Folk Remedies: Some Work, Some Don't

Submitted by Wise Woman on Sun, 2015-03-22 12:41

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What Works:

In ancient Chinese medicine, the cure for stuttering was a good hard whack in the face.

But it must… and this part is crucial… be on a cloudy day.

The funny thing about folk remedies is some of them actually work.

Early American settlers apparently believed that urine cured acne. Merrie England’s once-favored method of treating sore throats was to wrap your own dirty socks around your neck.

All cultures and societies have folk medicine of their own. And the modern day is no different.

The funny thing about folk remedies is some of them actually work.

1: Eradicate foot odor with vodka. Suffering from foot stench? Wipe down those dogs with a vodka-soaked washcloth. The alcohol is antiseptic and destroys the fungus and bacteria that causes odor. And it dries out the moisture that allows these organisms to grow. (Yes, you could use rubbing alcohol. Whichever is closer-at-hand.)

2: Cure your headache with a pencil. When stressed, most people clench their jaw and teeth. This can strain the muscles in your face and temples and cause tension headaches. A simple trick is to put a pencil between your teeth, but don’t bite down. By doing this, you’re forced to relax your jaw. This will ease the tension.

3: Bad breath? Cure it with bacteria. The live bacteria in yogurt have been shown to suppress the bacteria that cause bad breath. The “good” stuff will fight off those baddies that make your breath kick. Eat up.

The live bacteria in yogurt have been shown to suppress the bacteria that cause bad breath.

4: Listerine cures blisters. While it’s not as effective for bad breath as yogurt, Listerine does have one use: curing blisters. Moisten a cotton ball with the burning blue and dab the blister three times a day. Watch the blister go away.

5: Cure mouth herpes with tea. Suffer from cold sores? Lemon balm tea has antiviral properties that have been shown to tame herpes outbreaks (the mouth kind, not the sexually transmitted kind). Dab your cold sore with the tea several times a day and voila… mouth herpes no more!

6: Grind your corns with licorice and jelly. This is a weird one. Licorice contains estrogen-like compounds that can soften your skin. Especially the rough skin of calluses and corns. So grind up a few licorice sticks, mix them with petroleum jelly, rub it on your feet, and ignore all the weird looks your family gives you.

7 Motion sickness? Pop some olives. Motion sickness makes you produce excess saliva. This excess saliva is a signal to your body that something is wrong… in turn, making you feel nauseous. Olives have tannins that can help dry out your mouth and trick your body back to wellness.

(Chris Cambell, http://dailyreckoning.com/7-modern-folk-remedies-actually-work/)

What Does Not Work:

1: Urine cures acne. Early American settlers had some pretty strange notions when it came to eradicating acne. One involved the application of urine to the outbreaks. Another called for using the water that collected in old tree stumps to bathe pimpled skin. Needless to say, neither has been studied, and neither is worth trying.

2: Gizzards cure diarrhea. Absolutely don’t recommend this treatment for treating an infant’s diarrhea, we do find it fascinating and would love to know what inspired its creation. We offer it up strictly in the interest of history: Cut the lining from a chicken gizzard and let it dry. Then put it in boiling water to make a tea. Give 1 teaspoonful to your baby every half hour.

3: Dirty socks cure dore throats. From Merry Olde England spring some mighty strange sore throat remedies. One–which was actually used widely until the 20th century–called for wrapping your own dirty socks around your throat. Our guess? Since sore throats are so contagious, and in the olden days a signal of potentially lethal diseases, the dirty socks were used to keep loved ones as far away as possible from the patient. But that’s just a guess. Another English treatment involved wrapping bacon around the throat before bedtime. Finally, we couldn’t resist passing along this Irish gem: To heal a sore throat, simply apply salt herring to the soles of the feet.

4: Tobacco cures earaches. These cures should be labeled “weird, wacky and disgusting.” The first gross-sounding trick was to stuff the painful ear with a moist wad of chewing tobacco — or even to blow tobacco smoke into the ear. Another, mentioned in several compilations of old home remedies, calls for putting drops of urine in the affected ear. It’s even been written that Elvis Presley’s mother relied on this creepy remedy whenever The King had a childhood earache. Thanks, but we’ll pass on all of these. There’s no known science to support any of them.

5: Chocolate-garlic cures memory loss. An old, traditional memory-booster calls for dipping garlic cloves in chocolate and eating one to three of them a day. In theory, we think this makes tons of sense — the garlic and the chocolate are loaded to the gills with the kind of antioxidants that protect brain cells. But seriously, in practice? No thanks — we’ll have the chocolate-covered cherries instead, please.

6: Rattlesnakes cures rheumatism. An old cure for “rheumatism” was to kill a rattlesnake before it had a chance to strike (always a good idea), skin it, dry it, and then put the remains in a jug of corn whiskey. Then, drink the whiskey. No surprise: There’s no science to support this (and it’s a little too dangerous to recommend). But there have been studies at Israel’s Shulov Institute for Science looking at the possibility that snake venom, with toxins removed, could become a potential remedy for arthritis. Venom contains certain peptides — a molecule containing amino acids — that can turn off pain signals, which is handy for a reptile that needs to immobilize its prey. Of course, there’s a fine line between momentary paralysis and death, so we don’t want you trying this one at home.

7: Cuckoos cure back pain. Just love this old North Carolinian folk remedy for a bad back: Lie down (presumably outside) and when you hear the call of a whip-poor-will, roll over three times. This remedy may have been inspired by one that hails from Sussex, England. There, folkloric advice calls for the back pain sufferer to roll on the ground at the sound of spring’s first cuckoo. We suspect the rolling had something to do with stretching out sore back muscles — and birdsong is one of the best soul lifters around.

8: Eggs cure brusies. This ancient Chinese treatment is probably more fun to read about than to use. You need two things: a U.S. silver coin (dimes, quarters, and half dollars minted before 1964 are mostly silver) and a peeled, freshly hard-boiled egg. Slip the coin vertically all the way into the egg until its top edge is even with the top of the egg. Place the warm (not hot) egg on the bruise and leave it there for 30 minutes. This is said to immediately erase the discoloration.

9: Turpentine cures shingles. This shingles prevention strategy comes from a tome on old healing folklore, but naturally, we don’t give it much credence: As legend has it, hanging a turpentine-soaked string around your neck will keep shingles attacks at bay.

10: Earwax cures old cold sores. This one was found in a book about old home remedies: “To heal a cold sore quickly, put earwax on it.” Naturally, we don’t recommend the earwax treatment, though we do wonder what prompted its inventor to try it.

11: Corpses cure boils. This old English remedy is the strangest of them all. Apply a poultice to the boil. When you remove the poultice, place it in a corpse-containing coffin. Theory was, the boils would leave you and pass on to the dead person, where they could do no harm.

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