Old Wives Tales

**Discussion begins at 4:40**

Today, we are unraveling age-old superstitions, myths, and beliefs passed down through generations.  Can waking a sleepwalker kill them?  Is it true the caffeine stunts your growth?  Do we really need to wait 30 minutes after eating to go for a swim?  In this week's episode, we are exploring the origins of these quirky traditions and uncovering the truth behind them.

Transcript

Hey, guys.

Hey.

How's it going?

Welcome back.

We are here for another podcast.

Happy Tuesday.

With just the two SchemeQueens.

Two SchemeQueens.

Colleen is doing a deep dive looking for Megalodon.

Colleen is getting all ready to go for our season 2, coming in a few months.

I know.

I can't believe it.

Also, by the time you guys hear this episode, Kait will be one year older.

So, yeah.

Happy birthday, Kait.

Thank you.

He's 37.

I'm not afraid to say my age on air.

I'm 37.

What are you guys going to do about it?

I actually, you know how you think about, like, what is your age in your head?

You know, for a long time, I was, like, still in my 20s, but I don't think I'm in my 20s in my head anymore.

I think I'm solidly, like, early 30s in my head right now.

In my head, I'm...

every year, I'm 30.

Yeah.

So is it time for our...

Drink check!

Drink check!

Today, we're having just, like, an unorganized drink check, if you will.

Yeah.

So a lot of times, we try and, like, match the vibe, match the theme.

Today, we did not match the theme.

However, I would think that we're matching the theme of our day.

So, Maggie, what you drinking?

I'm having a McDonald's large diet coke from the fountain with an extra wide straw.

Yeah, the wide straw really does it.

It's like a little, you know, lunchtime recording sesh, midday, if you will.

And I was like, you know what would slap right now?

A diet coke.

And I was almost to your house, so I had to go, like, 15 minutes out of my way.

Really?

To go, yeah, I was just stopping at 7-Eleven.

Oh, yeah.

But I didn't want to turn my car off in case it didn't turn.

Like, I was like, if my car doesn't start and I have to jump it, I want to be here in your driveway.

I don't want to be.

So I wanted to go somewhere with a drive thru.

And Bourbon Boy has to be around because...

I mean, I jumped it to get it here, but...

I'm always afraid I'm going to blow myself up if I jump the car.

I've jumped enough now, though.

You just do red to red, black to black, right?

Yeah.

You all have heard about my summer car that I bought from my friend Sarah.

Yep.

The yellow Mercedes convertible, 1998.

So it's been in the driveway all winter.

So of course, the battery didn't start.

But we got her running.

She had a little joy ride today.

She did.

What are you having over there, Kait?

Just a cup of coffee with some frothed nut pods, milk in there, or I guess you should say dairy alternative.

I don't know.

And a Tay mug that I stole from Mermaid Girl at our Christmas party during the Yankee swap.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

She was mad at me.

But I love it.

Thanks, Mermaid Girl.

Kait doesn't let anyone make her coffee for her because no one does it like she does it.

She does make some good coffee.

And I even invested in, what is the frother brand?

Nespresso.

I even got myself the same.

I have an espresso machine with a frother, but your Nespresso frother.

Yeah, it just is the best.

The best.

Yeah.

And you just hit a button.

You don't have to stand there and hold the milk.

Yeah.

Don't worry about getting sprayed and burnt.

Yeah.

We have a fun little podcast for you guys today.

Yeah.

It's sort of conspiracy theory, but not quite.

I would say this is like a Colleen episode where she's like, this is just a mystery.

Yes.

Because up until a year into the podcast, conspiracy theories were just mysteries in her mind.

Yeah.

So yeah, this all started because I was hassling Kait about letting her nine-year-old have a couple sips of coffee before a soccer game.

Yeah.

And I said, you're going to stunt his growth.

And I said, no.

I said, no, this is like a stimulant for his brain because he has ADHD.

Well, diagnosed by Kait.

Diagnosed by me.

So anyway, but she was like, you know what, we should look up some of these old wives' tales.

And that's what we're doing to get old wives' tales.

So yeah, we're going to talk some of the old wives' tales.

Maybe you heard from your parents, maybe from your grandparents.

Yeah.

Maybe from their grandparents.

And then ones that I feel like I still repeat today.

I don't even know if I do them, but some of them I repeat for sure.

All right.

Well, we got a bunch, so we split these up and well, maybe I'll start with the one that started at all.

Okay.

Will coffee stunt your growth?

I honestly, this is the one that's always scared me the most because I started drinking coffee when I was in like eighth grade, which like looking back is very young.

To be clear, your son is in third grade.

Yep.

And he gets about a quarter a cup of coffee on game day?

Sometimes.

I didn't give it to him last time, but in the morning, I'll give it to him just to like pep him up.

