Alvin from Life Coaches Blog linked to this great arti­cle: ’20/20′ Busts 10 Body Myths.

The myths include:

1. Mem­ory Loss Is Inevitable
2. Slow Metab­o­lism Makes You Fatter
3. Can Heart­burn Lead to Cancer?
4. Men Can Drink More Alco­hol Than Women
5. Mar­i­juana Gives You the Munchies
6. A High SPF Will Fully Pro­tect You from Skin Cancer
7. Noth­ing Will Age You Faster Than the Sun
8. Super­fit = Superhealthy
9. Cho­les­terol Is the Major Cause of Heart Disease
10. There’s a Wrong Way to Breathe

Of course, the first myth inter­ested me the most, and here is an excerpt:

“Just like you chal­lenge a mus­cle to grow it, well, the brain gets new con­nec­tions,” said Dr. Roizen.

And that busts another big brain myth — that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Mem­ory loss is not inevitable. Want to keep your brain young? Exer­cise it.

Try learn­ing to play a musi­cal instru­ment, doing cross­word puz­zles, learn­ing a lan­guage — even play­ing com­puter games.

“The data now indi­cate that an hour of games for 40 weeks can make your brain equiv­a­lent, your brain’s real age, 10 years younger,” Roizen said.

And one final brain myth: Does the size of a person’s brain have any­thing to do with their intel­lec­tual capacity?

“There is no cor­re­la­tion with the size of a human brain and its intel­lect. In fact, Ein­stein was sort of a famous exam­ple. His brain was about aver­age size — no dif­fer­ence between his and almost any other brain,” Oz said.

But also inter­est­ing to me was that most of the answers came down to 1) reduce stress, 2) eat well (more fruits & veg­gies than any­thing else), and 3) exer­cise reg­u­larly (aer­o­bic exer­cise at least 3 times a week for 20–30 min­utes, at a min­i­mum). These are also three of the four pil­lars we keep talk­ing about for how to main­tain a healthy brain. The last pil­lar is 4) men­tal stim­u­la­tion, which is cov­ered in the first myth. Check out sev­eral brain fit­ness solu­tions here. And don’t for­get, that while play­ing an instru­ment, doing cross­word puz­zles, and learn­ing a lan­guage are all good, it’s not enough. You need a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent types of stim­uli to chal­lenge mul­ti­ple men­tal mus­cles over time.

The ABC News ’20/20′ arti­cle was based on infor­ma­tion from the book by Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz: YOU: The Owner’s Man­ual: An Insider’s Guide to the Body that Will Make You Health­ier and Younger.

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