Health Stories
Take responsibility for your own health
Health Stories are full of useful information about a particular health issue. You should keep up to date on the latest health stories but be wary of any pronouncements of governments and experts who give advice. As you may have seen from past experience health advice can conflict from one year to another so you must make sure you take in any information with a large dose of common sense.
Take for example breast feeding, governments have in the past given conflicting advice on whether it is beneficial for your baby and also have given plenty of changing advice on how to breast feed.
While you should use your own judgement and common sense you should also take any advice from medical experts seriously as the advice given is for your benefit.
2011 Strangest Health Stories
In 2011 some great progress was made in some research fields like stem cell research, while this was covered in the media there were also some more unusual studies that were released to the media which were quite sensational and not very accurate!
Here are some examples of the worst health stories this year which were just wrong!
Chocolate is as good as exercise.
Lots of newspapers featured a piece of research done in 25 mice where a chemical found in cocoa improved their muscular endurance, this result is far and away nothing near the claim that eating chocolate is exercise, but the newspapers implied it anyway!
Sweets are good for kids.
Research found that in a 24 hour study of children's diets that kids who ate sweets in a single day were less likely to be overweight, this is a conclusion based on a very small amount of information and it ignores all previous research information on the effect of sweets on kids.
Pylons cause asthma.
A research paper linked pylons to asthma in babies based on very limited research that looked at the health of children who had been exposed to different magnetic fields during pregnancy. There are plenty of other deciding factors for childhood asthma.
Saucepans can cause early menopause.
This claim was based on a limited study of chemicals called perfluorocarbons in drinking water. It suggested that household objects may be a health risk, the research did not prove that this can bring on the menopause!
Bear bile may help the heart.
Ursodeoxycholic acid can affect heart rhythm in heart cells extracted from rats, its currently unclear on how much this will help humans as it is in the early forms of research.
Quilting keeps you happy and healthy.
A survey of 29 women made this claim but did not do an objective measure of any aspect of their physical or mental health to support this theory.
Tangerines cure cancer
Genetically engineered mice were fed chemicals produced from tangerines resulting in the secretion of less bad fats from their livers, no humans were used in this study but it didn't stop claims that this could cure cancer in humans.