My dad used to make us get in the shower in the morning because he said that taking a shower helps wake your brain up.

But there you go, that's another old sweat.

We're not doing that one.

I agree with that.

Isn't that something with like a dopamine response?

I agree with that.

I know that you're a shower that I before kind of...

Yeah.

I have to shower in the morning or else I'm not...

Functioning?

Not awake and ready to go.

Yeah.

I think showering makes me feel like it's time to like wind down.

It like signals to my body like, oh, you're warm.

Get on your pajamas.

You're clean.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's fair.

Whatever works for you, I guess.

So let's take this back to CW Post.

Of Post's serials.

Oh.

He was a student of John Harvey Kellogg.

He was really into pseudoscience and claimed that a lot of ailments were caused by caffeine.

So Post starts making these ads that include anti-coffee propaganda.

No.

And one was a picture of a little kid in a classroom alone and it says, held back by coffee, this boy never had a fair chance.

Oh, how the tides have turned.

It's kind of dark.

Yeah.

So this was probably reinforced by very old studies that reported that coffee drinkers had an increased risk of osteoporosis because caffeine increased your body's elimination of calcium, lack of calcium contributes to osteoporosis.

And so, you know, is that stunting your growth?

Yeah, ipso facto.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Well, not true.

These findings have never been confirmed by any other studies, and the calcium excretion is so minimal, it wouldn't actually have any kind of effect.

The thought is that those initial studies didn't account for the fact that people who drank more coffee also drank less milk and calcium-containing beverages.

The lower overall consumption of calcium is probably what contributed to those findings.

So caffeine can impact sleep.

It does have appetite-suppressing effects, which theoretically could halt our growth.

But again, we have no proof proof of that correlation.

I think that we do know that children born to parents on caffeine during pregnancy are smaller.

That's why they kind of say limit your caffeine intake to what do they tell you, like two cups of coffee a day or something?

One cup, 200 milligrams.

You did not follow that?

No, no, no.

With your first baby, yes.

Second baby, you're just trying to survive.

Second baby.

And Joey was, she's the tallest one in her class.

And she was a chubby baby.

Yeah.

Well, the thought is that when you have a lot of caffeine, you get vasoconstriction and that could potentially decrease blood flow to the fetus.

But again, there is no research on this.

This is just kind of like the theory.

I also thought the caffeine restriction during pregnancy was actually also more about like blood pressure and that kind of thing.

Oh no, I thought it was just like intrauterine.

Okay.

And you know what I did write the fact down, which you knew from memory.

March of Dimes recommends no more than one and a half cups of coffee or 200 milligrams of caffeine a day.

We have we have other studies that show adults with coffee consumption have health benefits like lower risk of coronary artery disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, arrhythmia, stroke, Parkinson's, gout.

But we don't really have any studies on children.

We do know that it can, I wrote a lot here about this.

Yeah, I know you had a whole lit review like I said.

I did.

Okay.

It can briefly, transiently enhance athletic performance, which is why a lot of competitive sports ban excessive caffeine consumption.

But that makes sense then as far as why Patch might be a better soccer player after a couple coffee.

Yeah.

There's a 2020 NIH lit review found improvement in energy distribution in the central nervous system, improvement in physical performance, elevated short-term arousal and increased motor activity, perception and intelligence in the long-term, and improvement in respiratory function.

Which again, we do use caffeine in patients for this purpose.

Babies especially, if babies have apnea, they'll give them caffeine.

I don't know that I've seen a lot of benefit, but we have comatose patients that aren't breathing will sometimes try a little bit of caffeine.

That makes sense then that that would translate to improved respiratory function when you're being physically active.

This lit review did find some negatives though, like sleep cycle disruption, which could lead to alterations in weight and growth, as well as greater anxiety and depression.

There were a lot of critiques for the studies in this review, like most of them didn't look at the quantity of caffeine.

Caffeine has a dose response effect, so since children are smaller in size, it would take less caffeine for them to see the impact.

So the symptoms, anxiety, irritability, sleep disturbance has an increased heart rate.

To summarize, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no caffeine for kids less than 12.

Eek, sorry.

But again, we have no proof that there's any death-reactual effect.

And then no more than one cup of coffee from age 12 to 18.

So how much coffee were you drinking in the eighth grade?

Probably like one cup before school, I would drink it.

Okay.

Again, this goes back to me thinking I have ADHD.

What did you put in your coffee when you were in?

Splenda and half and half.

In college, I think it was Splenda and skim milk.

That's still how I drink my coffee.

Back in the day, when I was drinking half and half of my coffee, I was like, what is this one tablespoon going to do?

Yeah.

Well, that's how I feel now too.

When I'm like fancy creamer in, I'm like, it's a tablespoon.

I'll take the 30 calories.

