There are lots of old wives’ tales, from “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” to “drink lemon water in the morning to detox/speed up your metabolism”, and plenty of others.
In this article, we’ll look at a number of them and examine which ones are true, and which ones are false.
Let’s start with the ol’…
Original source: here.
An Apple A Day Keeps the Doctor Away
This old wives’ tale is surprisingly accurate. The science actually backs it up. If you’ve read my books, you know that I’m critical of most nutrition research. Why? Because most of it can’t be applied to real life. The reasons for that are:
- Most nutrition research doesn’t actually study food. It studies isolated compounds in food. For instance, it studies omega 3 – not fish. It studies vitamin C – not oranges. But food is not just a compilation of isolated nutrients. Those nutrients interact with each other, and we can’t generalize from research on isolated nutrients to food. For instance, the vitamin C you find in oranges is more potent than isolated vitamin C (ascorbic acid), because there are other things in oranges (like hesperidin and bioflavonoids) that amplify the potency of vitamin C. So those 60 mg of vitamin C as ascorbic acid are not the same as 60 mg of vitamin C inside an actual orange.
- A lot of the research is done in mice, rats and petri dishes. You can’t apply that to humans.
Because I want to give you the best possible information, I’m only going to give you research on actual food – not just isolated components within food. I want you to have the crème de la crème of nutrition research.
Back to apples.
In one study, 44 overweight adults were divided into 2 groups:
- Group 1: ate 3 apples a day (200 grams)
- Group 2: didn’t.
After only 6 weeks, neither group lost weight, but group 1 reduced one inflammatory marker (hsCRP) by 17% and another inflammatory marker (IL-6) by 12.4%. Group 2 had no reductions.
I want to emphasize that this is without removing anything from the diet. They didn’t remove junk food, fast food or sugar. They just added apples.
In another dynamite study, 250 adults with slightly elevated cholesterol levels were divided into 5 different groups:
- Group 1: 1 Red Delicious apple per day
- Group 2: 1 Granny Smith apple per day
- Group 3: 1 Fuji apple per day
- Group 4: 1 Golden Delicious apple per day
- Group 5: 2 Annurca apples per day (since they’re about half the size of the others)
After 4 months, the first 4 groups had no changes in their cholesterol levels, but group 5 reduced their LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) by 14.5%, with no other dietary changes.
In a third study, 30 participants were divided into 2 groups:
- Group 1: apples with skin
- Group 2: apples without skin
After 4 weeks, the participants switched. Those that were in group 1 ate apples without skin in the second 4-week period, and vice versa.
What researchers found was apples with skin improved a measurement of heart health called “flow mediated dilation” (or FMD). This is a measurement of how well blood vessels can widen when more blood flows through them. When blood vessels are able to widen to accommodate more blood flow, that’s good. When they don’t widen, it means the walls of the arteries are stiff – a risk factor for heart disease. Apples improved this measurement by 0.8%. To put that number into context, it means that the risk of heart disease was reduced by 6-10%.
So this old wives’ tale does indeed appear to be true. An apple a day does seem to keep the doctor away.
Drink Lemon Water in the Morning to Detox
To this, I simply have to say hahahahahahahahahaha. First of all, when most people talk about detox, they have no clue what they’re talking about. When you press them on “detox from what?”, they’ll give the generic answer of “toxins.” When you ask “which toxins?”, you get a deer-in-the-headlights look. Like they were just following a script, without analyzing the words that are coming out of their mouth.
While real, scientific detox deserves an article of its own (or maybe even a book), here’s the crash course:
- In medical terms, detox means that someone has acute poisoning from something, whether it’s mercury, alcohol, opioids, prescription meds, etc.
- There are different toxins:
- Heavy metals (like mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, etc.)
- Plastics (like phthalates and parabens)
- Pesticides and herbicides
Does lemon water help with any of those? Nope.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t drink lemon water. You should drink lemon water if you like the taste of lemon water. But for God’s sakes, stop uttering complete BS (you can tell I’m in a pretty good mood when writing this article ).
Drink Lemon Water to Speed Up Your Metabolism
While we’re on a lemon water kick, let’s keep going. So it doesn’t help you detox, but does it speed up your metabolism? My answer to that is the same as my answer to whether lemon water helps with detox: Haha. Haha. Haha. Haha. Haha (that’s the more polite version of “hahahahahahahahaha” – just so we’re all on the same page in regard to terminology).
