You can't believe everything you hear. Granted, many advice come from a good place. But new research has busted some of these common beliefs.

Popular Myth: A woman's fertility plunges after age 35.

Fact: Every woman has likely heard this pressuring statement - that our eggs expire when we're about 35 years old. But a recent study lead by Anne Steiner, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, found that among 38 and 39 year olds who had been pregnant before, 80 percent got pregnant naturally within six months.

While it's true that the quality and quantity of eggs decline with age, it happens at such variable rates that many healthy women will still have a stockpile of viable eggs late into their 30s. Experts do however maintain that by age 40, a woman's chance of getting pregnant is less than 5 percent per cycle. Talk to your gynecologist to find out more before dismissing your chances of getting pregnant in your late 30s and early 40s.


Popular Myth: You're not prone to breast cancer if you don't have a family history of breast cancer.

Fact: About 10 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have a mother or sister who also had it, or some other strong family connection. Another 10 percent have a family member a little further down the family tree. But about 80 percent have no family history at all.

The reason your doctor wants to know about your family's health history is because they still don't have a better way to identify which women are at the highest risk for the disease, says Debbie Saslow, PhD, the director of breast and gynecologic cancer for the American Cancer Society. The only other risk factor is age, she says, which is why it's important to keep up with those mammograms.


Popular Myth: You have menopause if you get hot flashes.

Fact: About 85 percent of women going through menopause get hot flashes. But the same thing can be triggered by anxiety and stress. Other, less common causes include hormone imbalance, thyroid disorders, and infections.

So if you're under 40 (less than 1 percent of women hit menopause before this age) and are experiencing symptoms of menopause but don't have any reason to think you're going through "the change," it may be due to something else. Talk to your doctor to find out what's going on with your body.

Popular Myth: Drinking cranberry juice can cure urinary tract infection.

Fact: Cranberries contain quinic acid, malic acid, and citric acid; which can prevent infection-causing bacteria such as E. coli from sticking to the walls of the bladder. But if you already have symptoms such as burning and itching, that means there's too much bacteria in your bladder and kidneys for the berries alone to wash out, remove, or destroy.

A recent review of 24 studies and 4,473 participants concluded that the benefits of cranberries have been overstated and that drinking the juice or taking supplements hasn't been shown to make a significant difference in prevention. Instead of thinking of cranberries to protect you from future UTIs, think chicken: A high percentage of packaged raw chicken has been found to be contaminated with the kind of E.coli that can cause UTIs in humans.

Popular Myth: Women have more subtle heart attacks than men.

Fact: In a new study of nearly 2,500 men and women, researchers asked patients to descibe their symptoms. Chest pain was fairly standard among all patients, and other symptoms were relatively common too. In the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, they concluded that too much has been made about gender differences.

Unfortunately, women are more likely to die from a heart attack. So if you're really not feeling right, or think you might be having a heart attack (doctors say female patients will often consider that they're having one and then do nothing more than take an aspirin) call your doctor immediately.


Popular Myth: You won't get pregnant if you have sex in a hot tub.

Fact: Sperm are fragile creatures and won't stand much of a chance in hot water, bubbles or strong chemicals like chlorine. So if they're released in a jacuzzi, they won't survive longer than a few seconds.

However, if you're having unprotected sex, sperm may fail to make contact with the water, instead remaining inside you. Also bear in mind that the frothy, treated water can also make other kinds of birth control less effective - for example, condoms may loosen, slip off, or weaken due to the chemicals in the water.