As it’s long holiday weekend for the majority of our readers, I decided to postpone the review of the Food Matters documentary until tomorrow.

Instead, here’s another Healthbolt Funtime escapade…

Seems you can be whoever you want to be, including a ‘Super Villian’.  All you have to do is answer a few oddball questions and the truth will be revealed!

I, apparent, am…

The Joker

The Joker 23% Lex Luthor 23% Dr. Doom 23% Mr. Freeze 21% Catwoman 20% Green Goblin 20% Kingpin 19% Mystique 16% Magneto 14% Riddler 14% Apocalypse 13% Poison Ivy 13% Juggernaut 8% Venom 6% Dark Phoenix 6% Two-Face 4%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

So Which Super Villian Are You?

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

Of course, you might just want to be a ‘Super Hero’ instead. If that’s the case…

Click here to take the Super Hero Personality Test

And once you’ve found out your Super Hero or Villian alter ego, don’t forget to share with us.

We want to know who our Healthbolt readers really are…

You’ve debated them around the water cooler for years. Your mother has warned you about a good many of them. Seinfeld even had a whole show built around one of them (#5). What are they?

Old Wives Tales, of course.

But are they tales, or do some of them hold some truth a grain or two of truth? Take the quiz below to test your own knowledge on some of the most commonly accepted thoughts out there. Then check your answers and get the explanations you seek at MSNBC.com.

1. Cell phones are dangerous to use in hospitals because they can interfere with medical equipment. True / False / Maybe So

2. It’s safe to follow “the 5 second rule” for food dropped on the floor. True / False / Maybe So

3. Cracking your knuckles can cause arthritis. True / False / Maybe So

4. Cola type soft drinks can damage your kidneys. True / False / Maybe So

5. “Double dipping” spreads germs from one chip to another. True / False / Maybe So

6. Eating locally produced honey can ease seasonal allergies. True / False / Maybe So

Some of those are pretty tricky, huh? So…how did you do?

Photo Credit

The medical world: a place where truth reigns supreme and questions are definitively answered. The one place shielded from wive’s tales and urban legends.

Not.

In reality, the medical world is fraught with all kinds of “We used to believe what?”-type theories and a whole bunch of other BS. Here, dear readers, are just a few of the health myths held on to, but now exposed. Seven, to be exact, debunked by two docs from the Indiana University School of Medicine: Dr. Rachel Vreeman, a research fellow, and Dr. Aaron Carroll, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism.

1. Myth #1 - Eating turkey makes you sleepy. Believed to be true for ages, research has found that the suspected tryptophan overload from turkey actually pales in comparison to the tryptophan found in Swiss cheese and pork. In fact, chicken and ground beef each contain about the same amount per ounce as our favorite Thanksgiving Day bird. In reality, it’s just the effects of eating a large meal that slows down blood flow and oxygenation to the brain, and that, m’friends, is the cause of your Turkey Day drowsiness.
2. Myth #2 - You should drink at least 8 glasses of water per day. Water-haters, you’re off the hook. Your recommended fluid intake is usually met just fine by your consumption of juice, milk and even caffeinated beverages. Heck, even those stray fruits and vegetables count, so drink water for the joy of it, not because you have to.
3. Myth #3 - We use only 10% of our brains. While it’s so tempting to use this as an excuse for the asinine behavior your partner pulls, this is another myth that is not true. In actuality, brain imaging studies show that no area of the brain is completely silent or unused.
4. Myth #4 - Hair and fingernails grow after death. This is one that freaked me right out as a kid, and kind of still does. Ahem. It’s not true though. Dehydration after death causes the skin around hair and nails to retract, making it seem as though there was an increase in length.
5. Myth #5 - Shaving makes hair grow back darker and thicker. Lie! Stubble only appears thicker until it grows out a little, then tapers a bit. As for the color, it’s the sun and chemicals that lighten hair up, so your little sprouts are just your natural color, nothing darker.
6. Myth #6 - Reading in dim lights ruins your eyesight. This one had me sweating, seeing as how I can hardly see my keyboard right now as I’m squinting and typing away (I love to work in the dark). Instead, this kind of work environment may cause temporary eye strain, but nothing over the long term. Phew.
7. Myth #7 - Cell phones interfere with hospital monitors and equipment. I remember smuggling my cell (then the size of a modern-day cordless phone) into a hospital in 1998 after a relative’s surgery, waiting to receive “The Call” on a job offer. Sure enough, the darn thing rang, eliciting a fine ass-chewing by the nurse and a squad of various other health professionals. Turns out their concerns were unfounded. A study published by the March 2007 journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found no interference of any kind between cell phones and hospital equipment. So there, Nurse Ratched.

