Old Wives' Tales are claims or sayings meant to promote a specific behaviour, such as eating carrots to improve eyesight. Many of these Tales started without any facts or science to support them and while following some may be harmless, others are not. In this episode, we've fact-checked four common Old Wives' Tales related to health, and the results may surprise you.

To start off our fourth season, we're doing something a bit different. In this special episode we're talking about how our very own Scott Lear achieves what he preaches to live a healthy life to support his physical and mental health. We'll touch on his physical activity, nutrition and sleep routines as well as how important socialization is to mental health.

And be sure to subscribe and join us in future episodes which will cover topics on how being active can make you more productive, busting common nutrition myths, how helping others can benefit you and discussing the latest scientific breakthroughs that will come up in the coming year.

Is long been promoted that any activity is good for you. And in fact many people need to be doing more, but recent research indicates that not all types activity are good for you. In this episode, we discuss what types of activity may actually be harmful, what is the physical activity paradox, can you do too much activity and the biology behind it all.

Select references cited in this podcast:

The physical activity paradox in cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality: the contemporary Copenhagen General Population Study with 104 046 adults: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/42/15/1499/6213772

When Moving is the Only Option: The Role of Necessity Versus Choice for Understanding and Promoting Physical Activity in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4411302

Coronary artery calcification and high-volume physical activity: role of lower intensity vs. longer duration of exercise: https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/article/31/12/1526/7656624

Every three seconds someone in the world is diagnosed with dementia- a disease that leads to a decrease in mental function. There's currently no cure for dementia making prevention all the more important. In this episode we discuss what is dementia (and how it's not just a thing of ageing), what are the risk factors and how you do and eat affects your chances of getting (or not getting) dementia.

Select references cited in this podcast:

Association of daily step count and intensity with incident dementia in 78 430 adults living in the UK: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2795819

Flavanoid-rich foods , dementia risk, and interactions with genetic risk, hypertension, and depression: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2823676

Lifestyle enrichment in later life and its association with dementia risk: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2807256

Everyday you make thousands of decisions that affect your health. This includes deciding what to eat, whether to exercise or not, and how much sleep you get. Whether you know or not, you're bombarded with information that influences your decisions. Behavioural economics is a theory that tries to explain why people may make different decisions in different contexts even if those decisions aren't always in their best interest. In this episode we discuss what behavioural economics is, how human laziness leads to decisions we don't want and how you can make use of behavioural economics to make healthy choices the easy choice.

It's estimated that 99% of the world breathes air that exceeds the recommended limits for pollution. Air pollution increases your chances for heart and other disease. But it's not just air pollution that's a problem, noise pollution also can affect your heart. In this episode, we discuss the health risks of being exposed to pollution, how air and noise pollution affect your health and things you can do to reduce your pollution exposure.

Select references cited in this podcast:

Associations of outdoor fine particulate air pollution and cardiovascular disease in 157 436 individuals from 21 high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries (PURE): a prospective cohort study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30103-0/fulltext

Association between Noise and Cardiovascular Disease in a Nationwide U.S. Prospective Cohort Study of Women Followed from 1988 to 2018: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP12906

The impact of vegetative and solid roadway barriers on particulate matter concentration in urban settings: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0296885

The global weight loss industry will be worth $400 billion by 2030. And while most people who are trying to lose weight will say they're doing it for their health, your weight is not a good indicator of how healthy you are. In this episode we discuss how people started to equate weight with health, the role of excess body fat (and not weight) in health, what you need body fat for and when changes in weight are good and when they're not.

References cited in this podcast:

Canadian Adult Obesity Clinical Practice Guidelines: https://obesitycanada.ca/guidelines/

Weight Circumference and All-cause Mortality in a Large US Cohort: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/775594

Sodium (and salt for that matter) has been made out to be the villain when it comes to nutrition. In fact, without sodium, you wouldn't be alive. While high amounts of salt in the diet are related to high blood pressure, the evidence to support a link with heart and other diseases isn't clear. In this episode we discuss why you need sodium, how much is too much, is sodium as harmful as we're told and how getting more potassium can help.

References cited in this podcast:

Urinary Sodium and Potassium Excretion, Mortality, and Cardiovascular Events: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1311889

Sources of potassium in food: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/food-sources-potassium

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Or is it? Most people have some sort of breakfast some of the time. There are also plenty of studies linking breakfast to weight loss, health and even school performance. But is the idea of breakfast based on science or what cereal companies tell us? In this episode, we discuss why people think breakfast is important, how it affects your health and what happens if you don't eat breakfast.

References cited in this podcast:

The Importance of Breakfast in Atherosclerotic Disease: Insights from the PESA Study: https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2017.08.027

Effect of breakfast on weight and energy intake: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials: https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l42

Omission of a carbohydrate-rich breakfast impairs evening endurance exercise performance despite complete dietary compensation at lunch: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17461391.2020.1797890

The average person consumes 39 000 to 52 000 microplastic particles per year through food and drink. This number doubles when taking into account how many microplastics we might inhale. Microplastics have been found in blood samples and almost every organ in the human body. In this episode, we discuss what are microplastics, how they get into your body, how they affect your health and how to avoid being exposed to them.

References cited in this podcast:

Human Consumption of Microplastics: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b01517

Polypropylene microplastics promote metastatic features in human breast cancer: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-33393-8

Microplastics and Nanaoplastics in Atheromas and Cardiovascular Events: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822