Right.

I also like to put a little hazelnut flavoring back in the day, back when I was in high school.

Yes, I loved a hazelnut as evidenced by my coffee right now.

But back on to the question about kids, uh, Kait, fear not, because the Canadians, the Canadians have a slightly more lenient recommendation.

They say that kids age 4 to 6 can have 45 milligrams of caffeine, which is about a half a cup of coffee.

Yeah.

You know what?

You're doing okay with the parenting as far as the Canadians go.

I mean, listen, the American Academy of Pediatrics also said during COVID that-

Screen time.

Screen time is fine and all this stuff, and now we're having all these issues with the kids.

So maybe-

We don't trust the American Academy of Pediatrics?

I feel like that's a bold statement, but maybe I can use my judgment.

I actually have zero opinion on the American Academy of Pediatrics' full disclosure.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so that as far as like you keep implying, like I think that the caffeine help my ADHD, I think it could help patches ADHD.

I know there's no study that says it does.

Studies have shown that caffeine is not an effective treatment for ADHD in children.

It may provide a temporary boost in alertness, but it does not improve their long-term attention to behavior.

And we don't really have any long-term studies demonstrating benefit.

But frankly, the takeaway is it's not going to stunt your growth.

As we say with everything, everything in moderation is fine.

Again, less than a half a cup of coffee you're set is getting.

He's enjoying it.

Yeah.

He's reaping the, he likes the taste.

What he likes the taste was weird.

Yeah.

It's like my coffee too.

It's not like sugar loaded.

It's not like a, like, and one time I got him a, like, I think it was like a decaf coffee for his birthday.

And it was like birthday cake or something.

It was like from a, we were in Williamsburg.

And I brought it back for him and he was, he like took two steps and he was like, this is gross.

He's also got his hippie mom's weird.

He'll be like, this ice cream tastes fake for McDonald's.

So thank you.

He also lectures his classmates on how bad lunchables are for him.

I think he did it one time.

And he also likes salad.

So he has like, he loves salad.

Very refined palate for a night.

He has an adult sense of taste.

That's what I say.

In comparison to Joey, who was like, I like chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese and hot dogs.

And what did I make the other day?

And she was like, I like this too.

Oh, it was a salad, but with croutons.

They have to have the croutons.

Well, what I liked growing up, I ate yogurt for dinner a lot.

I do that to Joey.

And I liked a corn dog.

I remember we used to have corn dogs at my birthday parties, and no one else liked corn dogs.

So my mom made me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I didn't even like pizza or french fries as a child.

And now I'm like, you know.

You didn't like pizza or french fries?

No, but I'm still a picky eater, but I was like a real picky eater back then.

Oh my gosh.

I don't think I've ever been a picky eater.

But my mom showed me a list that I made her when I was a kid, and I was like, I like all of these things.

And Joey, she's me.

Okay, Megan, have you ever like walked out of the house with wet hair and someone's been like, I can't believe you're leaving the house with wet hair.

You're going to catch a cold.

I mean, I generally go to work with wet hair every day, and then in the parking lot at work, I pull it up into a bun.

I mean, I feel like my grandmother would be like, you're leaving the house with wet hair?

Sure.

Growing up, my mom was like, don't you want to dry your hair?

You're going to catch a cold, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, does wet hair actually cause a cold?

I wish I had a very long answer for you, but the answer is no.

There's not even like studies that are done on this.

It's just that the answer is no, because cold and flu, like during, I think it's like goes back to, you know, you go outside, you get cold from your hair being wet, but viruses tend to like be able to reproduce in the body like more efficiently when it's cold outside.

Yeah, that's how we have like cold and flu season is like winter, fall, winter, spring.

Right.

And so those are like, I think it's sort of tied to that sort of idea.

Also, like your head, your hair does keep your head warm, and dry hair will keep your head warm, but it's all that cold still doesn't like let in more viruses during the cold weather seasons.

In order to like fight off the common cold, do you know what you should do?

Tell me.

Wash your hands.

That's it.

You should wash your hands.

So obvious, it's like vitamin C?

Yeah, no.

Wash your hands.

That's it.

And get a healthy diet and do some exercise, you know, like walking and stuff.

But yeah, there's really like no evidence that supports that wet hair is gonna equal a cold.

There's no causative link, if you will.

Got it.

That's that?

And that is from the Mayo Clinic.

No, NIH.

No, there's no late reviews.

No, no.

So when your grandma says you say, Grandma, actually, I love you so much.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

He just said, so when your grandma says something, you say, Grandma, and she made a gun motion with her hand.

That's a little bit aggressive, okay?

Yeah, that was too aggressive.

What you say is like, okay, thanks, Grandma.

And then you just in your mind are like, it's not 1800, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, well, have you been spending time at the pool with the kids yet?

