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The fact of the myth

that ‘you lose most of your body heat through your head,’ are plain wrong.

Eating close to bedtime won’t make you fat and giving children sugar won’t make them hyperactive.

And if you think you can survive the party season with a cure for hangovers then you’re mistaken - there isn’t one.

The findings were revealed by U.S. scientists who looked at some common myths and examined the available evidence to see which were true.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, they found no evidence that more heat escapes from the head than any other part of the body.

They said the myth probably originated in a military study which put hatless subjects in Arctic survival suits and measured their heat loss in extreme cold.

‘Because it was the only part of the subjects’ bodies that was exposed to the cold, they lost the most heat through their heads.’

A second study found there was ‘nothing special’ about the head and heat loss.

The belief that children become more disruptive after being given sugar is likely to be in the mind of their parents, the researchers said.

‘Even in studies of those who were considered “sensitive” to sugar, children did not behave differently after eating sugar-full or sugar-free diets,’ the authors wrote.

Evidence that eating late at night makes you fat is also thin on the ground.

One Swedish study appeared to support the theory, with obese women reported to eat more at night than non- obese women.

But researchers found that obese women did not just eat more at night, but also at other times.

Other studies have found no link at all between eating at night and weight gain.

‘People gain weight because they take in more calories overall than they burn up,’ the experts wrote.

And while internet searches found a myriad of hangover ‘cures’, no scientific evidence exists to support the theory that you can cure one or effectively prevent it occurring.

The team, from Indiana University School of Medicine, also looked at the myth that the traditional Christmas plant, the poinsettia, is toxic.

But in an analysis of 849 incidents involving the plant, no one died from exposure to or eating it and most did not even require medical treatment.