The holidays are here again. That means family, and family means listening to insane, ill-informed debates over every subject imaginable.
But just because your relatives are old and probably a little crazy doesn’t mean everything they say is nonsense.
When it comes to some of that old down-home folksy wisdom, for example, they’re actually right.
1. You Can Predict the Weather From Joint Pain
Everyone’s related to someone who swears they can tell when it’s going to rain (or snow, or hail, or whatever) based on the pain in their joints.
“My knee is acting up!” your relative likely wails. “A storm must be coming.” And it’s not just their imagination: Joint pain really can be a good indicator of weather activity.
Shifts in barometric pressure can cause painful swelling in joints and ligaments, especially for those who have arthritis or have suffered previous injury.
Depending on a person’s sensitivity, even small shifts in barometric pressure can be noticeable; some sufferers claim that they can detect storms days in advance.
Of course, for those without arthritis or old injuries, there’s always a good old standard barometer.
2. Chicken Soup Can Help a Cold
While any kind of soup can be nice on a wintry day, chicken soup is our cultural go-to — and according to television, movies, and our dear old grandmas, that’s not all this soup is good for.
According to them, chicken soup doesn’t just warm you up; it can also cure a cold.
Sometimes those weird, spurious-sounding home remedies get passed down for a good reason, and this is one of them.
Chicken soup has properties that inhibit neutrophils, white blood cells that fight off bacteria in inflamed cells. One of their best defenses is the creation of mucus.
Unfortunately, they tend to work in a “better safe than sorry” mode, which is what leads to the extraneous amount of snot we get during a cold, making us feel like crap.
Chicken soup slows down mucus production and allows some of it to temporarily drain.
Most of the ingredients in chicken soup work together to give the meal its cold relieving powers.
It’s also worth noting that some varieties of chicken soup (even store bought!) seem to have a better effect than others. So if Mom’s recipe isn’t doing it for you, try a different one.
3. Sleep On It and Decide Tomorrow
This advice is probably older than the very concept of advice itself. Anytime someone’s on the verge of a big decision, someone will inevitably tell them to sleep on it before making up their mind.
This sounds like the kind of tip that would only be handy if you make all major decisions while severely sleep deprived, but even if you can knock out 8 hours a night without a problem, it seems that sleeping before deciding still has a huge benefit.
Because our brains work in ways that aren’t exactly rational even at the best of times, it seems that unconscious thought is far better at coming up with answers to complex decisions than conscious thought.
Even in studies where subjects were given a decision and then distracted for an hour (as opposed to picking something right away), the difference in the quality of decision-making was huge.
Since sleep is a built-in way to not have to think about … well, anything, really, for about 8 hours, it’s the simplest way to turn off the conscious part of our brain and outsource the decision-making to the unconscious.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider