# [[Lebanese Medical Myth]] #Health #Medicine #Science #Misinformation #Question I found [this question](https://www.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/1d4zc93/how_scientific_is_shab2et_hawa/) on Reddit: *Just a quick question, everyone I've ever met has, at some point in their life, gotten sick because of "Shab2it Hawa[^1]". Med students and doctors, however, say that that's a myth. It's exclusively bacteria and viruses that can make you sick.* **My Answer:** It is somewhere on the scientific spectrum. First to be technical, ****it's not true that only bacteria and viruses make you sick.**** Those are what we call "infectious diseases" .. There are many other elements that can make you sick Other types of sicknesses: - ****Allergies****. This isn't caused by bacteria nor viruses, and its symptoms can be much worse to live with compared to some bacterial or viral infections. - ****Neurological "sickness"**** .. this could be a muscle spasm, neck pain, headaches. Those can keep you in bed for days without bacteria or viruses involved. - ****Organ malfunction****. Your kidney or liver or a certain organ not working well. - ****Nutritional deficiency****. Low levels of a certain macro or micronutrient can cause illnesses in itself or can make you more susceptible to infectious diseases and non-infectious conditions. - ****Poisoning****. These can be bacterial but can also be chemical. - ****Inflammation****. this is an autoimmune response triggered for different reasons and happens at different scales. - ****Mental health****. It has been demonstrated that mental health can have an influence on physical health. There are other forms of illnesses not caused by bacteria or viruses, those are just some I could think of now. Back to the "**shab2et hawa**" .. while it is not 100% scientific as in you can't replicate it in a lab with statistically significant success rate, as others have mentioned, external factors can influence how your body functions. It is also worth remembering that we don't know everything about medicine, I'd say that we barely know 10-20% of potential knowledge, and we will keep discovered new stuff. There might be whole layers to our health that we didn't discover yet. - We only discovered and understood viruses early 1900s, and we still lack a lot of knowledge about them. - We still don't know why placebo works. - We still don't know why many medications work (we only know that they do) A few decades ago, the idea of microscopic beings invading our body to cause illnesses would have been categorized as crazy. Also, much of modern medical research focuses on ****demonstration rather than causation****. This means that if a phenomenon can be consistently demonstrated, it is often accepted as valid, even if the underlying cause is not fully understood. > [!seealso] Related Thoughts > > Related thoughts will appear here when available. Published: June 1, 2024 [^1]: Literally translates to "getting hit by air" - It's the idea that cold air alone can cause illness, especially when combines with wetness.