A recently-carried out study shows that most holiday health myths aren’t true at all. 

Does sugar make kids hyperactive? Do you lose most of your body heat through your head?
Eating at night makes you fat? Read more and find out which myths were busted by the study.

Because it’s Christmas, let’s start with kids and sugar.

Sugar doesn’t make children hyperactive!

The researchers involved in this study carried out 12 placebo-controlled studies. The result: the children who were given different amounts of sugar did not act any different than those who received none. Not even other researches into the behavior of children affected by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or kids sensitive to sugar found things to be different.

So give the kids all the sugar they want, it won’t make them hyperactive.

Actually one study demonstrated that parents who thought their children were given a sugary drink (a placebo actually) thought their kids were hyperactive. So it’s not your kids, it’s you.

The thing that makes the kids hyperactive in some cases is the fact that the usually receive sugar (candies) on occasions when they are already most likely to be super excited, said the doctors who carried out the study.

The suicide rate doesn’t increase during holiday period

A study that took 35 years and was carried out in Minnesota residents showed that the suicide rate did not increase around Christmas or any other major holidays such as Thanksgiving or the 4th of July. A fact did remain unexplained by most scientists: the suicide rate tends to increase in warm, summer months.

Do you lose most of your body heat through your head?

No you don’t. This myth originates in an old military study in which the subjects were dressed in Arctic survival suits without hats in very cold weather. Of course the subjects lost a great amount of heat through their heads, but that was because the other parts of the body were well covered by proper clothing.

The researchers involved in the study which is the subject of this article said that if you put a subject in a swimsuit you’ll find out that it loses heat evenly across all exposed body surfaces. It won’t lose more than 10% through the head.

Does eating at night make you fat?

Well, researchers concluded that it’s important the time of the day when you eat, but more important is the number of calories you take in during the entire day. Eating like a swine all day and not eating at night won’t get you thinner.

“The danger in eating late at night is that it tends to be mindless eating, of calorie-laden foods," says Jeannie Gazzaniga-Moloo Ph.D., R.D., a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.

Can you cure a hangover?

Although searching the Web for hangover cures will provide you with countless methods (aspirin, bananas, prickly pear, Vegemite, you name it), there’s no real cure for a hangover.
The only cure for a bad hangover is time and lots of water to treat dehydration.

The study was carried out by Dr. Rachel Vreeman, M.D., and Dr. Aaron Carroll, M.D., professors of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Their findings were published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal.