Old Wives' Tales

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There is an ancient myth that if you swim 30 minutes after eating, you "get heavy" and are "weighed down" and drown.

I've heard variations on this. Some people will say it isn't 30 minutes, it's an hour.

Or the reasoning offered is "you get stomach cramps and drown." I've heard "the blood pools in your stomach to help you digest the food, making you weak and unable to swim" or something like that.

I've also heard "You won't drown - but you will immediately vomit in the pool and make it nasty for everyone else!"

However, I have never, ever seen anyone actually drown or vomit! Never!

And yet people in Europe are completely convinced this is true, as are people in America and people in South America!

If people across 3 continents swear this is true, I am inclined to think there might be something to it.

So, I pose a question. Have you ever seen someone vomit or drown from swimming after eating?

I am genuinely curious.
 
I'm in Australia and heard as a kid the stomach cramp swimming myth.

I recall recently seeing a popular meme saying no one ever drowned and that no one believes the myth anymore, so perhaps this is one old wives tale that won't survive.

Eta: and no, I've never heard of or seen anyone drown or vomit or get stomach cramps etc.
 
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Yes, you have to wait an hour before going swimming or you'll get cramps. This story is very common. No, I have never directly witnessed it.

That having been said, sometimes old wives are right. This short story is illustrative:

The Physician and the Priest

jhuger.com jhuger.com
 
I've vomited a couple of times because of swimming immediately after eating lunch.

(And yes, it's really disgusting if you vomit in a pool, it's bad enough in the ocean or a river.)

I've never had cramps from swimming, and I used to swim a lot.
 
rjh01 said:
It is a myth. Ref:
theconversation.com

Monday’s medical myth: wait 30 minutes after eating before you swim

The old saying that you should wait at least 30 minutes after eating before you swim is based on the idea that after a big meal, blood will be diverted away from your arms and legs, towards your stomach’s…
theconversation.com theconversation.com
Click to expand...
The article actually confirms a lot of the stuff, such as higher risk of vomiting and cramps if you swim after eating. Maybe chalk this up to "no you won't guaranteed die when hitting the water with a full belly, but it will likely be unpleasant"?
 
Thermal said:
The article actually confirms a lot of the stuff, such as higher risk of vomiting and cramps if you swim after eating. Maybe chalk this up to "no you won't guaranteed die when hitting the water with a full belly, but it will likely be unpleasant"?
Click to expand...
IF that happens you can get out of the water and rest. No danger of death. As long as lunch did not include drugs.
 
rjh01 said:
IF that happens you can get out of the water and rest. No danger of death. As long as lunch did not include drugs.
Click to expand...
Sure. If you're in a swimming pool. 50 yards out in open ocean and you've still got a lot of doubled up cramping and/or vomiting between you and terra firma.

It seems that the blood diversion angle is perhaps overblown, but the potential negative affects are very real. While it never happened to me, I'm quite familiar with cramps and vomiting when strenuously exercising right after eating. I guess I wouldn't have thought of swimming as any exception to that general rule.
 
Here’s a list of “urban legends, nee “old wives tales” that were common discussion point raised by newbies at alt.folklore.urban back in the ‘90s on usenet.
Most had been discussed to death and in the FAQ, this is marked F for false.

It is notable that Barbara and David Mikkelson of Snopes fame met each other there and were instrumental in compiling the FAQ. Also notable Adam and Jamie engaged with a.f.u. to gauge which urban legends would be a good fit for their up and coming venture, MythBusters.

alt.folklore.urban Frequently Asked Questions [Part 3 of 5]

alt.folklore.urban Frequently Asked Questions [Part 3 of 5]
www.faqs.org

Key to Listed FAQs:
T = 100% scientific truth
Tb = believed true, but not conclusively proven
F = 100% falsehood
Ft = A legend, mostly untrue, but with a true occurrence or
known origin.
Fb = believed false, but not conclusively proven
U = unanswered and may be unanswerable
P = Maybe it didn't happen, but it's scientifically possible
(used extremely sparingly, where the opposite is expected,
as it could apply to just about every legend)​
 
Having been a reader and occasional contributor to AFU through the late 80s and 90s, I read through the FAQ for old times sake. I was reminded of Craig Shergold, a kid who had cancer and requested get well cards from around the world so he could get into the Guiness Book of World Records before he died. He wound up getting cured of the cancer and over a couple of decades received a ridiculous number of cards, something like 300 million!

I wondered what happened to him and looked him up. Turns out he died in 2020, aged 40, from Covid 19.
 
Old wives' tales: If a parent allows a cat to enter a room where an infant is sleeping, the cat will suck the baby's breath and kill it.

You can remove a wart by piercing it with a needle, then dripping a drop of blood on a kernel of corn and feeding that to a chicken.

You get warts by handling a toad.

You should feed a cold but starve a fever.

Rain can give you pneumonia.

If you wake up to find a live chicken, toad, and cat in your bed, that's an omen of your imminent death. Or maybe the chicken's. Could be the cat's, though. Or the toad, unless it can quickly climb into the cornerstone of a building under construction.
 
