no evidence of this exists, and while they say it is true eye strain can occur in dim light, causing some “temporarily decreased acuity”, the eyes actually return to their full potential after rest.
• Flu shots can cause the flu. The authors claim this is just a “lie”. Such jabs use a dead virus to protect you from influenza and dead viruses cannot make you ill.
• You swallow eight spiders a year. They claim that even people rolling around in their sleep would deter spiders from getting too close while many just don’t sleep with their mouth open.