Little-known medical facts/misconceptions
I've been really interested in health and medicine for a while now and I thought it would be good for us to have an EoFF thread on this. I've noticed there tends to be some half-truths, misconceptions, and misunderstandings about health and the human body both here and on the web at large so this thread is for posting and discussing facts tht might not be widely disseminated but could be really beneficial. Here's a few of mine:
- Full-sugar soda is known to cause large blood sugar spikes, which likewise results in a large insulin reaction from your pancreas. This actually increases your metabolism significantly due to all of the energy being burned by the insulin-sugar combustion cycle. Additionally, the caffeine from soda increases your heart rate, further increasing your metabolism. Mountain Dew is actually really overall beneficial to your health if used regularly as part of a well-rounded diet.
- Following that, it's said frequently that the rise of diabetes is a result of the modern lifestyle of too much of a high-carb/sugar diet. In truth, studies have shown that we're just a lot better at diagnosing diabetes, which people have from birth. Historically, lots of people may have had diabetes and just not known it due to the difficulty of properly diagnosing. The modern diet likely plays no part in the onset of diabetes and if you aren't diagnosed at a young age you probably won't get it.
- Potatoes are something of a superfood, containing a multitude of vitamins and minerals essential to your diet. However, most cooking processes totally destroy them - aside from flash-frying, which actually seals in the vitamins before the heat can touch it. Contrary to popular belief, french fries and other fried potato dishes should actually be a part of your standard diet rather than a guilty treat.
- Regular brushing and flossing of your teeth is prescribed as a standard practice these days, but recent research has shown that doing this actually kills colonies of GOOD bacteria that help keep your mouth healthy as well as aiding in the digestion of food. It's thought that a significant amount of modern stomach issues - heart burn, diarrhea, indigestion, acid reflux - are due to people not having enough good bacteria in their mouth. Additionally, killing the bacteria in your mouth reduces your ability to build immunities to the bad stuff, overall weakening your immune system and making you more susceptible to illness.
Those are just a few I've encountered that I thought should be more widely known, but feel free to discuss and contribute your own!
