Your Health this (Bananas) Week

Think you have a sinus infection? Well stop demanding antibiotics, you idiot. Up to 83% of people with sinus troubles in the U.S. get prescribed antibiotics even though the root cause may well be something nonbacterial. Like hormones. Or allergies. Or a virus. So go take a sauna or stick your head in the toilet or something, lest your head be eventually overtaken by a mutant form of brain-eating MRSA.

After years of aggressive marketing campaigns by government organizations like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Americans still aren’t eating enough fruit and vegetables. Maybe they should use the PR money to hand out fruit and salad for free on street corners. People like free stuff. And why not hire some murderous Columbian terrorists to do the job? I mean, they already love bananas and recently found themselves out of work in the fruit business. 

I know that pregnant women with morning sickness just love the smell of pesticides with breakfast, but cut it out, eh? Because pesticide exposure in the first trimester might up your chances for gestational diabetes. Kind of makes you rethink the whole “I wanna have my baby in the country” thing, don’t it? But then you remember that air pollution can cause DNA mutation EVEN IN THE WOMB. Country it is.

Your shampoo is making you fat. Yes, that’s right, the obesity epidemic is not due to the increased use of lazy transportation, sedentary jobs and lifestyles, larger food portions and greater consumption of processed, calorie-dense eats, it’s due to common chemicals found in, like, absolutely everything. At least for men. They’ll have to think up another explanation for obese women. Until then, I advise to stop eating shampoo. Oh, and stay away from those nasty obesity viruses common in poor people.

A team of U.S. and U.K. doctors have suggested that just 15 minutes of daily, moderate exercise can keep kids from getting obese. Given that around 17% of U.S. kids are obese, it kind of begs the question: Are some kids NOT getting 15 minutes of brisk walking per day? What is the world coming to? Hasn’t anyone heard of, like, playing ball, hopscotch, tag, red rover, British bulldog, kick-the-can, capture the flag, chase the ugly kid? I mean when I was in school….

Just two drinks a day ups breast cancer risk in a study of U.S. women by 32%. Oh God, kill me now. I mean, WHY BOTHER? I can’t even use high fat foods to comfort myself, because those will give me cancer, too. Why God? Why?

In news for morons: tanning beds can cause cancer, especially in the under-35s. Yes I know you want your six-year-old to have that healthy glow, but really. While we’re at it, cigarettes also cause cancer. Oh, and eating 12 pounds of butter probably won’t help you lose weight. Can I just have a drink now? What about now? If I promise to eat all the bananas in Columbia? Can I have a drink then?

Disclaimer: Your Health This Week and Inkling magazine would like to remind you that this is a humorous article. Please don’t stop eating shampoo and methicillin from the comfort of your tanning bed just on account of us. Do not accept fresh fruit from a revolutionary even if s/he claims it’s free and/or is part of a government program. And don’t put too much stock in the advice about not drinking; some of us may have been drinking when we wrote that and our judgment may have been impaired. It’s a complicated world out there; please use however much of your brain has survived the brain-eating MRSA whenever possible.