I wrote about this topic to friends and I thought it would be good to cover it here. Ever since I was a kid, we weren’t allowed to go swimming until we waited at least 30 minutes before going into the pool. I can’t tell you how many times I had a hotdog in one hand while keeping an eye on the pool.

If some kid dove in and drown, it was always because they jumped in after a big slice of lasagna or something. We all believed it!

Now that I’m the proud owner of an indoor pool just one wall away from the kitchen, while I was holding a ham sandwich, I looked up to see if there was any truth to the popular belief. NO!!!! None at all!!!

There is not a single instance of someone downing because they ate before swimming!!! To this day, there are people who STILL believe it!

All those years I waited could have been more pool time!!! Ugh!!! There was no science behind the practice, ever! IIt was suggested in a Boy Scout handbook in 1908 that you wait 90 minutes and that was the earliest documentation where I could find any reference for this writing.

I just visited the tourist town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It’s charming, lots of shops, all on different elevations built into a steep canyon. When you go there, you see how difficult it was to build anything in that location. I wanted to know why build there and not up on the flatland.

Eureka Springs got its start because it was believed that the water from the spring had medicinal purposes. Everyone wanted to be as close to the spring as possible and a whole town was built because of an unfounded belief in the power of local water. Imagine an entire city springing up, excuse the pun, all because of a false belief about water!

These people were not dumb. My parents took science serious and just went with the notion that we didn’t swim for 30 minutes after eating. It’s what the YMCA recommended and we blindly followed along.

Eureka Springs is now thriving as a tourist town, even though the myth has been debunked for decades. Some still believe it.

All of this makes me wonder about current beliefs and habits that we all assume to be true but aren’t. Worse, people get so invested in junk science that they get mad when their beliefs are challenged in any way. Some people want to believe what they believe no matter how unfounded or how little proof exists. While it’s great that they are so content with science, I’m not. I strive to learn something new.

I recently read a great question. What does it take to change your mind about something? It has be thinking.