Unusual things people do to stay/get healthy?

March 10, 2013 9:15 AM

I'm going into the health field and curious about cultural/ethnic health practices that are off the beaten path. For example, can anyone tell me the "what", "how", and "why" of cupping and coining? What other cultural/religious/traditional practices can you share?

Just to be clear, I'm talking stuff like: "I'm (Puerto Rican/Buddhist/Catholic/from a village in Africa) and my (self/grandfather/mom/roommate) does this thing where he or she (whatever) in order to (cure a cold/get pregnant/tell the sex of a baby before birth/get well/ward off evil spirits)", and not "Aunt Bertha eats dirt because she says it helps her hemorrhoids".

Thanks, MeFi!

posted by mschief to society & culture (33 answers total)

In the USSR, my grandfather was a cardiologist and completely believed in the efficacy of fire cupping. I don't quite remember what it was supposed to do exactly -- I assume the same "increase bloodflow" nonsense -- but he definitely had a set of cups and did it for my mother and grandmother. He always tried to get me to do it, but the bruising it left scared the crap out of me.
posted by griphus at 9:22 AM on March 10

Also, everyone in my family used mustard plasters.
posted by griphus at 9:23 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Coining? I'm not sure this is what you mean, but my wife is from the southern US, and her grandmother from Georgia (US) does this thing where she rubs a penny on a wart to 'draw the wart out' and then she hides it, because 'if anyone finds the penny, the wart comes back.'. Looking around on Google, pennies may not have been the original coin, and perhaps this ritual arose in association with a formerly common but incorrect belief in the medicinal properties of silver. Just a guess.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:41 AM on March 10

I don't understand the difference between what you're looking for and what you're not looking for -- it sounds like Aunt Bertha's dirt-eating to cure hemorrhoids would fit in both categories.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:58 AM on March 10 [14 favorites]

This is not a wellness thing but since you said "tell the sex of a baby before birth" it's predictive like that: measure a kid's height at age 2.5 and he'll be exactly half the height he'll be when he's grown. From my Irish (County Mayo) Nana. Spot on with my 2 boys even though their height is out of sync w/both mine & their father's families.
posted by headnsouth at 10:01 AM on March 10 [2 favorites]

I'd suggest reading Anne fadiman's book the spirit catches you and you fall down for an in-depth examination of how Hmong culture perceives epilepsy and the difficulties that arose when a Hmong family with an epileptic daughter interacted with the western medical system.
posted by kavasa at 10:07 AM on March 10 [8 favorites]

Huh. Interesting stuff!

Griphus, what were the mustard plasters for? Healing in general? Colds, cancer, fever?

Library corpse, sorry for the confusion. I suppose for learning purposes I prefer "big" practices that would be relevant for healthcare providers to know, ie beliefs/practices relevant to an entire ethnic/cultural/religious group rather than to a single person.

But, that said, all this wisdom passed down from grandparents so far has been really interesting too! Please keep'em coming!
posted by mschief at 10:24 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

I think you'd be interested in reading texts from the medical anthropology field. While maybe not as interesting/unusual/sexy as cupping or other "weird" activities...some are super cool. Like the Hausa in Nigeria will eat a certain plant during lean times...but the plant HAPPENS to be an anti-malarial and that lean time HAPPENS to be during malaria season (look up NIna Etkin). Cool stuff.
posted by lil' ears at 10:24 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Sympathetic Magic see wiki.
posted by adamvasco at 10:24 AM on March 10 [2 favorites]

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but I remember hearing that my great-grandmother chase white birds (pigeons) out of the yard because she believed they would call death to the house. There was also something about leaving glasses of water in rooms to keep evil spirits away, and she knew various ways to avoid the mal de ojo (evil eye), which was said to cause birth defects among other things. There are some details here.

She was Cuban and Catholic, so there was more than a hint of Santería in there.
posted by jquinby at 10:25 AM on March 10 [2 favorites]

Griphus, what were the mustard plasters for? Healing in general? Colds, cancer, fever?

They're supposed to "open up the lungs" if you're having chest congestion/respiratory issues. They're meant for other symptoms as well, but that's the only one I'm familiar with.
posted by griphus at 10:34 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

In the USSR, my grandfather was a cardiologist and completely believed in the efficacy of fire cupping.

My great-grandmother did this. She lived in what was then Russia, and is now Ukraine, and she was Jewish, if that matters. She used heated cups (I don't think there was actual fire) on women who could not conceive because their wombs were tilted. I guess the suction was supposed to get the womb to change position? Sounds crazy as I type it, but apparently it worked, at least some of the time.
posted by DestinationUnknown at 10:37 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Oh, OK, well here's a good one about general health and cultural misunderstanding: Balinese folks have often been portrayed as serene and endlessly cheerful, but traditionally there's an interesting complex of health care beliefs and moral stigmas enforcing behavior like that, e.g. requiring that people who are recently bereaved put on big smiles to avoid catching an ill wind and getting sick. There are plenty of minor things too, like orienting your bedroom and bed such that your head rests as much toward the center of the island as possible, because the ocean is associated with sickness and sorcery, but the emotion stuff could actually have an impact on interpreting a patient. Unni Wikan's Managing Turbulent Hearts is a good source.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 10:40 AM on March 10 [3 favorites]

My family is Chinese Indonesian and we do something called "kerikan". There is a wiki page for the Indonesian version, but the Chinese version has more details (with pictures; if you're squeamish be warned that they might look kind of unpleasant).

