Here are some interesting ones:
1. If you’ve got an itch in your throat, scratch your ear. When the nerves in the ear get stimulated, they create a reflex in the throat that causes a muscle spasm, which cures the itch.
“When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm.”says Scott Schaffer, M.D., president of an ear, nose, and throat specialty center in Gibbsboro, New Jersey
2. If you have trouble hearing someone at a party or on the phone, use your right ear it’s better at picking up rapid speech. But, the left is better at picking up music tones.
This is according to a study done by researchers at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine: You can read the full article here.
3. If you need to relieve yourself badly, but you’re not anywhere near a bathroom, fantasize about relations. That preoccupies your brain and distracts it.
4. Next time the doctor’s going to give you an injection, cough as the needle is going in. Studies have found that people who coughed during intravenous injections suffered less pain than those who did not. According to the British Medical Journal, the act of coughing causes a sudden, temporary rise in pressure in the chest, inhibiting the pain-conducting work of the spinal cord — leading to pain-free injections.
You can read more about it here: Coughing can reduce pain of injection, study shows | BMJ
5. “Clear a stuffed nose or relieve sinus pressure by pushing your tongue against the roof of your mouth then pressing a finger between your eyebrows,” says Lisa DeStefano, D.O., an assistant professor at the Michigan State University college of osteopathic medicine. This causes the vomer bone to rock, which loosens your congestion and clears you up. After 20 seconds, you’ll feel your sinuses start to drain.
6. If you ate a big meal and you’re feeling full as you go to sleep, lay on your left side. That’ll keep you from suffering from acid reflux it keeps your stomach lower than your oesophagus which will help keep stomach acid from sliding up your throat.
Studies have shown that patients who sleep on their left sides are less likely to suffer from acid reflux. The oesophagus and stomach connect at an angle. When you sleep on your right, the stomach is higher than the oesophagus allowing food and stomach acid to slide up your throat. When you’re on your left, the stomach is lower than the oesophagus so gravity’s in your favour.
Remember, it is not advisable for you to go to bed immediately after eating. Wait for 2 to 3 hours.
7. You can stop a toothache by rubbing ice on the back of your hand, on the webbed area between your thumb and index finger. You can relieve a toothache by rubbing the back of your hand between thumb and index finger (the V zone where the bones of the two fingers meet) with an ice cube. Rub the hand on the side of the body where the toothache is located.
Researchers at McGill University (Canada) have shown that pain intensity can roughly be halved by numbing the hand in this manner for about seven minutes (with the effect assumed to likely be due to the interruption of pain impulses travelling to the brain). The research done involved a small sample size: 22 men and 14 women. So, it is hard to say if the findings were correct.
8. If you get all messed up on liquor, and the room starts spinning, put your hand on something stable. The reason: Alcohol dilutes the blood in the part of your ear called the cupula, which regulates balance. Putting your hand on something stable gives your brain another reference point. The tactile input from a stable object gives the brain a second opinion, and you feel more in balance. Because the nerves in the hand are so sensitive, this works better than the conventional foot-on-the-floor wisdom
9. Stop a nose bleed by putting some cotton on your upper gums right behind the small dent below your nose and press against it hard. It’s believed putting pressure on your gums blocks an artery that supplies blood to the nose. If it doesn’t work, you could press between your eyes, where there is also an artery. If you cool the area with a cold fabric, that may help as cold makes the arteries constrict. If it doesn’t stop within five to ten minutes, you might need to get more advice at your local walk-in centre or call your GP.
10. When you accidentally singe your finger on the stove, clean the skin and apply light pressure with the finger pads of your unmarred hand. Ice will relieve your pain more quickly.
11. Nervous? Slow your heart rate down by blowing on your thumb.
“This idea has its roots in the fact that the thumb has its own pulse,” says Dr Ghosh. ‘If you can calm that pulse down, you’re effectively calming the heart down, too.
“Blowing will cool the thumb and hence calm the heart rate, as cold does slow down your pulse.
This method might also help because the act of blowing itself forces you to deepen your breathing, which calms your heart.
“Oxygen is the natural antidote to the adrenaline which raised your heart rate in the first place. Hyper-inflate your lungs to ensure maximum oxygen intake to calm down. Breathe in for seven seconds, hold for three seconds, and out for seven seconds.”
12. You can prevent brain freeze by pressing your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, covering as much surface area as possible. Brain freeze (also known as Ice-cream headache) happens because the nerves in the roof of your mouth get extremely cold, so your brain thinks your whole body is cold. It compensates by overheating which causes your head to hurt. By warming up the roof of your mouth, you’ll chill your brain and feel better.
13. If your hand falls asleep, rock your head from side to side. ‘Pins and needles’ (paraesthesia or limbs ‘falling asleep’) is a sensation of uncomfortable tingling, usually felt in the hands or feet.
A common cause is awkward postures that compress the nerves. Your hand falls asleep because of the nerves in your neck compressing, so loosening your neck relieves it. If your foot falls asleep, that’s governed by nerves lower in the body, so you need to stand up and walk around.
On the other hand, one of the worst body hacks is to trick your body when going underwater (discussion and images from Wikipedia article):
- DO NOT hyperventilate before going underwater – you can drown. (This is called “Shallow water blackout”.) There is a folk belief that this increases your blood oxygen level, letting you stay underwater longer, but it doesn’t (your blood oxygen level is already pretty saturated), and is very dangerous. Instead, it decreases your blood CO2 level, reducing your reflexive respiratory drive (i.e., “must…breath…now”), tricking your body into not begging for air when it needs it, leading to drowning. Your body uses the CO2 level to judge when to breath, not the oxygen level, and thus when these are out of balance you can black out (from lack of O2) without realizing you need to breath (because the CO2 level is too low to trigger the reflex). Instead, before diving, take a moment to relax and breath normally (you may be excited and hyperventilating without realizing it), and always dive with a CPR-training buddy observing.
The above response is written by Tolu Manuwa, and it originally appeared on Quora.
This answer is not a substitute for professional medical advice. This answer is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or (in the United States) 911 immediately. Always seek the advice of your doctor before starting or changing treatment. Quora users who provide responses to health-related questions are intended third party beneficiaries with certain rights under Quora’s Terms of Service (http://www.quora.com/about/tos).
