More Lies About the World You Believe

So you're 11 years old. You've just scarfed down some mac and cheese and birthday cake. You and your friends run wildly, eager to jump in the pristine blue pool on a hot summer day. And then your mom stops you, saying, "No swimming yet! Wait 30 minutes!" She yells this from the other side of the patio.

We've all heard it from our parents, friends, and maybe even teachers: "Don't swim until 30 minutes after you've eaten." Resist the temptation. But why? There's this long-held belief that when blood moves to our digestive tract to help us process food, it diverts it away from other parts of our bodies, like our arms and our legs, which we need to stay afloat while swimming. If we don't have enough energy running through our limbs to keep us moving, we might drown.

Yes, our body needs increased blood flow for digestion, but not so much that it interferes with keeping our limbs functioning properly. From the moment we eat food until it leaves our stomach and moves further along in the digestion process, it takes about 4 hours. During those 4 hours, some of the energy and oxygen that would remove lactic acid that builds up in our muscles divert to aiding digestion. But we still have more than enough for a successful swim.

The worst that can happen? We might experience some stomach or muscle cramps, but we're not going to drown. The drowning myth came from a 1911 pamphlet from the Boy Scouts of America that told young boys swimming right after eating would result in dangerous cramps. What started as a scare tactic has persisted for over a century.

Good news for all the rambunctious kids out there: it's just not true. It's also not the only belief, written in stone, that some of us have lived our lives by. Is the Great Wall of China visible from space? Can carrots help us see in the dark? Or what about cracking our knuckles or coffee stunting our growth? These myths are, for the most part, harmless to believe while others have grown into conspiracies that might have larger implications.

One of these is that big pharmaceutical companies are purposefully withholding a cure for cancer to protect their jobs. The conspiracy theory goes that big pharmaceutical companies will never find a cure for cancer because it would mean that they would all go bankrupt. Some believe their fundraising cycle is self-sustaining, preferring ongoing funding over a cure, but that isn't the case.

Cancer is a collection of related diseases, each with its own complexities. The theory downplays the reality that developing multiple cures for various cancers is incredibly complicated. It's not about withholding a cure; it's about the challenge. This conspiracy theory also overlooks the mind-blowing technologies currently being developed in the fight against cancer.

One of the most intriguing examples is this company called Celsi Corporation. They're transforming cancer treatment away from the harsh experiences of chemotherapy and surgery. Celsi, a biotechnology company, develops immunotherapy products for cancer, autoimmune, and infectious diseases. Here's how it works: you might not realize it, but our immune system continuously fights off cancer. As we age, our immune system weakens, making us more likely to develop cancer with each passing year.

Celsi believes they have the potential to build immune systems back up to fight cancer. They've created an anti-cancer immune-boosting drug that is given before surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy have destroyed the immune system. This drug has shown a 73% 5-year survival rate in head and neck cancer patients compared to 45% without it. To learn more about this, you can visit celsi.com and support their mission to revolutionize cancer treatment.

So, no, the cancer research industry isn't one big lie. They are making real progress. But, as you'll see in the rest of this video, sometimes a simple lie is easier to accept than a complicated truth.

Believing that someone or something, like the cancer research industry, is out to get you certainly isn't an isolated incident. Since the 1950s, people have believed that adding fluoride to a public water source is a malicious act by the government and not a method to improve dental health. In the 1930s, scientists learned that fluoride, a naturally occurring element in water, could prevent tooth decay. This led to the idea of adding fluoride to public water supplies.

Despite some initial backlash, studies in the 1940s and 50s found that any possible harm from the extra fluoride was unlikely. That still didn't stop theories from circulating. One in particular was popularized in the 1964 film "Doctor Strangelove," in which the character General Ripper claims that water fluoridation is destroying humans and will make America susceptible to a communist takeover. Some of the anti-fluoridation movement seized on this theory, while others simply viewed it as medicine being forced on them.

