3 x health clichés: true or false?
Can your heart really break from heartbreak? And does a kiss really work against the pain? Is a detox cure good for you or not at all? All clichés that make me wonder if they are really true. Has research been done on this or have we simply heard this our whole lives, causing us to consider it as truth? Let's take a closer look at these three common clichés and see what science has to say about them.
1. A kiss or rubbing helps against pain: true
We still remember this from childhood. You had played outside too wildly and came home crying with a big scrape. The standard question from your mother: a kiss on it? The kiss worked wonders. Unfortunately, adults no longer kiss themselves on painful spots, but instead rub the area, which seems to have the same effect. So how does that work exactly? Here it comes: three different mechanisms play a role in the soothing effect of kissing and rubbing. First, our sensation is roughly guided along two different pathways: through vital sensitivity and through gnostic sensitivity. The first is responsible for the pain sensation and the second for a pleasant touch. The nice thing is that the nerve fibers of gnostic sensitivity are thicker and transmit impulses faster. By kissing or rubbing, the pain signals may thus be ‘overruled’ and therefore less noticeable. Additionally, signals go through the limbic system in our brain before we feel them, which is involved in our memory and emotions. All our pain experiences are stored here, including how your father or mother comforted you with a kiss or rub. The moment you do this yourself, the pain-relieving effect of that experience becomes active again, which inhibits the pain signal. How cool is that? The third mechanism is the placebo effect: the expectation that the pain decreases from a kiss from our father or mother is enough to soothe the pain and produce substances like dopamine and endorphins that have the same effect.
2. A detox cure is healthy: not true
Detoxing, cleansing, or whatever you want to call it: you are bombarded with it. I have also done a three-day juice cleanse, but unfortunately, I stopped on day two. What a hell this was. Detoxing can be done with the help of a juice cleanse, oil, or possible colon cleanses. It is also referred to as ‘resetting’ your body. That is at least the thought behind it. But is this true? Nope, because not the intestines but the liver is the detoxification center of our body. Most blood flows from the gastrointestinal tract and the spleen through the portal vein to the liver, where it is filtered of harmful and toxic substances, such as alcohol. The liver also takes care of sugar metabolism, vitamin storage, fat metabolism, hormone breakdown, and protein production in our body. Professor of clinical nutrition and former gastroenterologist Lisbeth Mathus-Vliegen says: ‘Your liver does not benefit from you eating nothing or very little and only drinking juices. It has to work its ass off to keep glucose levels up. Our intestines, like the bladder, only serve as an outlet for waste products and do not need to be flushed out.’ Well, clear story: save yourself the trouble and grumpy hunger attacks.
3. Heartbreak can literally break your heart: true
Wow, I did not expect this. I always thought this was a metaphor, but the broken heart syndrome really exists. Leonard Hofstra, cardiologist and professor at VUmc, says: ‘We see it about once a month. The heart is a muscle that rhythmically contracts under normal functioning. In broken heart syndrome, the lower part of the heart muscle seems to stand still. Because the rest of the heart is still pumping, the bottom of the left ventricle fills with blood and swells. The cause is stress, and heartbreak is a major culprit, just like the sudden death of a loved one. But acute pain and even extreme joy can also cause broken heart syndrome.’ So literal heart pain, I find it quite bizarre. An interesting fact about this: the medical term for broken heart syndrome is Tako Tsubo cardiomyopathy. ‘Tako’ means octopus and ‘tsubo’ means pot. The heart takes on the shape of a Japanese ceramic pot used to catch octopuses in this condition. Because the symptoms resemble those of a heart attack, this syndrome can cause anxiety and confusion. An echo showing the characteristic octopus pot shape puts an end to that.
Source: Psychologiemagazine.nl
