"A lot of people think they might get a little bit burned and that's that. However, lying in the sun unprotected is like someone smoking 80 cigarettes a day - it carries big risks." - The Daily Mail
Scientists warn that many other fairly common activities are likewise significantly worse than one might at first assume:
* While a single glass of red wine with dinner is known to confer heart-health benefits, any more than that, or a déclassé glass of white, is approximately equivalent to "taking out your liver, dousing it in battery acid, punching it, and then replacing it in your body, upside down," said internist and ordained born-again minister Jim Couples
* Restrictive clothing, specifically pants worn too-tight, such that a "muffin-top" is created above the waistband, are not only an offense to aesthetics, but to your health. Creating this effect entails restriction of the lower intestines and surrounding organs, such that "you might as well eat three or four Big Macs for every day you muffin-top, that's how much the cancer rates of organs in the region spike," researchers said.
* VH1 reality programming hurts more than your dignity, new research shows. The deadening effect that shows like I Love Money, Rock of Love and anything else VH1 makes "real," is roughly equivalent, minute-for-minute, to sticking your head into a microwave.
Not only will you up your risk for brain cancer, preliminary studies show that during viewing IQ drops by approximately 1 point per hour, indefinitely and irreversibly, making viewers increasingly susceptible to the bad health decisions both the shows' characters and its advertisements advocate. "Basically, looking at the brains of regular watchers is a lot like looking at autopsy results from Chernobyl," said neurosurgeon Bob Cole.
* Sex, when engaged in vigorously, can give some of the benefits of regular exercise, but doctors warn that every act, with the involved friction and tearing which necessitates cell regrowth in the region, adds a 2.5% risk of cancer of the penis, cervix, or colon, depending on your preferences. "Real slutbags of either gender may as well live in a hyperbaric chamber constantly being refilled with fresh asbestos," one researcher noted.
* While hydration can have both short and long-term health benefits, scientists warn that "no beverages, regardless of what they actually are, should be consumed at either very warm or very cool temperatures," noting that the work your body does to equalize the beverage's temperature is approximately equivalent to adding one week of regular wear-and-tear on the stomach, heart, and vascular system per 10˚ of regulation. "Really regular hot-and-coldies have the insides of an 85-year-old sometimes as early as age 20," they added.
Doctors recommend drinking all beverages within what they call the "tepidness range," or anywhere between ten degrees above and below your body's optimal temperature, excepting anything alcoholic, sugary, caffeinated, fatty, lactose-or-soy-based, carbonated, fruit-flavored, brown, fruit-based, or acidic, which drinks should really never be drunk at all.