6. Eat+Swim+Cramp=Drown.
As legend and parents have it, if you go swimming within an hour (I was always told half an hour) of eating, you’ll get cramps and drown. However, there has never been a drowning death due to noontime nachos followed by noontime laps. Swimmers can develop cramps, but their cause isn’t necessarily due to eating, and most people who know how to swim would likely survive a little side stitch. However, if you’re noontime nachos are accompanied by a pitcher of beer, then you’re probably the big guy wearing water wings in the shallow end anyways. No fear of drowning there.
7. How a Woman Carries Her Baby Predicts Its Sex.
The predictions vary, but I always heard that if a woman carries her baby high and round it’s a boy; low and flat, it’s a girl. While it’s fun to try to predict a baby’s sex, especially when your prediction has a fifty-fifty chance of being right, there’s no real evidence behind it. In a study done at Johns Hopkins, researchers recruited 104 pregnant women and found that the shape of the abdomen was a poor predictor of a baby’s sex. Try ultrasound.
8. Glass of Warm Milk/Turkey is Soporific.
Milk supposedly helps us fall asleep because of tryptophan, an amino acid known for its sleep inducing properties. Tryptophan is also found in turkey, and the reason why so many people claim that Thanksgiving puts them to sleep.
However, for these foods to result in sleepiness, tryptophan has to cross the blood brain barrier. When it is in the presence of high protein foods (like milk and turkey) it has to compete with other amino acids, and has little chance of getting across the barrier. Carbohydrates may facilitate the uptake of tryptophan, and thus a turkey meal may help with this uptake, but the level of tryptophan is actually quite low. More likely is that eating a large meal diverts blood to the stomach to aid in digestion and this combined with alcohol make us feel tired. Warm milk, on the other hand, may not weigh heavy in our stomach, but it certainly does in our minds. Association of milk with sleep may just work to put us under.
9. Indian Shooting Star=Free Tootsie Pop.
When I was about ten years old, I tested this one out. Guess what? They don’t send you a free tootsie pop. Instead, they send you, a small child who went to the trouble to save your tootsie pop wrapper, write a personal note, and pay postage, a lame form letter about some distinguished Indian that does not hand out free pops.
10. Drinking Coffee Will Sober You Up.
If only. It’s too bad, but coffee, water, food, and exercise do not help speed up the road to sobriety. Though coffee may help counteract the depressive effects of booze and make you feel more alert, it won’t help your liver metabolize alcohol any quicker. Your blood alcohol level remains the same with or without coffee.
