The lies I heard when I was a boy

When I was a stripling of eight I saw a blackandwhite line sketch of a fearsome Mexican demon in an issue of Mad magazine like Pazuzu the one in The Exorcist The caption read Whosoever beholdeth this image will die in exactly one year The date was May 22I knew with chilling finality that I was a goner though I told no one This was my personal chilling secret and I didnrsquot think my parents or anyone else could help me avert disaster Theyrsquod just have to say I was snatched away before my timeOn May 22 a year later I was at a family wedding in the town of Kummanam Kerala It was a grand fourday event with nadaswarams rending the air a garlanded baby elephant swaying in a stable somewhere and children playing hide and seek all over the grounds around the houseI was on full alert looking around me and trying to guess how and where the end would come Would the baby elephant trample me to death Would a falling green coconut crush my skull And then I saw itmdasha pond where all the children were splashing around beckoning me to join them This was it Death by drowning in muddy waterBut it was a noshow History records that I survived and lived on to inflict this humble column on you obsessed reader I shared that little story to make a little point I have tended to believe most things Irsquom told As a boy it was worse I believed 100 per cent of what I was told and readAlso Read Small is bigExamples Carrots improve eyesight The colour red enrages bulls Goldfish have a threesecond memory The Great Wall of China is visible from outer space Shaving makes hair grow thicker We only use 10 per cent of our brainsYou will doubtless have your own list but Irsquom in a mythbusting mood this morning three in particularEn gardeSleep tight or sleep light I believed for decades that I was sleepdeprived because I was not getting my regulation eight hours nightly Thanks to the gadgets I now wear that measure me round the clock and their Help menusI now know that there is absolutely nothing sacred about eight hours That number changes from babyhood to senility The National Sleep Foundation says infants sleep 1417 hours a day Between ages six and 12 you need 912 hours But from 18 to 60 and beyond most people need just seven hours And if yoursquore Rip Van Winkle that sleep will be full of pee breaks midnight snacks tossing and turning and the occasional dreamtime All goodHow many steps please Letrsquos slay another myth you should walk 10000 steps every day The golden rule here is never trust any number that is so beautifully rounded And if that number keeps cropping up in other parlours definitely heed the warning tingle of doubt I read in Malcolm Gladwellrsquos Outliers that 10000 was the number of hours of practice that would make you an expert in any fieldSorry that was too much of a muchness I dug into the research and it turned out that there is no magic to 10000 A metaanalysis of 15 studies covering 50000 participants done by Amanda Paluch of the University of Massachusetts found that between 6000 and 8000 daily steps is sufficient for most peopleMeanwhile there seems to be consensus that walking a little faster is more than a little better and that walking in nature wakes up your brain more than doing it on a treadmill indoorsIrsquoll just have water thanks Yes the one about eight glasses of water is another floater Never trust repeating numbers eight hours of sleep water days in a week according to the Beatles US nutritionist Dr Frederick J Stare says that the body is better than good at regulating its water needs and that if you drink water when you feel thirsty you should do just fine The books donrsquot mention this but you can get your water equally from coffee tea milk fruits and vegetablesmdashand yes also lattes Cokes and beerAbout those childhood beliefs that were burnt into my infant brain Carrots do contain vitamin A which is great for eye health However yoursquod have to eat a wicker basket full of carrots a day to meet the daily requirement Whatrsquos more too much of vitamin A is toxic and causes hypervitaminosis ABulls it turns out are colourblind and canrsquot see red What agitates them in the arena is not the colour but the sweeping movement of the bullfighterrsquos capeThe myth about goldfish I suspect comes from guilty owners Goldfish have such stunning memories that theyrsquore often used for studying memory and learning in fishes according to Culum Brown fish expert from Macquarie UniversityWhich brings us to the visibility of the Great Wall of China from outer space whether shaving thickens hair and if 90 per cent of your brain lies unused through your lifeWell the answers are in Itrsquos no no and noYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper