An Apple A Day Keeps Prescription Pills Away, Study

Who's afraid of the doctor anyway? No one, but they do visit her regularly, according to a new study by the Dartmouth University.

In order to check whether the apple is like Caesar's wife---above suspicion---scientists from Dartmouth Medical School decided to monitor the habits of 8,000 people for three years, according to the report published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

While 9 percent of the group regularly ate a small apple everyday, only 39 percent did not visit a doctor every year, compared to the 33 percent of those who did, after factoring their education, age and other health habits. Finding that the difference wasn't all that wide, the apple eaters did seem to go in for fewer medications, said the researchers, according to abcnews.

However, the study could not be completely trusted. While all the information was self-reported, the medical visits could not be totally linked to eating apples, according to Dr. Sharonne N. Hayes, cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He added that scientists did not try to find out why people visited doctors.

"The apple eaters were highly educated and less likely to smoke," Hayes said. "It could be that their visits to the doctor were for preventive reasons rather than illness."

According to smh, Caroline Taggart, author of An Apple a Day: Old-Fashioned Proverbs and Why They Still Work, Ancient Romans and Anglo-Saxons, said that apples have healthful properties. In traditional Ayurvedic medicine, that is 1,500 years old in southern Asia, apples are also believed to be balancing and good for constipation.

After all, the apple-doctor story was planted in the late 1800s, when going to the doctor was always for a cure, not for prevention. However, nowadays, visiting a doctor could lead to identifying illnesses and avoiding poor health, he noted. Moreover, the average price nationally for red delicious apples was just $1.21 per pound last week, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's retail report.

"Apples probably won't cure the woes of our health care system, but they're cheap enough and they certainly won't hurt," Hayes said.