Oh yeah, we went to the pool yesterday, yeah.

When you're at the pool, and do you make Joey and Patch wait till after snacks?

You can't go into the water until 20 minutes.

I actually don't, but when I was a kid, my parents used to like, I grew up with a pool in our backyard, and my parents would make us wait 20 minutes after our meal before we went back in the pool, or we would get belly cramps.

That's what they said.

Yeah.

Well, also though, were you wanting a lot about belly cramps?

I mean, I had like a stomach ache like every day of my life.

So did I.

But now we think that might come from anxiety.

I also heard, though, that if you had a lot of stomach aches, do you get migraines?

Every now and then.

Yeah.

I get, I mean, probably a couple times a year.

I have a massive migraine sufferer.

But I hear now, too, that if you have, that if you got stomach aches a lot as a child, you're like more prone to have migraines in adulthood.

So sometimes they think that it could be like, that could make a childhood migraine.

Oh, that's so interesting.

But yeah.

At health.

Yeah.

You snap them every day.

But you know what?

Yeah.

We're going to debunk this one, okay?

So the no swimming after eating theory comes from this idea that when you eat, your body diverts blood to your stomach to aid in digestion.

And so if you're diverting blood to your stomach, you are diverting blood away from your arms and legs.

And really the cramps should not be in your abdomen, but in your arms and legs, which could make it difficult to swim.

Oh, that makes sense.

But let me take you back to a very recent study in 1961.

Very recent.

Very recent study.

Didn't they always tell you in school, like, we don't want any sources that are more than 10 years old?

More than five.

Oh, is that?

So they're saying these.

Yeah.

So 1961, they had patients eat a large meal, and then when they had some abdominal distension, they would get an EKG to just see if there was like-

What?

An EKG?

Yeah.

They're looking to see if there were signs of ischemia related to the blood being diverted to the gut.

Oh my gosh.

And shocker.

It wasn't.

Otherwise, we'd all be dying.

I hate every time we ate.

You eat too much and you have a heart attack.

There was a follow-up.

You get angina every time you eat.

There was a follow-up.

That's called unstable angina.

There's a follow-up study in 1962 that looked at a whopping 14 subjects, and had them swim 100 yards freestyle, and they compared their times at various intervals from eating.

So a half hour after eating, one hour after eating, an hour and a half, two hours, two and a half, and three hours.

My gosh.

Could you imagine not eating for three hours while you're doing all the swimming?

I'd be so hungry.

That didn't even cross my mind.

But Kait has to eat every two hours.

Well, they found that there was no variation in the swimtimes.

So varying your interval from eating did not seem to have an impact on your swim time.

The American Red Cross Scientific Advisory Council published a, quote, lit review, which really just looked at that above study and said there's no correlation between eating and drowning or near drowning events.

So, you know what?

Eat your PB&J and then jump in the pool.

Right.

Live your life.

Yeah.

And you guys heard it here first in Summer's Coming.

Yeah.

So now we know.

Thank you for that lit review, Megan.

Of course.

Yeah.

Okay.

So our next one, will hair grow back thicker if you shave it?

Listen, I have very fair hair all over, right?

But I always heard this from people who had like dark hair, who were like, oh my God, I have females who were like, oh, I've got like a chin hair or something.

I would be like, don't, don't shave it.

It's just going to come back thicker.

Right.

Now there's all this like, it's like the thing to shave your face right now as a female.

You know, those like derma, you know what I'm talking about?

Those like, that's what they say it's supposed to be for.

It's like dead skin.

It's not to shave the hair off your face.

But then I've never done it because it makes me nervous because like, what if I get coarsed, fine baby hairs that come back?

Yeah, that would be devastating.

Yeah.

I don't want to be like rubbing cheeks with Bourbon Boy.

And he's like, why is your face feel like I'm rubbing a man's face?

You guys are going to have like a whisker burn?

Yeah.

All right.

Well, is it true?

Well, no.

Okay.

You hesitated.

Well, it doesn't make it grow back thicker, but it can make it grow back.

Well, it just makes it feel coarser, which is why I think that like people think it makes it grow back like more.

It makes it grow back darker and coarser, but not more.

Like there's not a more.

It's thicker.

Why is it darker and coarser?

Because of like the blunt edge and like the way it grows back.

I don't know.

That's what it says.

That's what it said.

I thought it was about the fact that like, you know, if you look at your hair like on your head, your long hair, it's thicker at the root and like finer at the tip because it's just, you know, breaks and is all filthy.

Yeah.

And so I thought that it's like, what's coming directly out of the follicle is probably going to be a little bit thicker, but no.

I mean, don't you remember when everybody was like buzzing their head and when we were younger, like boys were like buzzing their head.

That was like the way to wear your hair.

Do you remember this?

No.

