Unsubstantiated claims pose health risks

There’s no such thing as evil spirits inside Egyptian tombs (though there may be evil people who were buried in them). For years there’ve been claims that those who opened various Egyptian tombs during excavations were either cursed with an illness or died from one shortly afterwards.

There’s a saying that “when you hear hoofbeats, don’t think Zebra”. The reason most people who become ill, not mentally but physically, is usually because they’ve contracted a dangerous viral or bacterial infection. Imagine opening up a tomb that has been shut off for thousands of years. When you hear hoofbeats do you think ‘zebra’ or ‘horse’? If you think ‘zebra’, you need help and not because you’re physically ill. When you open a thousand-year-old (or longer) tomb, around which you are breathing and drinking while working, are you seriously expecting people to believe that you were overtaken by an evil spirit? The thought that you might have come into contact with something highly contagious never crossed your mind?

I believe that, in order to attract attention, to stir up a conversation or to make money, many organisations make many unfounded claims. Scientists often make such claims about their research even though their findings are not always definitive. This claim that evil spirits reside in thousand year old tombs and then possess people appears to be pure nonsense. There’s never been any evidence to back it up and how can there be? But such claims do not harm the general public and simply give them something fun to talk about, and they’re a great subject for Hollywood movies.

However, there have been numerous other claims over the years which were sometimes untrue, or not researched properly, and which misled, and some still do, customers into using the product.

I’ve always been suspicious of weight loss products that claim to help with weight loss but in the safest and most natural way possible. One such product that I read about years ago, and which has often appeared on commercials on various satellite channels, is a powder that you sprinkle on your food. It’s supposed to help suppress your appetite and, therefore, help in weight loss. It’s never been proven to help and, quite honestly, it sounds scary. When I was a kid, doctors often prescribed a medication called Periactin that was designed to increase people’s appetite and thus help them gain weight. It was often prescribed to kids who were especially thin, like I was, so they would gain weight. I recall our doctor prescribing it to me but even though it helped increase my appetite, I don’t recall ever gaining weight. I didn’t take it for long but I wonder what long- term negative effects it might have had on me if I had continued to take it for years.

One claim that turned out to be highly dangerous and completely untrue was that of a cigarette manufacturer who claimed that doctors preferred their brand above all others. They supposedly found this out by conducting a dodgy survey. I would be very wary of any doctor who said a particular brand of cigarette was safer to smoke than any other.

Other claims that we should all be wary of are skincare products that claim to reduce wrinkles by increasing the collagen in the skin or ones that claim to sculpt your face. How can they do that? If you believe it and buy it, the only thing that is likely to increase is the hole in your pocket.

And I’ve always said this. Energy drinks should not be consumed as a beverage just because you feel like drinking something with a flavour. These energy drinks are laden with sugars and are technically formulated to be drunk by people burning enormous amounts of energy through rigorous hours- long exercises. I assume that by drinking it after your strenuous exercise you are replenishing the electrolytes that you lose through extreme sweating. Here’s a hint, if you are not sweating buckets, don’t drink it. Yet I have seen countless office workers pick them up on the way to work to drink as a breakfast substitute. People need to think.