I remember when I was a kid I had this one friend who used to always crack her knuckles. And every time she did, someone would without fail say to her, “if you keep doing that, you’re going to get arthritis!” I was grateful for their cautioning, because quite frankly, the sound annoys me, but then, whenever I’d pop a knuckle or joint by accident I’d seize up with fear that I too would develop arthritis.

 All I knew at that age was that judging by my grandmother’s gnarled fingers, arthritis was not something I wanted to get. But then a wonderful thing happened:  the theory was dispelled. While the exact cause of arthritis is unknown, it is held by most experts that it is from an auto-immune disease that attacks healthy blood cells, causing them to release chemicals into the blood stream that in turn damage the joints. The only thing joint cracking causes are maybe a few shudders, and many a career in chiropraction.

“Bundle up or you’ll catch your death a cold!” Sound familiar? If your mom was anything like mine, it probably does. But is it true? Can you really catch a cold just by being cold?

Though it is widely debated, most scientists think not. After all, a “cold” is caused by a virus- not by the temperature outside. So what could have caused this theory? Well, a few things. First, when do we usually get sick? In the winter, of course. And the winter is usually pretty cold in most areas of the world. But another thing we often forget is that in the winter, we’re indoors (in closed quarters) a lot more often than in the summer. So germs can pass from person to person a lot easier, hence giving the illusion that the cold weather is directly responsible for our illness.

Another idea might have come from illnesses such as hypothermia, which isn’t caused by a virus at all, but by the decrease in blood temperature. Still, many people don’t know a lot about hypothermia, as it just isn’t that common anymore, what with L.L. Bean down jackets and indoor heating. And because you are cold when you develop hypothermia, maybe people just assume that hypothermia is a cold. Speaking of which, the fact that it isn’t called a “warm” may also be working against the “cold” theory. But maybe it should be called a warm. I mean, think about it. When you get a cold, your temperature rises, you eat hot soup, you stay bundled up in bed…Hmm…

I recently got into this debate the other night over a turkey dinner at Boston Market. Does the tryptophan in turkey really make you sleepy? Well, up until this past winter scientists sure thought so. According to Dr. Carol Ash of Somerset Medical Center’s Sleep for Life Center in Hillsborough, N.J (in an Article by Daniela Flores), you’d have to eat quite a few turkeys to reap any sleep-inducing benefits from consuming turkey.

More likely, scientists believe the reason we get so sleepy after big meals like Thanksgiving dinner is because we’ve consumed so many carbohydrates in one sitting. The nominal amount of tryptophan the average person ingests actually has to counter balance itself with so much other food (mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn, etc) that the tryptophan never even makes it to your brain, where it would need to go in order to make you sleepy.

When lab tests prove a sweet carbonated elixir will guarantee lifelong happiness and acceptance, why not? Plus! it comes with the added benefits of “essential” sugars that will rot your teeth and caffeine that will make your heart race, but hey, it will also give you an active lifestyle and much-needed personality boost! And, you can find Coke just about anywhere… as long as you’re not looking in the heath food isle.

In the 1800s, a German doctor by the name of Franz Joseph Gall came up with Phrenology, the theory that you could determine a person’s character and personality based solely on the shape of their head. The theory became popular across Europe with psychiatrists and neuroscientists, who used Phrenology as a means for justifying racism and misogyny in the “modern era.” Phrenologists believed the mind was an organ with each section performing a specific and localized function, an idea not unlike Aristotle’s. (He tried to pin anger on the liver.) While doctors arguing the meaning behind the bumps and crevices on the head is interesting, all I want to know is what Phrenologists would have thought of the Coneheads…

Ya… me either, but in the 1930s, when medical studies started coming out about the possible connection between smoking and cancer, tobacco companies emphatically dismissed the findings on the one hand, while scrambling to find doctors to endorse their products on the other. What might doctors be endorsing today that is really killing us?