Oh.

Well, I feel like a lot of the kids-

Maybe this was a North Carolina fad.

Maybe.

I don't know.

But I feel like a lot of the boys were like buzzing their heads back in the day.

And then you would like feel their head and it would feel like so soft.

Their hair was like really soft.

I could just see like 12-year-old Kait being like, trying to flirt with all the guys in her class, being like, let me feel your head.

They loved it.

It could be one of those things.

I look back and I'm like, did they love it?

Just like your teachers loved you so much, they made you sit next to them.

Yeah.

I just have really good self-esteem.

And you pass that on to your daughter.

Both of them.

Both that and doing.

Anyway, there was a study published in 1970.

So we're getting a little bit earlier.

This is hot off the presses.

Yeah.

Yeah.

By Yelva Linfield, who was a doctor, MD.

Whoa.

And Peter McWilliams, also a doctor.

And they studied a whopping five young men, really big N here, guys.

Yeah.

Sample size is large.

So the men shaved one leg weekly for several months.

And they found that there was no actual significant differences in the total, quote, weight of hair produced in the area that was shaved versus the area that was not shaved.

Okay.

I wonder...

So this is like a, this is a control study.

I wonder how they weighed it.

Did they just like at the end of the whole thing, shave of both and put the cuttings on a...

I guess, I don't know.

Okay.

That was from an article that said, so Mayo Clinic then, you know, on their website, it says, shaving hair doesn't cause, you know, greater thickness, but this is where they say it can give hair like a blunt tip, which may make it feel more coarse, or like, which could make you think that it's coming in more thick.

So debunked.

Don't use that as an excuse not to shave your legs, I guess.

Right.

I mean, honestly, I feel like the longer I've shaved my legs, the less hair I have.

Well, we're also getting older.

Okay.

Wow.

I don't know about you, but I'm Italian.

All right.

Do you sleepwalk?

No.

Have you ever known a sleepwalker?

No, because sleepwalkers freak me out.

Well, cause haven't you heard, you're never supposed to wake a sleepwalker?

Yes, but also just like sleep.

Oh, you know what?

My brother has sleptwalked.

He sleptwalked a couple of times, but like not.

Like when I think of sleepwalkers, I think of that girl on TikTok that like records herself.

You don't know what I'm talking about.

Okay, Colleen.

She is so freaking funny when she sleepwalks.

Like if she, and she knows like if she eats cheese, it's like she eats cheese, and then if she eats cheese, she'll sleepwalk.

So this is when she like she'll like do it and then record what she does.

And she like has full on conversations with like her plants.

So I can't believe I've never seen her.

She is so funny.

And she like, I don't know, she'll like post and she'll like fart and she'll be like, like look around.

Did you ever wake your brother up when he was sleepwalking?

No.

Okay.

And honestly, I really only have like one actual memory of him sleepwalking, and he said something about a bomb.

Yeah, he must have been having a bad dream.

Okay.

So the time when you are most likely to dream is during what phase of sleep?

REM, rapid eye movement.

That's right.

And during this stage, you are paralyzed to prevent you from acting out your dreams, but it is during that much deeper sleep that sleepwalking takes place.

And so the brain is active enough for you to move, but not so active that you wake up.

In 2011, a team of Italian researchers actually looked at EEGs to discover that both wake-like and sleep-like brain patterns co-exist at the same time, and they believe that an imbalance in these two states is what causes some people to sleepwalk.

There is sleep drunkenness or sleep inertia, which is the period after waking from a deep sleep in which forced arousal can cause up to 10 minutes of disorientation.

And I got to say, I feel that.

I get called at work and woken up, and I have complete conversations, and then I have to go find the person I talk to and be like, wait, let's recap.

What are we talking about?

That's like the other day.

I had a dream.

Actually, I don't even know if it was a dream, but I woke up from a dead sleep, and I was like, oh my gosh, the kids are screaming.

I was like, Bourbon Boy, are the kids screaming?

And he like was like, what?

And I like woke up or I like went, I came out and checked on them and they were fine.

And then went back to bed and I was like, I must have had a nightmare or something.

But then I went back to sleep and I forgot that I did that until like later in the day.

And I texted Bourbon Boy and I was like, do you remember this?

And he was like, I do.

And then I couldn't go back to sleep.

It's like why when I wake up, I have to send you and Colleen audio recordings of my dream.

Because if I don't do it like while I'm still in bed, I will have no recollection.

Yeah.

So again, getting like abruptly woken up can cause up to 10 minutes of disorientation.

And the courts have actually ruled that if you commit a crime while sleepwalking or in sleep inertia, you are not culpable for your actions.

I believe that.

So it's like temporary insanity, is it not?

Yeah.

Well, there's a whole Netflix documentary about a guy who did that.

