Ho ho ho! From the British Medical Journal, some Christmas debunking of some commonly held wintery myths, such as the idea that you lose more heat through the head than any other part of the body:
As temperatures drop, hats and caps flourish. Even the US Army Field manual for survival recommends covering your head in cold weather because “40 to 45 percent of body heat” is lost through the head. If this were true, humans would be just as cold if they went without trousers as if they went without a hat. But patently this is just not the case.
This myth probably originated with an old military study in which scientists put subjects in arctic survival suits (but no hats) and measured their heat loss in extremely cold temperatures. Because it was the only part of the subjects’ bodies that was exposed to the cold, they lost the most heat through their heads.
Also despatched: the claim that night-time eating makes you fat, and that there’s any way to cure a hangover. These all belong on the great Wikipedia page of common misconceptions.
Sadly not mentioned in this paper is the commonly held belief that a large bearded man dressed in red comes down your chimney on Christmas eve delivering presents. I suppose I should continue to assume that’s true, then?
Link.
was brilliant…