We do it by scraping the back with a coin with blunted edges coated in Vicks (that last might be something they added when we moved to Canada). It''s supposed to help if you are "masuk angin", meaning you have wind inside but just refers to any sort of cold/flu type thing. My mom's explanation is that it "opens up the pores and lets the wind escape".

It isn't actually anywhere near as painful as it looks, but there have been cases of it being mistaken for child abuse and whenever I got it as a kid my mom always warned me not to let anyone see. I still do it now and again even though it probably has no medicinal benefit, partly because you never know, it might, and partly because it's a nice familiar reminder of being young and at home again.
posted by daelin at 10:48 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Oops, I see upon reading now that maybe this is the same thing as the coining you mentioned in your original question. I hope the info's still useful anyways. One last thing I forgot to add is that the colour of the marks is supposed to correlate to how sick you are (the darker, the more sick), but since I only ever did it when I was sick I'm not sure if it really is that different from what it looks like when you're healthy...
posted by daelin at 10:51 AM on March 10

Rural Sussex, UK, around 1900. My great-great-aunt had a wart on the end of her nose and was advised to go to the fair that had come to the village and pay a gypsy to lick it. (She paid him £1. It 'worked'—well, the wart went away thereafter.) (Sorry, I know that 'gypsy' is a dubious term, but it seems to have been the one used at the time.)
posted by daisyk at 11:11 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

bread and milk poultice
posted by backwards guitar at 11:14 AM on March 10 [2 favorites]

Mustard plasters were commonly used by people of English and Scottish descent in the US and Canada through the early 20th century as well. (They were among the treatments given to Lincoln after he was shot, for example.)

I remember being given a stick of "Camphor Ice" to rub on poison ivy, which I doubt would fly with most pediatricians today.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:26 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

well, I don't know if these fit your desired categories or not. also, they may not be very specific -- I am pre-coffee. these examples are ones off the top of my head, in my field (midwifery).

some random thoughts to throw out there - Burmese patients I've worked with using cupping, as well as moxibustion. I have a fascinating reputable research article on the use of moxibustion to get a breech baby to turn over into the right position, which I'm going to dig up right now.

other things in ob/midwifery; la cuarenta, the 40 days after birth in a lot of Hispanic cultures where a woman's supposed to basically take it very chill, not walk around a lot, not really leave the house, grandma and aunts are taking care of things. it's interesting. I get young moms who are acculturated to the US who ask me to talk to their parents to explain it's not physically necessary and mom won't keel over if she doesn't stick with it...

there are a million and one folk practices around selecting the sex of the baby based on what you eat, don't eat, do, don't do. I have to dig up my notes.

breastfeeding; have worked with Hispanic women, (unfortunately don't remember anything more specific), where breastfeeding has some associated issues, like cultures have food restrictions around it, as well as interesting emotional stuff - like moms think if they're depressed or sad or angry the milk will hurt the baby.

most fascinating; had a patient from a specific Burmese ethnic group, after the baby was born, asked to put umbilical cord blood on the baby's lips after having the cord cut (if any of my preceptors are reading this, well, they'd remember...hi guys). I don't know if it was a problem with the phone interpreter, but never did get a good explanation why.
posted by circle_b at 11:27 AM on March 10 [2 favorites]

You mentioned cupping and coining. There's also candling.
posted by ceribus peribus at 12:11 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but a friend of mine spent a lot of time in the Tibetan immigrant community in the US, and she said that people would go to great lengths to avoid ice-cold water because it was seen as unhealthy. To the point where people would be like "Stop! What are you doing?" if she put ice in her water.
posted by lunasol at 12:14 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

I think you might enjoy ethnomed.org.
posted by travelwithcats at 12:54 PM on March 10 [2 favorites]

Wrapping your feet with crushed green tomatoes helps a sore throat. I seem to remember this being a Mexican belief, though I never tried it. Only heard of it
posted by The Hyacinth Girl at 12:57 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Sort of related... We watched a video in nursing school that showed some hospital staff starting to freak out when a sick child was brought in with marks from coining. Some of them thought it was child abuse and were angry that the parents could be so ignorant as to harm their own child, etc. Then one of the other characters in the video pointed out that we glue painful metal tension rods onto our kids' teeth for years at a time just for later beauty and minor potential health benefits. It was kind of an a-ha moment for anyone who thinks that our culture doesn't do anything "weird" or "harmful in the moment with an expectation of future benefit." Braces could easily seem like child abuse to someone who's not from our culture.
posted by vytae at 1:14 PM on March 10 [7 favorites]

To the point where people would be like "Stop! What are you doing?" if she put ice in her water.

