Myths, Lies and Old Wives Tales

I painted his leg with nail varnish at my friends urging.  “No really” she said “it could be chiggers, they burrow into the skin and unless you paint the leg with nail polish - (clear) - they will stay there burrowing around, making his leg itch and swell”.  Really I said, well that’s just nasty, and where do their little bug corpses go once I have suffocated them with the aforementioned polish? These are apparently almost invisible bugs.  This bug is so tiny I can’t even see it running around in the little bumps on his leg, it gives me the shivers.  So anyway, on her urging I painted his leg with (clear) nail polish, to suffocate the bugs and cause their demise, hoping my son’s leg would stop swelling.  This, despite the fact that I had already taken him to Urgent Care where the Doctor had diagnosed hives, which fit more inline with the fact that his eye was also swollen, (the way it swells when the pollen is super high).  And that both of these things have happened before, i.e. the leg and eye swelling, never at the same time mind you, but still we have a history.   But no, I really wanted to believe that the anti-histamine was futile (I really try to avoid medication when possible) and that the nail polish would of course do the trick.  My son squirmed as I painted his leg, I tried to relate, after all he had scratched his leg because it itched and when I put the nail polish on it was bound to make it smart, like someone rubbing iodine into an open wound, ouch. 

But still the swelling remained, so my husband jumped on the all-knowing oracle, better known to you and I as Web MD.  Anyway it turns out that chiggers don’t burrow into your skin after all, they are little mites that just run around on your skin releasing an enzyme to make little bits of your skin dissolve so they can have their lunch, yeah still pretty yucky but certainly not as bad as imagining that little bugs are holding fiestas under you skin…  The treatment can be as simple as a triple bacteria cream with lidocaine, available over the counter from any drug store.  The antibacterial cream helps the scratched area not get infected and the lidocaine numbs it to get it to stop itching.  Quite simple really, and much better for both of us, than coating the area with my expensive nail varnish. 

So that got me thinking, what else is an old wives tale, a true remedy, something passed along from generation to generation to keep us from say, sitting on that cold concrete so we don’t get hemorrhoids.  This one is a myth by the way, according to hemaron.com “… hemorrhoids caused by sitting on a cold concrete sidewalk is quite popular in Asian communities. However, there is no truth to it - sitting on the sidewalk will not cause hemorrhoids.” Good to know, right?

Chewing gum cautions and tales from parents have caused many a panicked child to spit out their bubblelicious in fright, but is it really true that chewing gum takes 7 years to leave your digestive tract? Apparently not, although indigestible - gum leaves your body in the same amount of time, albeit less digested than any of the other foods we eat.  

How about a bar of soap between the sheets to stop leg cramps! Well we are not sure about this one, I would be more inclined to make sure I went to bed sufficiently hydrated than rely on a bar of soap to ensure a crampless night. 

There are thousands of cures or remedies that get passed down from generation to generation, and sometimes we get desperate enough to try one or two of them.  For sure I know that chicken soup helps when I have a cold, is it a miracle cure or just a comfort food?   According to an article in the St. Petersburg Times it really is a cure for our battered immune systems “researchers at the University of Nebraska found that homemade chicken soup really does make you feel better when you’re sick. It reduces congestion and inflammation by limiting the movement of white blood cells that produce infection-related mucus. The result? Fewer sniffles.” There, I knew I could rely on my Grandmother’s advice for something. 

When all else fails, but before you try ‘that’ remedy, maybe hit the web and do some research, it can be a wealth of both information and misinformation, so be careful. We really like this article at ABC News that explains, ‘the Urine and Jelly Fish story’ made famous a few years back in a very memorable Friends episode. You might be happy to know that this is one old wives tale that you CAN avoid. Thank goodness!

When all was said and done, I followed the Doctor’s suggestion to give our son Benadryl every 6 hours to reduce the swelling and stop the itching,  and it turns out that it worked. The swelling has been going down slowly and his pediatrician thought it looked ok this morning. So it seems it really was just a case of hives. It was very windy here yesterday and that stirred the pollen, my son’s body was just reacting to the barrage of histamine coursing through his body. Although had it been chiggers I am sure they would have looked awful pretty wearing my high-gloss nail varnish as they scurried around the bumps and crevices of my son’s little leg.

Make an adjustment, stay healthy ~ be happy, call Dr. Paul or Dr. Susan at 303.674.1500 or email office@fontanachiro.com 

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