home remedies you would NEVER try

Nurses General Nursing

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Doing some research today and found a good one for lady partsl yeast infections-Insert a fresh clove of garlic wrapped in cheese cloth....I don't think so!

A former neighbor would wipe her baby boy's faces with their wet diaper to prevent acne when they got older.They never did have a zit but then again she and her husband both had very nice complexions.

Have you heard/seen any wacky home remedies to share?

When I was anxious to have my baby, I read on a lot of blogs to take 4-6 oz of castor oil to induce labor. When I bought the castor oil, I realized, that they were talking about the whole bottle! I was too scared to try that much(2 tablespoons maybe). No wonder people complained of uncontrolled BMs during delivery. But I hear it works and that some midwives even recommend it.

One embarassing remedy I did try. It is recommended to rub butter on your breast during puberty and you will have large breasts. My mom and her friend tried it. Both in the double D's. Myself, a nice large D cup. So this one might have prevented plastic surgeons from being so rich nowadays.

Soaking the feet in Listerine will cure athlete's foot...not true, but it does decrease the associated itching and burning. Also, unless you use the 'original' medicine-tasting kind, it stains your skin blue or green or orange. Festive!

Specializes in floor to ICU.
Soaking the feet in Listerine will cure athlete's foot...not true, but it does decrease the associated itching and burning. Also, unless you use the 'original' medicine-tasting kind, it stains your skin blue or green or orange. Festive!

Speaking of Listerine: (sorry to hijack the thread) has anyone bought the kitchen cleaner by Seventh Generation? Supposed to be chemical free products. I bought some out of curiosity (and it was on clearance!). I kept wondering why it reminded me of my grandparents everytime I used it. I finally figured out it smells JUST LIKE LISTERINE mouth wash!! My grandparents used to keep a huge old glass bottle of the stuff in their bathroom....

Specializes in MR/DD.

My husband had athletes foot and I had heard about urine curing it.

I told him to urinate on his feet in the shower (at the end so he would not rinse off the urine) .. It worked after about 3 days :)

Specializes in ED, ICU, Education.
If you have a earache have someone blow ciggarette smoke in the ear and then put a cotten ball in it to hold the smoke in to get rid of the earache.

If you have a toothache rub whiskey on it. Personally I always thought drinking the whiskey would help more.

If someone is about to die and you do not want them to die on your shift tie a knot in the sheet at the foot of the bed.

Put a bar of Ivory soap at the end of the bed if you are having leg cramps.

LOL about the Whiskey! And I'm gonna' have to try the knot tying thing (probably sooner than I want by the way my night is going)

Specializes in Med Surg, Ortho.

I would sit under a heat tanning lamp to help with acne until I sit under it for about 10 minutes one day instead of the recommended 2 minutes....got 1st-2nd degree burns from that stupid home remedy! (this happened when I was a teenager)

Also, When I was younger, I had always heard that mayonnaise put in hair makes a great conditioner. I did this a few times but I don't believe it made any difference....I was just stinky and smelled like a sandwich afterwards. Oh the crazy weird things I did when i was a kid.

Also had a sister that did the urine treatment for her acne.....yuck!

Specializes in RN, BSN, CHDN.

Rub a yellow gold ring over your eye for sty's or eye infections that was my mothers favorite one!

Dont wash your hair when you have your period!

Rub raw meat over a wart then bury it in the garden and by the time the meat had rotted the wart would be gone!

Specializes in PP, Pediatrics, Home Health.

When I was a kid I would get terrible fevers when my tonsils would get infected,the one fever I had was 105.1!Very hot!

My mom took Vaseline rubbed it on both of the bottoms of my feet, then took an onion, cut in half and put that on the bottoms of my feet on top of the Vaseline.She would then make me wear socks.She told me it would help with my fevers and in the morning when I would take the socks off the onion would be cooked and my fever would be gone!Your feet smell horrible after but it has been the only remedy that has worked to help with fevers.I now do it all the time if I get sick or when my daughter gets sick too.

My mother swears that white shoe polish cures poison ivy. She used to paint my little brother with it. Didn't kill him or cure him either. My ex husband always put a dot of toothpaste on a pimple overnight. Worked for him but never for me! I've had a couple of patients who put WD40 on sore knees!!

Fresh urine in the ear for earache, urine on the feet for athelete's foot. Vick's Vaporub for athelete's foot or fungal nail infection, duct tape or banana peel for warts.

As for the man that could take warts off by spitting on them, I've never heard of it being done that way, but my great grandfather did something similar, not sure exactly how. My cousin had several warts on his hands as a child and MDs had chemically removed them, and had frozen them as well. They always came back, but when Pa did whatever he did, they never returned! My grandfather could also cure thrush in a baby's mouth, unsure how, but it worked! I know people will prbablt think I'm nuts, but I saw these things myself.

In my area, there used to be a Cherokee medicine man who would cure thrush in a baby's mouth by blowing into it.

The oddest home remedy my mother claimed worked miracles was to swallow a spoonful of Vicks VapoRub- yeah- well she must have really loved it, because she would put a steaming hot washcloth over a nice layer spread over my chest, and put a little blob of it in the spout of a Vapor-izer, all before I was supposed to eat the stuff.

My grandmother had polio as a child. She swallowed a heaping tablespoon of Vaseline every day as a treatment for polio. I'm not sure if there is any truth to that remedy or not...

I like to use ginger for nausea. I've heard that urine will help really stinky feet. My cousin swears that putting an unwrapped bar of soap under her sheets fixed her restless leg syndrome when she was pregnant (maybe an offshoot of the soap for leg cramps thing?). I've heard of killing head lice with gasoline.

The weirdest one I've heard was rubbing a cut potato under your arms if you sweat too much.

Ginger is awesome! I took capsules the whole time I was pregnant with my son. Phenergan and Zofran did nothing for the nausea except either knock me out (phenergan) or make the nausea worse (Zofran).

The potato thing is not so weird. The potato juice dries and sort of forms a dry layer on the skin. Pumpkin flesh works even better.

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