‘20/20’ Busts 10 Body Myths

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Alvin from Life Coach­es Blog linked to this great arti­cle: ‘20/20’ Busts 10 Body Myths.

The myths include:

  1. Mem­o­ry Loss Is Inevitable
  2. Slow Metab­o­lism Makes You Fatter
  3. Can Heart­burn Lead to Cancer?
  4. Men Can Drink More Alco­hol Than Women
  5. Mar­i­jua­na Gives You the Munchies
  6. A High SPF Will Ful­ly Pro­tect You from Skin Cancer
  7. Noth­ing Will Age You Faster Than the Sun
  8. Super­fit = Superhealthy
  9. Cho­les­terol Is the Major Cause of Heart Disease
  10. There’s a Wrong Way to Breathe


Of course, the first myth inter­est­ed me the most, and here is an excerpt:

“Just like you chal­lenge a mus­cle to grow it, well, the brain gets new con­nec­tions,” said Dr. Roizen.

And that busts anoth­er big brain myth — that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Mem­o­ry loss is not inevitable. Want to keep your brain young? Exer­cise it.

Try learn­ing to play a musi­cal instru­ment, doing cross­word puz­zles, learn­ing a lan­guage — even play­ing com­put­er games.

“The data now indi­cate that an hour of games for 40 weeks can make your brain equiv­a­lent, your brain’s real age, 10 years younger,” Roizen said.

And one final brain myth: Does the size of a per­son­’s brain have any­thing to do with their intel­lec­tu­al capacity?

“There is no cor­re­la­tion with the size of a human brain and its intel­lect. In fact, Ein­stein was sort of a famous exam­ple. His brain was about aver­age size — no dif­fer­ence between his and almost any oth­er brain,” Oz said.

But also inter­est­ing to me was that most of the answers came down to 1) reduce stress, 2) eat well (more fruits & veg­gies than any­thing else), and 3) exer­cise reg­u­lar­ly (aer­o­bic exer­cise at least 3 times a week for 20–30 min­utes, at a min­i­mum). These are also three of the four pil­lars we keep talk­ing about for how to main­tain a healthy brain. The last pil­lar is 4) men­tal stim­u­la­tion, which is cov­ered in the first myth. Check out sev­er­al brain fit­ness solu­tions here. And don’t for­get, that while play­ing an instru­ment, doing cross­word puz­zles, and learn­ing a lan­guage are all good, it’s not enough. You need a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent types of stim­uli to chal­lenge mul­ti­ple men­tal mus­cles over time.

The ABC News ‘20/20’ arti­cle was based on infor­ma­tion from the book by Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz: YOU: The Own­er’s Man­u­al: An Insid­er’s Guide to the Body that Will Make You Health­i­er and Younger.