Dont Fall For 15 Year Old Stories About Boobs

If you know anything about me, You know I like boobs. And I'll leave it at that. But recently a good friend of mine sent me a story on Facebook about how "Men who stare at big boobs for 10 minutes a day are healthier" Sounds good, right? I'm all for it. But, as always, it's not true.

This is a story that has been circulating for over 10 years. Here's the "new" story "Doctors say looking at busty women for 10 minutes a day is good for your health" The story goes on to say

"STARING at busty women can lengthen your life, scientists have proved. A German study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, concludes that staring at women's breasts for a few minutes daily is better for your health than going to the gym."Just 10 minutes of looking at the charms of well-endowed females is equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out," said author Dr Karen Weatherby, an expert on ageing. The research team, led by Dr Weatherby, spent five years monitoring the effects of this unique discovery."

It all ends with "She also recommends that men over 40 should spend at least 10 minutes daily admiring breasts sized D-cup or larger."

EXCEPT...It's not true. I read this story first in an "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" in 2001. From Urban Legends at about.com

"'Medical study' supposedly published in the New England Journal of Medicine claims staring at women's breasts increases heart health and lengthens lifespans of men.

Description: Satire / Email hoax
Circulating since: March / April 2000
Status: False (see details below)

Email text contributed by a reader in April 2000:

This is not a joke. It came from the New England Journal of Medicine.

Great news for girl watchers: Ogling over women's breasts is good for a man's health and can add years to his life, medical experts have discovered. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, "Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out" declared gerontologist Dr. Karen Weatherby."

Don't get your hopes up, guys. No such study was ever published in the New England Journal of Medicine (check for yourself).

A search of the thousands of peer-reviewed articles contained in the National Institutes of Health PubMed database turns up zero items documenting the health benefits of staring at women's breasts, and, for that matter, zero items authored by "Dr. Karen Weatherby" (who does not exist).

If the story smacks of supermarket tabloid faux-journalism, well, that's precisely what it is. The text first hit the Internet in March or April 2000, mere weeks after a strikingly similar article appeared in the consistently misinformative Weekly World News (nor is this the first time we've encountered baseless Internet rumors traceable to precisely that source). A slightly different version had already appeared in the May 13, 1997 issue of the tabloid. A new round of breast-staring mania overtook the Internet in July 2011, when the Scottish news site Daily Record & Sunday Mail republished the story sans fact checking. It goes without saying (I hope) that it's unwise to take medical advice from supermarket tabloids, still less from forwarded emails. Males who wish to increase their lifespans ought to consider practicing common sense as an alternative — it's more likely to achieve the desired result than any amount of public breast ogling.

Now it's back..this time thanks to Facebook. Ahh the classics dont get old.