So this is really where this wives tale about not waking up a sleepwalker stems from.

Waking them suddenly is not like it's not going to cause a heart attack or die, but it might just shock them into this state of sleep inertia.

So the experts say that you should wake a sleepwalker if they are at risk of harm.

Otherwise, just try to guide them back to bed without waking them, which I feel like we always heard that you're just supposed to kind of be like, okay, come on now, go back to bed.

Yeah, right.

There was a case of 15 year old girl in 2005 was found curled up asleep at the top of a 130 foot crane, having climbed there while sleepwalking.

So that's creepy.

And we've heard stories of like people driving in their sleep and like showing up places.

So all very wild.

But it's not waking them up is not going to cause them to die.

It's just going to disorient them.

Right.

And so that's why unless they're harming themselves, you should just gently guide them back to bed.

Right.

I mean, yeah, disorientation is a legit thing when you're being woken up.

Okay.

This one is like one of my favorite ones.

I don't think a lot of people know this one, but Megan, have you ever heard about like a wart removal with a potato?

No.

Listen, I never had any warts growing up.

Oh, I did.

I have this one like skin-colored mole in the back of my hand that my mom used to put medicine on and put duct tape on, and it never went away because it's not a wart.

It's just like a little raised bum.

So perhaps-

Maybe you just weren't a dirt kid like me.

Shots fired.

I would disagree with that.

I'm kidding.

We went out and played until Captain Fred came out and whistled from the front.

That's right.

You did get locked out of the house with an apple.

That was two different stories.

I think you're confabulating.

Okay.

I was locked out of the house and told, don't come back for an hour.

Yeah.

Like go get exercise.

Right.

And I was served an apple for dinner when my mom was out of town, but those were kind of two separate stories.

So anyway, I'm saying that maybe I would like have heard more of these if it was like something I was personally.

An apple for dinner.

You would not have survived.

No.

Yes.

Maybe I do know all these things because I have had to have like multiple warts, probably like three warts off of my fingers.

And also I had a planner's wart on my foot growing up, and that one had to be frozen off too.

But anyway, did you know that if you cut a potato in half, rub the potato on the wart, like with the white part.

It has to be a white potato on the wart.

You got to get all that tater juice all over it.

When you say what, you mean no red potato or like no sweet potato?

No sweet potatoes, white potatoes, white meat.

The white meaty potato, you got to rub it on the wart and make sure all that juice gets on there.

And then you bury the halves separately, okay?

Okay.

You know what?

I was buying this until there was burying of the potatoes involved.

Yes.

Now this sounds like witchcraft.

Yes.

It will get rid of the wart, okay?

I don't believe it.

And then if you dig up the half of the potato, the wart will have transferred to the potato.

Spoiler alert, it's a root.

I was going to say, is it, are you going to suddenly, is your wart-infested potato now going to grow more potatoes?

Yeah.

That kind of grosses me out.

And now there's warty infected potatoes that we're eating.

Because did you know, potato is the one thing that all the nutrients need to survive?

Yeah.

Probably not well, but survive.

You can survive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Potatoes are also like the gift that keeps on giving.

You just eat half of one, you bury another half, and it just keeps growing.

Yeah.

Honestly, I think the potato is probably the greatest food of all time.

There's so many things you can do with a potato.

Are you going to list them for me?

Yeah.

We can do a potato board if you want.

Fried potatoes, baked potatoes, smashed potato chips, potatoes gratin.

I'm sure they've heard this story before about, so one time the three of us were in the car as passenger princessing and Kait and Colleen start talking about, we should have a board party.

Do you know how many boards we could do?

And they just started listing them.

And I was feeling like we were in Forrest Gump, talking about the different ways you can cook shrimp.

And about 15 minutes, it was never, I don't know.

It was a long conversation.

It was a while.

And then finally, I was car sick, and I just raged at them.

And I was like, I can't talk.

What did I say?

I don't know.

You're like, I cannot talk about the boards.

And it was like, I was going to make, it was like 10, legitimately, I was like, oh, we could have a pretzel board.

And she was like, oh, we can have a hot chocolate board.

And I was like, oh, we can have a pizza board.

Oh no, but I felt like I snapped it later on.

I was like, I have to apologize for snapping, but like you guys were driving me crazy.

I was trying not to vomit, and it was like just listing boards.

So anyway, we could have a potato board.

We could have a potato board.

That would be good.

I think we were hungry.

Anyway, I'd like to start with, guys, do you know what a wart is?

Tell me.

Okay, a wart is just like a benign skin growth.

It's really gross, actually.

It's usually-

Not always a virus.

Not always a virus, but it's usually caused by human papilloma virus HPV, which you mean, it doesn't have to be on your genitals.

Yep, it could be anywhere.

About 96 percent of the people on the planet are carriers.