Now that narrative is still powerful. Some think that the addition of fluoride is backed by the sugar lobby to encourage people to eat more sweets without the worry of getting cavities. Cities all around the country are starting to remove fluoride from their drinking water in response to these largely baseless concerns.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that fluoride is a safe and inexpensive way to boost oral health in children. In fact, that really hasn't changed since the beginning. The first city in the United States to add fluoride to its water was Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1945. Eleven years later, cavities among 30,000 school children dropped by 60%. The American Dental Association has called fluoridation the single most important public health measure to prevent cavities.

Let's take a closer look at another reported risk to the human body in the debunked chemtrails conspiracy theory. You know those white streaks trailing behind jets? There's this widespread belief that they're chemicals purposely being sprayed for sinister reasons. Why? Well, some think it's some sort of mind control, others think it's poison, and then some think that the government can somehow alter the weather with these chemtrails.

But what are they actually? The white streams are called contrails. They appear when water vapor condenses and freezes around an airplane's exhaust, producing crystals. It's the same basic idea behind why you sometimes see your breath in colder temperatures.

In low humidity, these crystals dissipate and disappear; in high humidity, they stick around and create visible vapor trails. This humidity difference explains why some aircraft have contrails and others don't. But how did this theory even come into existence? It probably started with a 1996 research paper from the U.S. Air Force that outlined a future weather modification system to achieve military objectives using aerospace forces.

Decades later, people have clung onto a 2017 study that found about 10% of a thousand people believe the conspiracy completely, and almost 30% found it to be somewhat true. Then, in 2021, a Facebook post claimed President Joe Biden manipulated weather through chemtrails and caused Texas's week-long deep freeze earlier that year. While the myth about chemtrails is untrue, its acceptance by the public isn't so far-fetched.

Throughout the Cold War, over 750 mock chemical warfare attacks on the public were staged by the British government. These exposed hundreds of thousands of people to zinc cadmium sulfide. At the time, the chemical was thought to be non-toxic, but over the years scientists learned that with repeated exposure, it can be cancerous. In the '50s and '60s, the United States did the same, using the chemical to test for biological weapons.

As much as conspiracy theorists on the internet might want to whip up the chemtrails theory, that's just not true. There's also the idea that the Great Wall of China is visible from space. With all of its sections combined, it spans over 13,000 miles, and its scale is massive. It's also made from materials that can make it difficult to see from space. The human eye perceives contrast, and its color isn't that different from the ground around it.

Some astronauts have reported that the Great Wall is visible from low orbit under very specific weather and lighting conditions. When the sun is low on the horizon, the wall casts shadows that make it possible to see it. But it's kind of a lie that so many of us like to believe. It all originated in 1932 with a Ripley's Believe It or Not cartoon that claimed the wall was the mightiest work of man, the only one that would be visible to the human eye from the moon.

The wall's visibility from space became a particularly important point of pride for the people of China. However, when Yang Liwei, the country's first person in space, returned from his 2003 mission, he admitted that he did not see the Great Wall. This had such a widespread impact that China's Ministry of Education revised elementary school textbooks, which had previously claimed that the wall was visible.

Another lie that gives us a sense of pride and possibility is the claim that humans only use 10% of our brains. It's one of those things you hear people say at dinner parties to try and sound smart. It's so fun to talk about that it's been the subject of various movies about people who unlock extraordinary mental abilities. What would happen if we were able to access the other 90%? In the 1996 movie "Phenomenon," John Travolta gains the ability to predict earthquakes and learn foreign languages in minutes.

In 2014's "Lucy," Scarlett Johansson becomes a super skilled martial artist armed with telekinesis. In the 2011 movie "Limitless," Bradley Cooper writes a novel and learns how to play the piano in less than a week. A 2013 Michael J. Fox Foundation study found that 65% of respondents agree that we only use 10% of our brains, and it makes sense.

It's heartening to think that there's some possibility we might become martial artists or prolific authors overnight with a little boost to our brain's processing power. The truth is that scientists don't think we ever achieve 100% brain function, but it's 100 billion neurons are working at a significantly higher level than the 10% figure. If we only used 10%, most brain injuries would have no consequences, and we know that's not the case.

