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This week, Joe and Terry Graedon entertain your questions and stories about home remedies. What do you do for leg cramps or heartburn? Call in your favorites at 888-472-3366 between 7 and 8 am EST, or send us an email beforehand: radio@peoplespharmacy.com. We’ll explore whether there is science supporting home remedies.
You could listen through your local public radio station or get the live stream at 7 am EDT on your computer or smart phone (wunc.org). Here is a link so you can find which stations carry our broadcast. If you can’t listen to the broadcast, you may wish to hear the podcast later. You can subscribe through your favorite podcast provider, download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of the page, or listen to the stream on this post starting on February 26, 2023.
The Science Supporting Home Remedies for Muscle Cramps:
Muscle cramps may wake you up at night, but they also plague plenty of active athletes. We first heard about the idea of drinking pickle juice to ease cramps in the context of football practice on hot summer days. But it turns out hockey players get leg cramps, too. Oliver Peer of the Flint Firebirds describes how he uses pickle juice–and occasionally a spoonful of yellow mustard–to stop any cramps that occur during a game.
You might think that is a peculiar remedy, or perhaps you just suppose that pickle juice works by replenishing electrolytes lost to sweat. At least it would be an explanation, right? But it turns out that when physiologists study muscle cramps, they have confirmed the benefits of pickle juice and ruled out electrolytes as the mechanism of action.
How the heck might this remedy work, then? The basic science behind the most plausible explanation wasn’t conducted until the 21st century, even though the treatment has been popular for decades. Neurobiologist Bruce Bean explained the importance of transient receptor potential (TRP) channels to us back in 2017. We suspect that TRP activity might explain why quite a few home remedies work.
Vicks VapoRub Has Menthol and Thymol:
Pharmacist Lunsford Richardson developed Vicks VapoRub as a patent medicine around the turn of the 20th century in North Carolina. Richardson didn’t know exactly why or how his ointment could help calm a cough. (And he surely didn’t imagine people would put it on the soles of their feet.) A hundred years later, we have learned that both menthol and thymol can have anti-tussive activity. What’s more, menthol activates a TRP channel, TRPM8, that senses cool temperatures. That may eventually help explain how it is working against coughs.
Have You Tried Neosporin on Your Nail Fungus?
Many listeners and readers have tried a number of home remedies against nail fungus, including Vicks VapoRub. Some of the herbal oils in Vicks, such as thymol, have antifungal properties. You’ll find many of the same herbal oils in Listerine mouthwash, by the way. As a result, we weren’t surprised to hear that these medicine chest standards can help defeat nail fungus with regular use.
Science Supporting Home Remedies with Neosporin:
We were somewhat surprised to hear from people who found that the antibiotic ointment Neosporin sometimes clears up ugly nails. After all, antibiotics should have no impact on fungal infections, and yet people were telling us that it worked well and relatively quickly. Then we found research indicating that some nail infections are bacterial rather than fungal (Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association, March 1, 2021). That makes the success of Neosporin much less surprising!
Criteria for Remedies Worth Trying:
Years ago, a nurse who told us about using Vicks VapoRub on the soles of the feet for a nighttime cough offered few simple criteria. We have adopted them. We agree that a home remedy is worth trying if it:
- Can’t hurt
- Might help
- & doesn’t cost very much
Please tell us about your favorites! You can email us: radio@peoplespharmacy.com or call 888-472-3366 between 7:00 and 7:50 am EST on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024.
This Week’s Guest:
Oliver Peer is one of the most prolific goal-scorers in the Ontario Hockey League, the top developmental hockey league in the world. The 20-year-old forward leads the Flint Firebirds in goals, assists and points.
Listen to the Podcast:
The podcast of this program will be available Monday, February 26, 2024, after broadcast on Feb. 24. You can stream the show from this site and download the podcast for free.
Air Date:February 24, 2024
Cindy
Recently I had an infection in my gum that was bad enough to produce bleeding and pain below the tooth. I tried one of my favorite home remedies for tooth problems, oil of oregano. Within about two days the infection was 90% better. It happened that I had an appointment for teeth cleaning about a week later. My dentist wanted to put me on antibiotics even though the infection was almost gone. She did not believe it had been bad and got better from using O of O. I told her “No thank you. I’ll keep doing what I am doing, and if gets infected again I’ll call you.” It is now 100% better. She gave me the ‘look’ when you tell a medical professional about a home remedy that truly works.
Carli
I tried milk thistle to help my liver and found it got rid of my toenail fungus and fungus under the breasts and did this extremely quickly! I’m thinking it helped my liver handle these situations properly. Nothing the foot doctor told me to do worked, including his expensive creams.
ROBERT
I find that eating carbs or no carbs have a relationship on how many cramps I experience at night. If I want a snack near bedtime I will eat a small amount of chicken. It’s satisfying. Prepared ahead if time in a pressure cooker. Never fried.
Florida K
My favorite home remedy, which I learned about here, is yellow mustard for burns. I used it again last weekend when I burned my index finger on my toaster oven. I put my finger under cold water for a couple minutes right away, but noticed a few hours later that it was getting red and tender. I put some yellow mustard on it, put a bandage around it and left it on overnight, being careful not to get it wet in the meantime. It never blistered, and you can barely see where I was burned. LOVE this home remedy and recommend it to family and friends all the time.
Michael
How do I recognize Ichthammol? I went to both CVS and Walmart websites, and they made a lot of suggestions for pain relief creams, etc, but hard to tell which, if any, were, Ichthammol.
Daniel
I used polysporin on the toenail “fungus” I had for years, and it cleared up in 3 days. It has not come back after at least a year. I’m posting this because I tried everything else the foot doctor prescribed (except removing the nail), and nothing made any change at all.
Usually when you hear something like this it sounds too good to be true. But for a small amount of polysporin, which I already had, it was worth a try. I’m convinced now that home remedies can sometimes work.
Jeanni
I always research for home remedies first before I relent to taking a prescription drug. For example I was born with what they called a heart murmur (I am seventy nine) and have always had missed beats, heart flutters or a racing heart beat almost every month throughout my life. They only last a minute or two and I have learned to live with them. Three years ago I started drinking 8 oz. of grape juice daily because it makes your blood less sticky. Since then I have noticed that I very seldom experience these issues with my heart. In fact the varicous vein in my left leg that I have had for years has pretty much gone away now.
Another home remedy was for a cyst on my left shoulder that I had three years ago. I went to a doctor and he said he could drain it but it would come back. Instead when it had started to drain I applied Ichthammol ointment (which you can buy at the drug store) it is a drawing agent and I applied a bandage twice a day until it quit draining and the cyst has never returned. I also did this remedy for a friend of mine who had a cyst on his shoulder and had dealt with it for over ten years. After applying Ichthammol and a bandage twice a day his cyst has never returned and that was seven years ago. Ichthammol is also great for cuts or scrapes if they are starting to get infected and for helping draw out splinters or insect stings. I learned about Ichthammol from my father who was a medic in the Army during WWll.
Mary J
I continue to be amazed at the number of people who accept no solution unless “science” confirms it.