Common Myth #1: Sugar-free foods are the healthier choice
While it is tempting to dash to the sugar-free food aisle to make ourselves feel better about what we eat, products often contain sugar disguised by another name. Many of the guilt-free alternatives, like the much touted agave nectar, are delivery systems for massive amounts of fructose, which is primarily handled by the liver; high levels of fructose stress the liver and when it is overworked, it converts excess fructose to fat. This could lead to fatty liver disease, and other metabolic disorders including obesity and diabetes. What’s worse, these so called healthier options actually have more fructose than the everyday sugar we were trying to avoid in the first place.
Common Myth #2: Multitasking is possible
Multitasking has been the buzzword for efficiency and yet another point of contention in the great male-female divide. But it turns out that no one is good at it. What we call multitasking is just rapidly jumping from one task to another. The more tasks we engage in, the less attention we devote to them, making each task blurry, pixelated and plain messy. So why do we take pleasure in multitasking? It’s because our brains reward distraction with a burst of feel-good chemicals. It’s exhilarating to see what else is new out there. But, what we don’t realize is that the brain is also simultaneously taking a beating in terms of cognitive performance from the sheer stress of juggling multiple tasks. This could also impair physical health along with mental acuity, thereby plummeting efficiency and making it a worthless zero-sum game in the end.
Common Myth #3: We use only 10% of our brains
Though our understanding of the human brain has grown tremendously, there is still a lot of unchartered territory. This is why common myths about brain function go around uncontested. Thankfully, we have proof that debunks the notion that most of the brain we carry around is junk. The brain is one of the major fuel guzzlers of the body; it represents 3% of the body’s weight, yet uses up 20% of the body’s energy output. Though different parts of the brain are active during different activities, brain scans show that no part remains completely inactive. So, when we are awake, most of our brain is hard at work, continuously processing external information and firing impulses to other neurons that make us perform conscious acts like writing an email as well as unconscious tasks like breathing. In fact, if we only used 10% of our brain, we would be no different than sheep in terms of intellectual capacity.
Common Myth #4: Eating carrots is a surefire way of improving your eyesight
No childhood story is complete without parents using eyeglasses as a threat to make sure we ate the last bit of carrot on the plate. At first glance, it seems believable too. Carrots are rich in vitamin A. Vitamin A is important for healthy eyes and skin. Therefore, carrots equal good vision. But studies have shown that the amount of vitamin A present in carrots is not nearly enough to have a notable effect on vision. Moreover, overdosing on this vitamin could actually be toxic. This myth was originally circulated by British intelligence to the German camps in WWII as a smokescreen to cover up their new technology that helped them detect German bombers at night.
What other common myths do you know?
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