So maybe you're a carrier, but you don't have like a-

Yeah.

It's usually, it manifests on somebody with a weakened immune system.

I mean, actually, that would not be-

I was sleep apneic until I was 12 years old.

You know this, right?

Yeah.

And then once I got my tonsils taken out, my whole life changed.

It was like, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not sleep deprived anymore.

With HPV, you can get it with any contact from an infective person, soaps, towels, swimming pools.

I did do swim teams, so probably got it from people at the pools.

Definitely, that's where I got the planner's wart from.

And there's really no way to get rid of it, except for actual treatment from a dermatologist.

But this is so funny because there are so many-

this is not just-

Don't they like have to dig in and get the root out?

Yeah, you have to like kill it.

Yeah, it goes all the way down.

It's like not just superficial, like-

Well, that's why they-

that's why they freeze them a lot, because you can freeze and then it falls off and then you get-

it usually like turns it black, and then the black part just like falls off.

Yeah.

It's gross, but satisfying.

I wonder how many listeners we've lost.

I know, I know, I know.

A wart conversation.

Sorry, guys, because there's more.

The-

this is-

so there's like, I really tried to look for like, where did this come from?

And there's-

it has to be like a word of mouth thing, because this is not coming from anywhere.

However, there are a lot of things that apparently people say you can rub on warts and it'll get rid of.

You can, like I said, rub your wart on a potato.

You can rub your wart on a choice of meat and then bury the meat in the backyard is another one.

Okay, so just go blow 20 bucks on a steak.

Yeah.

Rub your foot all over it.

It says if you bury the meat and then you dig it up, and the meat is gone, then the wart should be gone too.

Because some animal has gotten into your raw meat.

Yeah.

A raccoon was like, oh my goodness, a steak dinner.

Also, people have said apple cider vinegar and a Band-Aid, that doesn't work.

Apple cider vinegar does have anti-microbial properties, but it's like...

Cure for everything.

Yeah.

I mean, I do love some ACV.

But other people have said rub a peel of an orange or a banana peel.

Some people say a clear nail polish over, I've heard this one too, clear nail polish over a wart because it suffocates the wart, and then you repeat it every day.

That one says that that one might work, but there's like no actual meta, because it will suffocate the wart.

I kind of thought that's why I was putting duck tape on my hand, like medicine, and then duck tape over my hand.

Yeah, duck tape is another one.

And then another one rubbing.

There's a lot of rubbing food, like rubbing garlic all over the wart for two weeks.

I don't know.

You'll also scare away the vampires.

Yeah, but not the vampires of Mystic Falls.

Anyway, I also found this website that I will post to the Gram because these are like wart removal folklore from the Appalachian.

And some of these stories are like these people had multiple quote warts all over them, and then one of their parents would rub, have them go pick up stones from the yard or rocks, and they would rub the stone on the warts.

And then like...

The warts that were covering their entire body.

Right.

This is what I'm confused about.

And then they would leave the bag, they put the stones in a paper bag, and then they would close the paper bag, and they'd put the paper bag by the road.

And three days later, the warts were gone.

But in my mind, I'm thinking, you probably didn't have warts, my friend.

It was probably like hand, foot, mouth.

Like chicken pox?

Or the chicken pox.

Yeah.

The measles?

Right.

It just seems like when people have a wart, it's usually just like one.

It's not like multiple.

So there was a lot of these on this website that was like, I had warts all over my hands and feet, and then somebody rubbed a lot of rock rubbing.

I don't know why.

I don't know why it was rocks.

It's like a hot stone massage.

There was another one where this girl had warts all over her hand, and then her uncle tied a string with a knot, with like knots, and each knot represented the wart, and then he spit on the knot, like each knot.

So like if knot A went to wart A, he would spit on that and rubbed knot A on wart A, and then down the line, knot B to wart B, spit on it, rubbed the, and then threw the string in the fire, and then her warts were gone in a few days.

I don't know, guys.

Sounds...

Who needs medicine?

Okay, it sounds like these are the evidence-based material that we should be using.

So, no, that's not true, guys.

You can get a Dr.

Scholl's, speaking of warts, one time during COVID, I had two glasses of wine and found what I thought was a wart on my thumb, panicked, got on Amazon, ordered the Dr.

Scholl's frozen wart, and then forgot I did it.

And then two days later, it came, and I was like, why did I order this?

I'm sorry, this track, I mean, I know you had a couple of glasses of wine, but also this track, so you and Colleen are both the like queen of panic.

And then it was nothing, you know?

That's okay, because that's like one time my friend Sarah told me she thought Tanner had some mange on his ear.

Yeah.

And I like went to the vet for his mange, and she's like, he was at doggy daycare, it looks like he was playing.

This is a scab, and she like pulled it off.

