MYTHBUSTERS : Go Ahead and Cross Your Eyes

It was the kind of health information you never questioned. After all, it came from an authority--not your doctor, but from your mom, your grandpa or maybe even your pal Jimmy, who once dated a med student. From time to time, we’ll look at these long-held health “facts” and answer the question--Sorry, Mom--true or false?

“Cross your eyes and they will stay that way.”

Not so, says Dr. Art Corish, an Irvine optometrist and former president of the Orange County Optometric Society. “Crossing the eyes is a perfectly normal activity, an ability eye doctors expect you to have. It will not hurt your eyes.” He tells parents to ignore their children’s crossed-eye antics if they’re clearly clowning around. The less said, he says, the better.

“Swallow gum and it will not only bind you up, but will stay in your stomach for seven years.”

Not true, says Dr. Kenneth Hepps, a gastroenterologist on staff at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. “It would pass uneventfully in the majority of cases,” he says. Normal transit time through the body? About three to five days.

What we should be warned about is swallowing hair or persimmons. Swallow enough of either, and you could develop a bezoar--medical-ese for a very tightly packed accumulation of hair or vegetable matter that’s only partially digested.

Hairballs--known to stomach doctors as trichobezoars--are most common in psychiatric patients, Hepps says, although teen-age girls, fond of twisting and nibbling on their hair, might legitimately be considered an above-average risk.

“We had a patient at a Texas hospital from the psychiatric ward who had plucked out and swallowed nearly a 1-pound ball of hair over time,” Hepps recalls. Hepps and his colleagues were forced to remove the hairball with a scope inserted through the mouth.

Bezoars caused by persimmons, which are pulpy, are called phytobezoars. They are a particular hazard for people who have undergone stomach surgery or for diabetics, for whom the functioning of smooth muscles in the digestive tract and elsewhere may decline over time.

“Walk barefoot and your feet will grow and grow.”

False, says Franklin Kase, a Burbank podiatrist and chairman of the San Fernando Valley division of the Los Angeles County Podiatric Medical Assn.

This myth should be rewritten, Kase says, to something like: “Become pregnant and your feet might grow.” During pregnancy, the extra weight puts pressure on the legs, feet and ankles. “The soft tissue in the feet may stretch and expand, elongating the foot and arch and causing splaying or widening of the front part of the foot,” he says.

With age, your feet also tend to get longer, but this happens whether you are shoeless or shod.

Also, the more you walk, the more chance your feet will undergo an adult growth spurt.

“Stop working out and your muscles will turn to fat.”

“Impossible,” says Julie Silverstein, an exercise physiologist at Centinela Hospital’s Fitness Institute in Culver City. “Muscle and fat are two separate entities. One cannot turn into another.

“If you decrease exercise and continue to eat (the same amount), the extra calories you take in will be stored as fat,” she says. “You feel flabby because your muscles aren’t as toned (once you quit workouts). You lose muscle mass and you gain fat. But one doesn’t turn into another.”