Wait. We knew all this already

[elfs]

So, there's this article buzzing around the Internet: "Seven Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe," or some such. The "myths" they list are:

• People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
• We use only 10% of our brains
• Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
• Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, or coarser
• Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
• Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
• Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals.

The oddest thing about this article is that I thought we already knew all of these. Haven't articles like this been floating around the medical literature for years? Maybe not all collected in one place, but I know I saw an article about how the "64oz of fluids a day requirement" got translated into the "8 glasses a day myth" last year, and the bit about there not being enough tryptophan in turkey to cause drowsiness is a decade old, at least. Articles pointing out that there's no clinical evidence associating reading in dim light with long-term vision problems have been around at least since 2003.

I'm just surprised to see it all coming out so quickly; fully eight percent of my "You must read this" RSS feed was that one article, or some report on that article. It's just weird.

Comments

[katybeth]

I don't think the bad habit comes solely from older cell phones. If I'm in a noisy environment when I make my call, I can't hear the person on the other end as well because of background noise on my end, so my natural tendency is to raise my voice so that they can hear me better, too. I realize that noise on my end doesn't affect them, and they can hear me just fine even if I talk so quietly I can barely hear myself, but it takes a conscious effort to keep my voice low. I try to keep my cell phone calls in public short and quiet, and use text when possible.

I have witnessed courteous quiet cell phone calls. I've had the person on the bus seat next to me make a call so quietly that I couldn't overhear his conversation. Probably many such calls are made but we don't notice them as much because they are quiet and unobtrusive.

Two people talking loudly on the bus are almost as annoying as one person talking loudly on a cell phone, yes. I don't see that as often, though.