Again, most people talking about metabolism have no clue what they’re talking about. They might give a vague definition like “how many calories you burn”, but that’s basically the extent of their knowledge. The real definition of metabolism is the speed of chemical reactions in the body.
For instance, if you drink coffee, how long does it take your body to get the caffeine out of your bloodstream? If you take Tylenol, how long does your liver take to process it? You might get caffeine out of your bloodstream quickly, but not Tylenol. Or vice versa.
But let’s go back to metabolism as far as calorie burning goes. There are really only 2 ways to increase your metabolism:
- If you have a slow thyroid, fix it (if your thyroid is not slow, there’s not much to do there).
- Build some muscle.
Lemon water does not fix slow thyroids or build muscle. So it’s kind of a dud for metabolism as well. Again, if you like the taste of lemon water, drink it. But drink it without telling anybody proudly that you drink lemon water, and it has all these health benefits (it doesn’t). It just tastes good (to you). That’s it.
Drink 8 Glasses of Water Per Day
Since we’re on the topic of water, let’s look at this old wives’ tale. Is this one true or not? Well, without even looking at research, let’s just use logic. There are adults as small as 95-100 pounds – and others that are on the show “My 600-Pound Life.” Do you think that people as light as 100 pounds need the same amount of water as people who are 600 pounds? Nope.
Some people exercise, and others don’t. Do you think that people who exercise (and presumably, work hard enough to sweat) need the same amount as people who don’t? Some people take diuretics for their blood pressure (or other heart issues), and it causes them to lose water. Do you think they need the same amount of water as people who aren’t on diuretics? Some people are construction workers, and they’re moving 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Do you think they need the same amount of water as a computer programmer or accountant, who’s seated at a desk both at work, and outside of work? Nope.
Yes, there’s no question that it’s important to be well-hydrated. That, we can all agree on. But the amount of fluid (not just water) that it takes to properly hydrate varies so widely person-to-person, that pretty much the only broad guideline I can give is a boring, common-sense one: drink when thirsty.
I elaborate on this in much greater detail in my article on water-drinking myths.
Cracking Your Knuckles Gives You Arthritis
Funny how after I wrote that sentence, I instinctively cracked my knuckles. It feels so good. But am I putting myself at risk for arthritis? Nope.
I get where this comes from. There’s an audible crack. Some think this crack is the grinding of 2 bones against each other, and that wears away the cartilage. But that’s not the case.
One study compared regular knuckle crackers with people who don’t crack their knuckles at all. They found no relationship between knuckle cracking and osteoarthritis. It didn’t matter if they were cracking their knuckles every hour for decades. The prevalence of osteoarthritis was nearly identical in both groups.
This isn’t exactly new knowledge, either. There’s a study going back as far as 1975 that shows no relationship between knuckle cracking and arthritis. Yet, despite evidence to the contrary, this old wives’ tale just won’t die.
Celery Has Negative Calories
Ah, the legend of negative calories. The premise sounds good – “certain foods require more calories to burn them than to eat them. So when you eat those foods, you’re actually losing calories.” But that’s just not true.
There’s not a single study to back it up, and plenty of studies to refute it.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t eat celery, broccoli or cabbage. You absolutely should. But not because they have negative calories.
Cod Liver Oil Gives You Strength
Cod liver oil is an old-time supplement, believed to be healthy. And indeed it is. Cod liver oil has a couple of benefits:
- It’s moderately rich in omega 3 (not as rich as regular fish oil, which comes from things like sardines and mackerel).
- It’s a good source of vitamins A and D (regular fish oil is not).
That makes it decent for things like heart health and brain health. Not uniquely so (there are plenty of other things that are good for heart health and brain health), but still good.
However, the real question isn’t “is cod liver beneficial?” (it is). The real question is whether it makes you strong.
And the answer to that is a definite “no.” Correcting vitamin D deficiencies makes you less weak. Not exactly strong. Just less weak. And that’s not the case for taking vitamin D for maintenance (when you don’t have a deficiency). But that’s vitamin D. Not cod liver oil.
From a nutritional perspective, the only thing that makes you strong is protein (and vitamin S – steroids it sure worked for Ben Johnson and Vera De Milo. Don’t know who Vera De Milo is? You have to check out this short video). But even that can’t truly be said to make you strong. It’s just what has the most potent effect compared to other food. But the effect of protein on strength pales in comparison to well… strength training. Not surprising.