Since natural selection discourages the development of useless structures in our bodies, it would have prioritized other parts of us over a headful of non-functioning tissue. The evidence isn't just theoretical. Imaging like PET and fMRI scans show the brain activity of doctors and scientists in real time. Large areas of the brain are used in all kinds of activities, from simple tasks like looking at pictures to more complex ones like solving math problems.

Researchers have yet to find a part of the brain that doesn't do anything. It's hard to trace back to the origins, but it seems to have first appeared in the preface to Dale Carnegie's 1936 bestseller "How to Win Friends and Influence People," an early self-help book. Even back then, the idea that we've only harnessed 10% of our brain power made people believe in their own potential.

Maybe you won't become a genius overnight, but it's not all bad news. We can still build brain power at any stage in life by doing challenging mental tasks. It's our nature to look for quick fixes, like turning on some dormant part of our brain to get ahead. Some of us probably thought that eating carrots would help us see in the dark when we were kids.

It's true that beta carotene found in carrots is very good for eye health, but that truth has been stretched into a vegetable that actually gives us superpowers. The idea started back in World War II as part of British propaganda put in place as a safety measure during the war's Blitzkrieg attacks from Nazi Germany. The British government issued city-wide blackouts while the Royal Air Force propelled German fighter planes.

The British planes could track the Germans thanks to the development of new radar technology, but the military couldn't make that knowledge public. Instead, the government claimed that carrots actually helped British pilots attack German planes in the dark. So why wouldn't the British public think that if they ate carrots, they would see better during the blackouts? Suddenly, there were ads telling citizens that carrots helped keep you healthy and helped you see while blackout protocols were in place, and this launched an all-out carrot craze.

So while the carrots might be good for your eyes, they won't give you night vision. Then there are all the things we're told are bad for us, like coffee, which apparently stunts our growth. Thankfully, studies have shown that coffee is linked to just about everything, and there's no evidence to show that it'll stop us from growing.

Caffeine is an appetite suppressant, so we might not eat as much, but that doesn't really impact our growth. If you drink coffee while you're pregnant, it can occasionally result in a lighter baby, but that doesn't really have anything to do with coffee limiting growth once we're born. While coffee isn't going to stop kids from growing, it can present a whole other host of health issues as we get older, like anxiety, an abnormal heart rate, bad sleep, headaches, and more.

So even if you're a kid, technically, you can still grow big and strong. You might want to tell them to skip the coffee anyway. What about being too close to our screens or monitors? Can it really cause eye damage? No, but it can cause eye strain that feels pretty terrible.

With more devices than ever around our homes, schools, and offices, it's good to be aware of how our eyes feel when we look at them. You might notice your vision blurring if you're too close, or perhaps your eyes get itchy, achy, or tired. Screens aren't going to cause us any permanent damage, but it also doesn't mean we should sit wide-eyed one inch away from them.

Similarly, you might be reprimanded for cracking your knuckles. A friend or parent might caution you that cracking your knuckles leads to arthritis. But, just like sitting near those screens, you're not doing any permanent damage by cracking them. The pop we hear in a cracked knuckle is the bubbles bursting in the synovial fluid that lubricates our joints. It's gross, but it's not bad for you.

In fact, crackers have the same rate of arthritis as non-crackers. The real question to ask yourself if you like to crack your knuckles isn't whether you'll get arthritis, but why you can crack them in the first place. For some people, cracking knuckles can relieve stress or anxiety and might even be a type of coping mechanism for a larger mental health struggle.

Some of us live in our brains daily with lies like this. We blindly believe myths that originated decades, if not centuries ago, because they're easy to buy into. Often, it's simpler to accept something as the truth instead of questioning why it might not be. If we can learn anything from debunking these types of lies, big and small, it's that we should learn to be more critical of the claims that come our way.

Something might enter our heads when we're young and sit there for us to pass on to the next generation. Some of these claims might not negatively affect our lives, but some of them might lead us down dangerously untruthful paths. Life at its best is a constant quest for truth, even if that truth can be hard to find.