Medicial Things my Mom told me...

Factual Questions
1

Anyone cares to verify these ‘facts’ that my mother preaches to me everyday?

  1. Washing hair at night and not drying it will lead to headache.

  2. Leaving wet feets and legs to dry will cause joint problems and aches later in life.

  3. Picking nose will cause cancer.

  4. Not having breakfast is bad, even if you wake up at 1pm…

2

Your blood sugar will be at a low point whenever you wake up. It doesn’t have to be eggs, juice and coffee (or leftover pizza) but most people need to have something in their stomach to get going.

3

I only heard that it gave you a cold. :smiley:

I’ve never heard of 2 and 3, but I’d WAG the answer is “no.”

But don’t argue with her. You’re probably not going to change her mind. Trust me. I’ve been there.

4

Re: Medicial Things my Mom told me…

quote:Originally posted by LostCause
4. Not having breakfast is bad, even if you wake up at 1pm…

Your blood sugar will be at a low point whenever you wake up. It doesn’t have to be eggs, juice and coffee (or leftover pizza) but most people need to have something in their stomach to get going.
This is not necessarily true. If you eat a high carb or are an insatiable sweet tooth, then sure, your insulin pumpitude will be high and will drop down in the am. But if you eat a sensible diet, your blood sugar will be stable (very little variation).

5

In fact, in an otherwise healthy and well-nourished individual, blood sugar levels tend to rise a bit just before awakening. This is called the “dawn phenomenon” (look halfway down page).

6

If I go to sleep on wet hair I wake up looking like the Bride of Frankenstein, but nothing more than that. Numbers two and three strike me as bogus; the nose picking one sounds similar to threats of hairy palms if you masturbate.

As for four, I don’t get hungry until an hour or two after I wake up, no matter when that might be. I’ll eat when I’m damn good and ready. I HATE when people insist on feeding me the minute I get up, because I simply can’t.

7

  1. Bollox

  2. Bollox

  3. Bollox

  4. Depends. Bollox for some, not for others. Probably critical for people with certain diseases such as diabetes. Less so for those of us who’ve spent a lifetime not eating breakfast, but go to bed late and eat quite late.

(First three rated bollox by my personal experience, and some common sense medical knowledge).

8

Reading KarlGauss’s link, I see the authors actually found that the blood sugar levels remained constant while insulin levels rose. Their conclusion:

“The observed increase in insulin concluded in this study that in the early morning hours, despite stable levels of glucose, indicates a temporally increased insulin need in non-diabetic individuals similar to that found in individuals with diabetes(8).”

As for the OP, I recommend following your mother’s advice but disregarding the reasons. If you insist on leaving things wet, keep an eye out for fungal growth. If you can’t leave your nose alone, watch for bleeding. And hey, if you wake up at 1 pm, you can go straight to lunch. Just don’t go hungry.

9

So, to clarify, this means that people’s sugar levels tend to rise just before awakening, but so long as there is adequate insulin reserve, even minimally rising sugar levels are near-instanteously lowered back to normal by increasing insulin secretion.

10

  1. I go to bed with wet hair more often than not. I don’t wake with headaches.

  2. I have joint pains but have not made a habit of leaving my knees wet. Make of that what you will.

  3. I picked my nose for a good chunk (!) of my childhood and hain’t got no cancer yet. Maybe I was removing pretumors piece by piece, who knows?

  4. I usually need something to get me going in the morning, but my SO never eats breakfast and adamantly rejects it when offered. Unless it’s scrumpy breakfast, in which case she’ll wake up early to get ready for it so really it’s lunch.