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Old wives tale: "You should brush your teeth with soot and ash from the fireplace."

What actually happens: "You abrade all the enamel off your teeth."

Ask my grandmother how she found this out.
 
My childhood was relatively free of old wives' tales, I think, but one that I never quite figured out was the idea that pillows cause curvature of the spine when you're a child. I didn't have a pillow until I was 12 or so. Now of course, it's also true that I don't have curvature of the spine, but neither do any of my kids who got pillows.

And of course the hour after eating before you swim, which was a plague and a nuisance. As an adult for many years until sidelined by accident damage, I was an avid distance swimmer - 1 1/2 to two miles several times a week - and diligently violated the rule, since you can't swim for over an hour on an empty stomach. Maybe there's something to the myth for some people, but the worst effect of eating too much pizza for me before swimming was a couple of burps. So maybe if you're the sort of person who cramps up and can't figure out a way to stay afloat while doing so, it would be a good idea to experiment a little before going out for long ocean swims. Otherwise, though, get your carbs and go.
 
You can lead a horse to water, but cattle must be driven

This next one I've actually heard: if you count all foggy days in November, they will be the same number as days when snow falls during the next four months.
 
Spektator said:
You can lead a horse to water, but cattle must be driven

This next one I've actually heard: if you count all foggy days in November, they will be the same number as days when snow falls during the next four months.
Click to expand...
Is that related to the one about some rodent seeing its own shadow?
 
arthwollipot said:
Is that related to the one about some rodent seeing its own shadow?
Click to expand...
There's a logic to that, although a limited one. We tend to get our nasty belt of winter in Jan or Feb. If it's cloudy out on Groundhog Day, we're in said nasty part and Spring is on its way. If it's sunny out, the foul weather was delayed and is still coming, hence, six more weeks. Our unseasonably warm spurts of "Indian Summers" kinda throw real winter off.
 
Thermal said:
There's a logic to that, although a limited one. We tend to get our nasty belt of winter in Jan or Feb. If it's cloudy out on Groundhog Day, we're in said nasty part and Spring is on its way. If it's sunny out, the foul weather was delayed and is still coming, hence, six more weeks. Our unseasonably warm spurts of "Indian Summers" kinda throw real winter off.
Click to expand...
Now to me an Indian Summer is one that is oppressively hot and humid, like it is in India.
 
"Old Wives Tales" / "Urban Legends" are a good example to explain how Mandela Effects occur. False knowledge reinforced by trusted connections gets automatic credibility, often supplanting memory itself. The way the spurious information coalesces around stuff "everyone knows" even when it's untrue is exactly how everyone affected winds up with the same or similar "false memories".
 
Lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Except it does, all the time.

Cats attract lightning, so put them outside in a thunderstorm. I wonder I this one started because stroking a cat's fur in low humidity causes static discharges.

Red sky at night, you can sleep tight. Red sky at morning, that's a storm warning. (Lots of variants of this, especially nautical. There's an element of truth in the Northern Hemisphere: dust and humidity scatter light and produce a red tint. With prevailing wind patterns in some latitudes seeing a red sunset sky means the rain producing clutter has passed but a red sunrise means it's approaching. Probably about 50% accuracy)
 
Spektator said:
They mainly center on golf scores, fish almost caught, and reasons for coming home drunk.
Click to expand...

Hang on a mo!

I'm an old husband and I've never played golf nor fished and if I'm out getting drunk it is generally in the company of my old wife.

Most of this old husband's tales would involve extreme drunkness and associated stupid behaviour in younger days, being off face on psychedelic substances in same younger days or bands I saw "back in the day". That class of thing.
 
A few international ones I've picked up during my travels.
From China: The part of your face between your upper lip and your nostrils is the 'death zone'. If you burst a pimple there, you will die.
From SE Asia: If you mix alcohol with coconut, it will congeal into a thick poison, and kill you.
From all over the Middle East: Geckoes are venomous. They come into houses at night and spit on white things. This spit is poisonous, and will kill you.
And I'm surprised no-one's mentioned the infamous Korean old wives' tale- fan death. The belief is that, if you go to sleep with a fan blowing on you, you will suffocate and die. The reasons for this are as varied as they are comically implausible. "The fan will split the oxygen atoms, so you can't breathe". "The fan will blow the air away from your mouth and nose, so you can't breathe". "The fan will chill your body, so you die of cold". "Yes, fans don't split atoms in other countries, but Korean oxygen is different from foreign oxygen". All of these explanations were told either to me, or to my friends, during the 2 years I spent living in Seoul. Fan death features in TV dramas, and every year the government releases the numbers of people who have supposedly succumbed to fan death during the summer.
 
Starve a cold, feed a fever. My Grandmother liked that one, and I had a few bowls of soup over the years because of it. But I like soup, so that's not so bad.
 
If your stomach is upset, you have to eat a meal consisting of boiled chickenbreast (no salt or pepper), white rice boiled without salt and boiled green peas.

