Rusty Saber: Medicine only works when it burns

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Editor's note: SBJ columnist Joe McAdoo is on vacation. The following column is an excerpt from his book, "McAdoo About Nothing."|ret||ret||tab|

Are there certain statements you accept as fact, but you don't know whether or not they are true? There are a number of these that I have always accepted without ever questioning. I have no idea why I believed them at the time I first encountered them, or why I never questioned them until now.|ret||ret||tab|

Call them old sayings, "old wives' tales" (whatever that means), myths, or whatever. "Medicine has to burn before it does you any good" is an example of such a statement. I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't believe this. I suppose I heard it first from my mother, who was preparing me for the sting of iodine as she was about to apply it on a cut. More than likely, there are many medicines with healing qualities that don't burn, but I have this notion that if I don't feel it burning the fire out of me, it must not be doing any good. Therefore, I have gone through life taking masochistic pleasure out of pouring some solution on a cut, gleefully enjoying the pain, because I knew it was working. |ret||ret||tab|

Somewhere in the back of my mind is the phrase, "Sleep before midnight is better for you than sleep after midnight." This has the ring about it of something coaches might tell athletes to get them in bed and off the streets. Getting a good night's sleep is good for you, but when you get it is not important. Sleep is sleep. There is no quality control regulator in the brain passing out rating points for sleep based upon the clock. Nonetheless, for years I congratulated myself whenever I have gone to bed before midnight. It was "good for me," you see.|ret||ret||tab|

"Never buy a yellow used car" is something I have always believed without any justification. I have no idea where I picked up this tidbit of information. Most likely, it came from someone that I accepted as an authority figure at the time. I seem to recall that the justification was that dents don't show up as clearly on yellow as on other colors. The conventional wisdom was that a banged-up car would be painted yellow to hide its shady past. Whether or not this is good advice, I don't know have never owned a yellow car. |ret||ret||tab|

When you were growing up, how many times did you hear "Smoking will stunt your growth?" There are many reasons not to smoke, but this isn't one of them. Smoking can shorten your life, it can't shorten your body. There is probably an explanation as to why adults have used this myth to try to convince children to stay away from cigarettes. Kids don't know much about diseases. They do know that they want to grow up as soon as possible. Telling a child that smoking will retard the process should be a strong motivator. It has not worked. Kids have been smoking for as long as adults have been telling them that it will stunt their growth. I believed the myth, however. As a child, I thought midgets had been smokers, and tall kids who smoked confused me.|ret||ret||tab|

Doubtless you have heard "Don't go swimming for an hour after you eat." The reason given to me was that I would get a stomach cramp and drown. I didn't want to do that. As a child, I believed in this so strongly that I wouldn't even stick my foot in the water after eating. I assumed that getting any part of the body wet would lead to the dreaded cramp. Drowning would follow automatically. (Thinking back, I was a pretty dumb little kid.) I don't know if there is any medical evidence to support the cramp-drowning syndrome.|ret||ret||tab|

It probably doesn't say much for our intellectual curiosity that we never question the validity of the myths or whatever we call them. However, had we followed the advice contained in the ones I have presented here, we would not have been hurt, except by the possibly missing out on some great bargains on yellow used cars. I can't say the same for a lot of advice I have followed in my life that was based on solid facts. I think I may hang on to some of my myths. This is in spite of the fact that I didn't smoke as a child, and I am only 5 feet 7 inches tall.|ret||ret||tab|

|bold_on|(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University and a Springfield public relations consultant.)|ret||ret||tab|

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