12 Myths About The Human Body Debunked

It is important that we know ourselves and what we are capable of in order to get through life mostly unimpeded. But this is hard to accomplish, with the sheer volume of misconceptions surrounding our own bodies.

Many times what we are told by those who are meant to educate us is often untrue. This can be said for countless things most of us were taught in school when we were young. But this blame cannot be solely put-upon teachers, who likely were also taught the same things when they were younger.

A large amount of these myths may have even come from: a lack of knowledge, lies, or even misinterpretations of the work of others that have been perpetuated across society and the internet, which only serves to increase these fallacies further.

People have a tendency to share this misinformation without understanding the truth from fiction, often when it serves their own ideals and narratives well, such as alcohol warming up the body. This is not in fact true, and likely came from someone wanting a drink.

However, in these days of scientific research we can now discredit a great deal of these delusions, in order to combat this spread of these inaccuracies.

With that in mind, here are 12 myths and misconceptions about your body debunked.

The common misconception behind this idea is that eating fatty foods, such as burgers and cheese, is the main source of weight gain and weight related diseases in society. However, this is not true.

There are numerous complex reasons for gaining excessive weight, such as lack of physical activity, overeating, and lack of a well balanced diet. Whatever the case, unless caused by genetic factors (note that some people may be genetically predisposed to overeating), the vast majority of cases come down to simple maths, i.e., taking in more calories than your body uses over a long period of time.

But why do fatty foods get the blame?

It turns out that in the 1960s, when studies on the link between nutrition, weight gain and heart disease were being conducted, sugar companies actually paid off scientists to downplay the link between sugar and obesity, thus shifting blame towards saturated fats. Then they employed sneaky marketing tactics to drive this false fact home until it became a widespread belief -despite sugar being the main contributor.

When sugar is digested, it quickly releases a surge of hormones that result in the body storing most of this energy as fat. This storage, outside the consumption of a balanced diet to offset it, soon leads to someone becoming hungrier and thus eating more.

Fats on the other hand take much longer to digest, do not cause a hormone spike, and take more energy to process, meaning you are less likely to have a second snack and the body uses more calories in their breakdown for the same calorie gain.