Every once in a while you will come to hear of some new health related “fact”, which on closer inspection turns out to be a myth. Let’s take a look at five such health myths.
1. Only women take up crash diets
Of late men have become the target of health trends. They seem to follow the latest trends in health and are generally taking better care of themselves than did their father and brothers before them.
In their search for the perfect six pack and biceps you are sure to find a few good men resorting to crash diets days before an important even in their lives, for instance before their wedding; all in the quest to look and feel good. So crash diets are no longer the domain of women, men have jumped onto the bandwagon of crash diets too.
2. Heart disease affects mostly men
While this may have been true a few decades ago, this no longer hold true today. Women now compete with men for the same jobs and are under the same kind of work pressure and stress as their male colleagues. This puts them at the same risk of heart disease. With less time on hand, they are also not eating the right kind of food. Their junk food intake has increased which puts them at the same health risks that men suffer.
3. Eating at night will make you fat
This one seems to have come up after Oprah stated that she benefited from a diet which restricted her eating to before 7:30 PM. While this may have worked for her, it does not imply that if you eat after a certain time it would cause you to become fat.
Eating after a certain time may not be very healthy especially if you are going to eat a huge helping of food and then crash into bed. This could have adverse effects on your health and lead to problems like heart burn and acidity. It is therefore advisable to eat so that you still have a little room left in your tummy. You should ideally sit up for the food to digest, but if you cannot manage to do that. Try to sleep after at least one hour of eating allowing enough time for the digestion to begin.
4. Men don’t use health services as women do
This is not strictly true, for one simple reason that there are certain health services that only women will access. For instance pregnancy tests, Pap smear test, and ante-natal checkup. If these strictly female-oriented health services are subtracted from other health services, it will be observed that both men and women use the same amount of health services.
5. Taking health supplements can improve your health
While health supplements do contribute to your health, you can’t expect to use them like magic pills.
The best way to get vitamins is through food, not vitamin pills. The main reason for this is that when you consume vegetables that contain vitamins, you also consume the phytochemicals that are part of the plant nutrients. These protect you from diseases like cancer. Research also suggests that when nutrients are received only thorough vitamin supplements their effect is not as good as when consuming them from vegetables.