I was like, okay, $200 for that appointment, you know?

Anyway, you guys go to the dermatologist if you have a wart.

You could also, I mean, there are like remedies on Amazon to use, but really tried and true.

Get you some frozen nitrogen and freeze that world off.

It's instantaneous.

And then I have feed a cold, starve a fever.

Have you heard that?

I have heard of that, and I thought that was true, but I guess we'll see.

This is outdated medical advice, likely originating from the myth that being cold could cause a cold, which you have debunked, and that heat was the remedy.

And eating particularly warm foods like soup would temporarily raise your body temperature due to the increased metabolic activity of digestion.

And so the idea was that if you raise your body temperature, it's like how a fever is supposed to help fight off a cold because, again, viruses live better and colder in environments.

But why, hold on, I do have a question then.

Why do we make operating rooms so cold?

I thought that was to keep away the germs.

That's true.

I do know that's why sometimes it's like you're not, you shouldn't really treat a fever because it's like your body, you know?

Right, right.

Yes, so because fever is our body's natural response to pathogens, raising the temperature hopefully makes the environment less hospitable for the pathogens.

But once you have the flu and you already have a fever, you don't want to exacerbate it.

So the original saying was actually feed a cold, stave a fever.

Oh, what does stave mean?

Hold off.

Okay.

There are also theories that support anorexia as a defense mechanism.

There was a 1979 again.

So this is our most current source, 1979, an experiment that infected mice with listeria, and it found that those that didn't eat had a mortality rate of 40 percent, and those who were force-fed had a mortality rate of 90 percent.

But we have no human studies that have replicated this.

What we do know is that antioxidants like carotene and vitamin C and E are essential to target free radicals and keep your immune system strong.

We also know that protein is necessary to fight off an infection.

There have been a few studies that illustrated that chicken soup has mild anti-inflammatory effects and can help clear nasal drainage and thin mucus.

I do love, I do love a chicken soup when we're sick.

What were you guys talking about the other day in the group chat with our friend Morgan?

Well, Morgan was talking about Italian penicillin, and my mom always made us Jewish penicillin, which was, it was basically chicken noodle soup.

But that was pretty much what she was saying too.

It was like chicken noodle soup with lemon, which I'm making tonight for dinner.

And no relation to us being sick.

We're not sick.

Yeah, we're not sick.

I just want to, it just sounded really good.

Drinking hot tea, which contains antioxidants, can also help hydrate thin secretions.

Bourbon.

Yeah, I think it's all about getting some fluid in also.

Yeah, I mean, I just also like, these things are just like, they're soothing to your body.

Like soup when you're, we've got a sore throat, hot tea when you've got a, it's just like soothing to have.

It's like, you're treating your symptoms.

Yeah, basically.

Yeah, I mean, we all know, I love a medicine ball, I love some soup, I love some tea, that all feels good for your cough and your throat.

And I mean, we always are pushing our patients to eat, right?

Right.

Like your body needs protein and fuel to recover.

To heal.

There's also another study a few decades ago where people were randomized to a liquid meal versus a 24 hour fast, and the liquid meal group had a better immune response.

So pretty much what it comes down to is like, if you're hungry, you should eat.

If you aren't hungry, don't force it, but either way, definitely hydrate.

Right.

Those were in.

And that's like a thing too, because if you're febrile, you're more likely to become dehydrated.

Yes.

Insensible losses.

Yeah.

Yep.

That's pretty much it.

We had a couple other ones, but nothing that had like a really good.

Is it true that if you swallow chewing gum, it will stay in your body for seven months, seven years?

False.

Because while our body can't digest it, we'll just pass it.

Just like hair, unless you have a hair ball, and then it stays in your stomach.

I asked Kait if she wanted to research the five-second rule, but she said she doesn't want to know.

So now we know it's not real, but it's probably not real.

Oh, she doesn't want to get into it.

She doesn't want to think about it.

I fully support the five-second rule, unless I'm in the hospital, and anything that touches the floor is immediately a no.

Oh, yeah.

You guys let us know if you heard any old wives' tales.

And maybe we'll have to do a part two at some point, you know, in season three.

Because these were fun.

If we're still all right.

It's really unfortunate that none of these were true, though.

Yeah.

Our grandmas didn't know anything.

I wish at least one of them would have been like a fact.

I know.

Interesting.

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Kait, what should the people do?

Yeah, you know what I want you to do?

I want you to take out your phone right now.

I want you to pull up three people that you think would really love this podcast, and I want you to send this to them via text message or WhatsApp or however you message people on your personal cell phone device.

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And yeah.

The 3SchemeQueens will be back together next week, hopefully.

Hopefully.

With a little Memorial Day special for you.

Yeah, Memorial Day.

We'll see you next Tuesday, I guess.

See you next Tuesday.