Well, what do you think? Feeling a little relief? A little surprised? How ’bout a little foolish?

Yeah, I know. Me too.

Ever wondered how much your body is worth? Start planning now with the Cadaver Calculator!

The Cadaver Calculator asks you a series of questions, including whether you are fit or obese, if you’re a lil smokey or not, how much liquor you quaff, if you are an albino (hey), and if you ever eat anything remotely leafy and green. My mortal coil is evidently worth 5 G’s. How much is yours worth?

(Brilliant: the Cadaver Calculator comes to us via Mingle2, an online dating site. Now that’s romance!)

Your normal programming has been interrupted for this important public service announcement:

Look like an idiot in 1 easy step: pimp an IQ widget on your blog!

Online IQ tests are a joke (but you know this). Even if they claim to be “real”. They’re not.

Guess what? Mensa is a joke, too.

The vos Savant method will raise your IQ a few notches, but does this really mean anything?

Even the merit of a “real” IQ test is debatable, because IQ is a controversial concept. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould and the pioneering Alfred Binet disputed the validity of IQ (among many others).

If you need to do some virtual culling or simply find yourself in the mood to discover even more poseurs, because you’re just so gangsta, might I suggest a rich niche known as those who brag about their intelligence. Of course, only retarded people will just come right out and tell you directly. Most wannabe genii will sheepishly tell you in faux humility, and only after a lot of prodding. Or they’ll display El Widget De Smarty on their blog, but with an appropriately self-deprecating tagline nearby. And by nearby I mean in the archives.

We’re just super saucy for high IQ. We love to compare everything from election results to life expectancy to hangover prevalence against intelligence measurements. The human affinity for categories and labels is only outdone by our love of Wal-Mart.

Remember, however, that the merit of IQ is questionable. Definition - by definition - helps us to organize and understand data and clarify experience. But definitions are also inherently limiting. That is why a high IQ is no categorical predictor of talent, success, creativity, health, or achievement.

What’s with the genius wet dreams of the Myspace set? Being a genius is miserable, and not in that emo eyeliner kind of way. It seems to involve a lot of hard work, which, come on, is just gross. It’s often lonely and not very different from garden-variety crazy.

Geniuses in every field, from all walks of life, from every blot in the span of time, have only one thing in common, and it isn’t IQ. It’s fire in the belly. It’s at least ten years of wrenching hard work. It’s torture. And you’ll still probably fail.

People romanticize “genius” the same way they romanticize “enlightenment” (at least in California, anyway). But we don’t really want to be geniuses and we don’t really want to be enlightened, either. You know why? Because true genius is hard, and true enlightenment is nothing more than pain and suffering.

What most of us actually want is approval and relief.

Which is why Mensa is so popular, and The Secret is a best-seller.

My inexpert advice: just do your thing, baby, and do it with confidence. Also, don’t do drugs.

And now, back to the show.

I’m sick of these alternative health hucksters trying to profit off innocent souls by selling them dangerous, deceitful products. Why aren’t vitamins regulated? Drugs are regulated by the FDA to protect citizens’ health, and it’s about time vitamins were, too. There are seven very compelling reasons why drugs are way better than vitamins. If anything, we ought to deregulate drugs (prescription drugs, people) and ban those dangerous vitamins!