Yeah. By the time you’ve managed to eat this meal for the second day, most likely whatever had upset the stomach has cleared up.
 
Ah, fatal food and drink.

Watermelon and milk consumed together will kill you. Likewise fish and milk.

If swallowed, watermelon seeds will sprout in your stomach and grow into vines until your stomach either bursts or can no longer process food, so you're doomed to perish of inanition.

Tomatoes are toxic and a person should never eat more than one a day. There's a smidgen of fact here: green tomatoes have significant levels of alkaloids (tomatine and solanine) that dwindle greatly when the fruits ripen. Dogs can suffer poisoning if they eat tomatoes.

Some foods should not be eaten aboard a ship because they will cause a disaster (storm, collision, grounding, etc). Eggs and bananas are two. This is an old husband's tale, told to me by a great uncle who I eventually learned was a compulsive liar.
 
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Eggs not consumed on ships?

They used to be highly prized.
Cackle berries we called them and on a long deployment at sea the day they ran out was always a sad one.

Can't beat Chicken on a Raft with Skinheads.
 
I remember my aunt, and Old Wife herself, telling me that if I swallowed my gum it would stay in my stomach for seven years. This was the same person who said "Licorice cleans your teeth." Which is the exact opposite of what is true -- that sticky sugary substance is the worst thing in the world for teeth.
 
I distinctly remember a full school room discussion (grade 5 and 6) about this subject back in the 1960's when I was a student.

It was stated plainly at the time this was not true, and just an "Old Wives Tale".

THE REASON it was so contentious of a subject, was because we used to go swimming (in Lake Simcoe) once a week, when it was warm enough, as part of our school PT Classes.

We were told to eat our lunch in the truck (we rode in 5 ton stake truck, sitting on bales of straw to the Lake) ... THEN immediately go swimming.

Many students reported their mother's would NOT let them swim without an hour wait time after eating It was decided these students could eat time lunch on the way home from the lake, in the truck.

But someone kept stealing their food, (another student was suspected) so one of the teachers who brought their car kept a cooler to keep lunches locked in the trunk.

One special needs kid, had to sit in the car anyway, as she couldn't go swimming (She had a feeding tube), and she helped guard the food :)

I remember her name was Lori, and when we went Ice Skating, she used to use a wooden chair to skate with, she was the only one who could not skate properly.
 
I used to be on the swim team in high school and three days a week we'd have morning practice before school. I don't remember my routine but I'm sure I had some breakfast just before going to the pool otherwise I wouldn't be able to eat until lunch. (Now that I'm retired, I wonder how the hell I managed a couple hours of swimming a day, school, working at Burger King until midnight or later sometimes, homework, and everything else. Nowadays it's a major effort just to take out the garbage.)
 
Andy_Ross said:
Eggs not consumed on ships?

They used to be highly prized.
Cackle berries we called them and on a long deployment at sea the day they ran out was always a sad one.

Can't beat Chicken on a Raft with Skinheads.
Click to expand...
I know, I know. This is the guy who had a photo of himself from the 1930s, dressed in what looked like a weird lodge-brother costume, and told us that it had been taken when he was first mate aboard the USS Alabama, which sailed all the way around the world in a week. And claimed he was a first cousin to Doc Holiday, who taught him the quick draw and the border spin. And he told about witnessing the gunfight at the O.K. Corral (which took place a good 25 years before my uncle was born - he and chronology were not on speaking terms). Oh, and he did fool me and my cousins by telling us about going to Atlanta just after getting out of the Navy and getting a job as an extra in Gone With the Wind, appearing as one of the casualties in the crane shot, filmed near the Atlanta Terminal. Later I learned that not one frame of that movie was filmed within 2000 miles of Georgia. But then he also claimed to be the only man ever to survive being bitten by the most venomous spider in the world, the black and yellow garden spider, which had written his name in its web as one of its victims, but had to go back and erase it when he lived.

He died when I was away in grad school. I miss him.
 
Chicken on a raft with skinheads is fried cackle berry and beans on toast.

traditional Sunday morning breakfast
 
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Spektator said:
Ah, fatal food and drink.

Watermelon and milk consumed together will kill you. Likewise fish and milk.

If swallowed, watermelon seeds will sprout in your stomach and grow into vines until your stomach either bursts or can no longer process food, so you're doomed to perish of inanition.
Tomatoes are toxic and a person should never eat more than one a day. There's a smidgen of fact here: green tomatoes have significant levels of alkaloids (tomatine and solanine) that dwindle greatly when the fruits ripen. Dogs can suffer poisoning if they eat tomatoes.

Some foods should not be eaten aboard a ship because they will cause a disaster (storm, collision, grounding, etc). Eggs and bananas are two. This is an old husband's tale, told to me by a great uncle who I eventually learned was a compulsive liar.
Click to expand...
I heard that one often growing up but it wasn't from old wives, it was from my older brothers. More of a "torture little brother" thing than a belief in an old legend, I think.
 
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