Put an Onion in Your Sock Before Bed, Wake Up to This!

Friday night after work, you decide to drive over to your grandma’s for the weekend. She cooks you a delicious dinner and listens to all your stories. You mention the office AC must have given you a slight cold — you coughed a couple of times.

Grandma says nothing and just nods and smiles like she’s up to something. You go to bed and fall asleep like a baby. The next morning, you wake up with onions in your socks and a tennis ball tied to your back! Grandmaaaa! What’s all that supposed to mean?

Grandma brings you freshly baked waffles for breakfast and explains she’s carefully sliced and put onions into your socks to help you with your cold. Onions are famous for their unbearable smell. They have sulfur to blame for it. When you place onions close to your feet, the sulfuric compounds get right into your body. They fight off bacteria and drive away toxins.

Grandma’s learned this folk remedy from her grandma, who’d learned it from her grandma and she’d learned it from hers. The story goes on and on as the remedy comes from as early as the 1500s. Back then, people used to believe spreading raw sliced onions around your house would serve as protection from diseases. People thought all the infections were in the poisonous air. This theory has been replaced with the germ one many years ago. But the onion remedy still persisted.

Another more or less logical explanation for this tradition has to do with Chinese foot reflexology. According to it, the nerves in your feet have access to different internal organs. The access points are called meridians, and your feet have around 7,000 of those. The toes have access to your head and neck.

The insides of your feet are connected to your spine. And the area below your toes can work with your lungs. Chinese reflexology fans believe that when you add red or white chopped onions to your socks for the night, you stimulate the right points on your feet. The next morning, you’re supposed to wake up 100% healthy.

You feel skeptical about all this, so you do some research online. Turns out there’s no proof the onion remedy doesn’t work, but it must be a placebo effect. Onions are somewhat acidic, so when you rub them onto things, there will be some antibacterial effect. But it’s way weaker than that of chemical antibiotics.

An onion on your feet can’t absorb a virus or help you get rid of toxins. Onions can do you more good if you eat them and not pack your socks with them. They’re low in calories and rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. They may help control blood sugar and make your bones stronger. And if you really believe in that onion in your socks practice, that definitely won’t hurt you and might even help. Okay, so you grok the onions part now, but what’s with the tennis ball on your back?

Grandma explains you were snoring so loudly she couldn’t sleep. So she decided to use another time-tested remedy. She knows you’re more likely to snore when you’re sleeping on your back, so she had to stop you from it. She woke you up for a second and duct-taped a tennis ball on the back of your PJs. It prevented you from rolling onto your back. If you repeat this trick for two weeks, you’ll get used to sleeping on your side. All of these methods are giving you hiccups.

And yes, Grandma knows a remedy for that, as well. Hiccups happen when your diaphragm suddenly contracts. To stop it, try drinking cold water upside down. No, don’t pour it over your head! Hold the water like you normally would, but move your head forward and over the glass. Tilt the glass and drink water from the opposite side of it. This method works because when you tilt your head, your belly muscles contract. You also focus on drinking carefully and get distracted from hiccups!

Okay — the hiccups problem has been solved. Time to get ready to go. You left your dandruff shampoo at home, but maybe there’s something on the shelf. Unicorn tears, goblin knob extract, oh here it is — “no to dandruff”. Looks like it’s just regular aspirin. Your phone explains the salicylic acid in aspirin helps calm your scalp skin and sheds all flakes off it. You gotta crush 2 or 3 aspirin pills, mix the powder with regular shampoo, massage it into your scalp and leave it on for 5 minutes, then rinse well.

And here’s another interesting container — “for shiny hair”. It smells like mayo. Oh, it tastes like mayo, too. The can says put on damp hair before washing, cover it with a shower cap and leave on for 20 minutes. Then, rinse well to wash it off. Now for some reason, you’re craving a ham sandwich. You check it online, and it turns out mayo hair mask works because of the high amount of protein in eggs and moisturizing power of olive oil. All this makes your hair stronger and thicker. Gotta try it next time!

How about a new hairstyle? As you try it, you’re wearing wrist weights. While you’re working the dryer and hairbrush for about 20 minutes, the extra weight helps you work out your muscles, too. Feels like a proper warm-up before the gym you’ve wanted to try for a long time. As you pack your gym bag, you realize you had left your deodorant at home. You remember baking soda can help out!

It’s a pro at absorbing odors. That’s why you often leave an open box of it in your fridge. You shouldn’t wear it for deodorant every day — it can dry your skin, especially if you have the sensitive type. But you can mix one part baking soda and 6 parts cornstarch and use it in emergencies, like today. It’s 100% natural and doesn’t have parabens, aluminum, or artificial colors like those factory-made deodorants.

You drive to the gym for a leg day. You’ve given it your all and that was too much. Your muscles feel sore. Coach hands you down a bit of ginger. He explains if you eat it raw or heat-treated every day, you’ll feel way less post-workout soreness.

Ginger has soothing compounds and oils in it, so it can also treat nausea or an upset stomach. It works both raw and heat-treated. Time to pick up your niece from her ballet class and drive her to Grandma’s. Sally is telling you fun stories from class when suddenly she asks you to stop the car because she’s feeling motion sick.

So good it’s Grandma’s car and the glovebox is filled with necessities. You give Sally a lemon wedge. The citric acid in it gives it the famous smell and can instantly relieve a rough stomach. Sally doesn’t like raw lemons, so you get her a glass of green apple juice, squeeze the lemon in it and top it with black salt.

The natural sugars in green apples help neutralize acids and calm down the stomach. And she gets plain grain crackers for a snack. They’re perfect for an upset stomach as they help take your saliva levels under control.

You finally get home to Grandma. Something in your feet has been bothering you all day. You have dry skin and even the best of moisturizers can’t help in some situations. There’s a radio show about foot care on the air. They recommend warm soapy water to heal calluses. Just soak your feet in a bowl of warm water with soap for 20 minutes, then clean them with a hard brush. It’ll remove old cracked skin and make the new one soft and healthy.

It’s been a long day and you feel really tired. Time to go to bed. But what’s that noise? It’s your mom on the phone! It’s weird she isn’t asleep at 11 p.m. Looks like she has some sleeping problems. Grams has a solution for that, of course. She’s been making the magical beeswax sleep ointment for years.

There’s a special ingredient in natural wax that fights off stress hormones and helps you relax. You’ll need 4 tablespoons of beeswax pastilles. To make it even more effective, mix it with 1 cup of coconut oil and 1 cup of olive oil. Put it in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir and wait for oil to melt on low heat.

When it’s all liquid, spread it in little jars. It’ll turn into a proper ointment quickly. Rub it into the bottoms of your feet generously and leave overnight. Wear socks not to mess up your sheets. Well, you’ve had enough experiments for today — you fall asleep in seconds hoping you won’t find any surprises in your socks the next morning.