• Reason #7: Vitamins may be essential to life, but drugs help mask the symptoms of all the sh*t you shouldn’t be doing to your body.

Okay, so the body needs vitamins to, you know, not die or something. The WHO (World Health Organization – not the band) says vitamin deficiencies will cause all kinds of diseases. But duh – that’s why we have drugs…to deal with those diseases!

• Reason #6: Vitamins are really dangerous, while drugs are proven.

There have been a few really famous studies that have proven that cheap, crappy forms of certain vitamins like synthetic vitamin E and beta carotene, when given in excessive amounts to really old terminally ill people about to croak, doesn’t stop them from dying. So, obviously, vitamins are super-dangerous. I’m pretty sure way more people have died from chewing those deadly vitamin C tablets than from Vioxx, Avandia, Prempro, Tylenol, Ritalin, Prozac and other wonderful drugs. I don’t need to quote you the numbers. Vitamins are so dangerous, it’s messed up that they aren’t banned outright.

• Reason #5: Vitamins are unregulated and untested, while drugs are guaranteed safe by the FDA.

Here’s the deal: The FDA doesn’t actually test any drugs. They leave that to the drug companies. The FDA is also totally corrupt, and I like that – from threatening dissenting scientists to board scandals to being a cushy landing pad for stressed former Pharma execs to make 300 grand for an easy one-year stint. But the FDA is nice, because they trust pharmaceutical companies to do their jobs, and isn’t that what’s important? Being nice? Hello, karma!
Corruption, my butt. Besides, no one’s perfect; that’s just capitalism for you. The market will sort it out. Jesus says so right there in First Parentheses.

• Reason #4: Vitamins can’t be patented, which makes them communist.

If you love your country, take drugs.

• Reason #3: Vitamins do not have cool names or logos.

Who wants to pop some plant powder that is proven to be essential to life when it’s got a stupid leaf on the bottle? I want names that sound like hot European chicks and have swirly abstract logos, dammit! Ooh, ooh! And can the logo also have that wet, glossy Mac look? Yeah, that’s awesome.

• Reason #2: People have been doing “the vitamin thing” for literally hundreds of thousands of years, but drugs are pretty new.

Just tattoo an L on your forehead while you’re at it. Better yet, wear high water peg pants and a neon fanny pack, loser. Vitamins are so over. Everyone who ever took vitamins before the 20^th century died – well, eventually. Isn’t that proof enough? Drugs are new, and that makes them better.

• Reason #1: Vitamins are kinda gay, whereas drugs are a guaranteed way to get you lots of friends at parties!

Let’s be honest. Paris and Lindsay are probably not going to go for your pansy Echinacea tablet when there’s Xanax to be had.

-Sara Ost over at Mark’s Daily Apple is your totally awesome-tastic guest poster, will someone send her a stiff cocktail, please?

I got very interesting email in my in-box today. It was about a German study released in The New England Journal of Medicine about the physical benefits of men staring at women breasts.

I say with the utmost conviction that this article is, erm, unsupported.
This was kind of expected as I got to the, “Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well endowed female is roughly the equivalent to a thirty-minute aerobics workout.” If this fact were true, our nation would be simply crawling with Adonises instead of Homers. Furthermore, nowhere in The New England Journal of Medicine does a German study appear by author Karen Weatherby.

If only… Eh, fellas?

Thanks, Nathan!

This a rhetorical question, but we answer it everyday that we walk around on this earth. Look around you and know that the life you’re living right now is what it’s like to be made out of meat. We all are, and it’s a bizarre concept to wrap your head around.

In an issue of Omni Magazine, in 1991, Terry Bisson published a story titled “They’re Made Out of Meat”. I can only describe it as screaming-ly good. It’s a rather brilliant piece. It’s very topical, considering our concern with the human body around here. And if you haven’t read it, you must. It’ll take you about 5 minutes to complete, but you’ll probably think about it for days.

Excerpt:

“They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”

“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”

“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”

“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”

“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”

“That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat…”

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