Now that you mention it, quite a few folks I've worked with from India thought the same thing about ice water. There is also the fear of fan death in Korea.
posted by jquinby at 1:19 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

More on fan death here.
posted by jquinby at 1:20 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

I did have a Colombian friend who put a peeled clove of garlic in an intimate place to help with a chest infection. She said after half-an-hour she could taste it.
posted by glasseyes at 2:30 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Braces could easily seem like child abuse to someone who's not from our culture.

And lots of Russians (read: also Ukrainians, Belorussians, etc.) do see it as absurd! Many Slavs treat great swaths of mainstream US medicine with skepticism.

By the same token, Russians (etc.) are also masters of alternative medicine. I hasten to point out that not all alternative medicine is also folk medicine. Take care to either expand or restrict your search as you see fit. But realize that there are many widespread, and potentially harmful and ineffectual medical practices that are not necessarily founded on generations of tradition.

Coming back to the Russians (etc.), my family and our various acquaintances were big fans of the so-called Kuznetsov's iplicator (see Russian Wikipedia for illustration). It is essentially a DIY "bed of nails" that you make from a kit consisting of a bunch of small, sharp plastic scales sewn onto a piece of fabric. The goal is, again, improving circulation, which is considered to be a cure for all ills (it's also the supposed mechanism of action for cupping and the mustard plasters mentioned above).

In parallel with this device, many Russians are also fans of acupuncture. Acupuncture is not at all a part of Slavic folk medicine, but there you have it. Amusingly, practitioners of acupuncture are engaged in a minor scuffle with the people behind Kuznetsov's bed-of-nails device.

About ten years ago there was very popular belief in hypnotism being used to treat smoking, alcoholism, and other substance addiction. The best-known is apparently something called the "Dovzhenko method" ("метод Довженко," e.g., plug this into Google Translate). The treatment is popularly known as getting "coded." There is a parallel belief (I don't think it's part of the official materials, but it's definitely part of the culture) that recidivism before the "term of encoding" is up leads to catastrophic medical emergencies and death.

It should be noted that (a) alcoholism is very common in Russia, etc., (b) other substance abuse is growing in incidence and carries enormous social stigma, and (c) there is very little buy-in into western-style mental health treatment, no social support for substance abuse patients, few or no accessible rehab facilities, etc.
posted by Nomyte at 3:03 PM on March 10 [3 favorites]

Some people believe drinking your own urine has health benefits.
posted by orme at 3:24 PM on March 10

In the Cook Island community where I do my linguistic fieldwork, there are two practices that might be of interest to you:

1. If you get a cut from the coral on the reef, people pee on it to stop it getting infected. They believe it has to be someone else's pee, not your own.

2. They believe that it is unhealthy to take a shower if you haven't raised a sweat first. To be clear, their "showers" involve pouring cold water from a bucket over yourself. So if they want to have a shower, they do some hard physical labour first, even if there isn't really anything that would otherwise need doing.
posted by lollusc at 5:41 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

I'm Asian and my Chinese boyfriend/mother-in-law/friends/co-workers do these things that are supposed to improve general health or cure specific ailments:

1. Drink a big glass of water (room temperature) first thing in the morning. Supposed to help with general digestive health, and makes your skin clear.

2. When your ears are blocked or you feel unwell, they'll say you're probably "overheated". Drink more water and "heat-releasing" drinks, like barley tea or chrysanthemum tea. There are tons of commercially available teas and tonics for this, e.g. Kokokam, Tan Ngan Lo, although we'll sometimes drop by a herbalist to get a homemade batch.

3. Nthing the belief about drinking cold water, especially for women who have or are expecting their period. My boyfriend scolds me about this, because I love ice-cold beverages! Something like it makes your cramps or PMS worse. A friend's Chinese mother-in-law also recommends she take a shot of D.O.M. Benedictine liqueur, during that time of the month. There are also a lot of practices and taboos during post-partum care, i.e., can't wash your hair, can't eat certain foods, etc.

4. Egg massage for fevers (which I see is mentioned on daelin's link to Gua Sha). A silver coin or ring is inserted into a warm hard-boiled egg. This is wrapped in a handkerchief and rubbed all over the body (forehead, neck, chest). This is supposed to release the heat or something. Although some people have pointed out that the supposed indicator of absorbed toxins is just a natural chemical reaction. A friend says sometimes there are small hairs in the egg, which is the result of a specific type of "hairy" fever (?).

5. General advice: many people of older generations, like mentioned, don't like taking Western medicine. If they're prescribed medicine, they'll just stow it somewhere then continue taking their own bitter herbal tea/syrup/pellets/lozenges. It can be really frustrating when my boyfriend insists on just taking his Pei Pa Koa or African Sea-coconut syrup, instead of something from the pharmacy. We compromise by allowing him to take his remedy for a day or two, and if his remedies aren't cutting it, we switch to the evil Western drugs. But the older people will not touch a painkiller. I think this was the main theme of Fadiman's book on the Hmong people, about how "non-compliant" they were with the doctor's instructions. A little follow up and supervision might be needed to make sure the medicine gets "eaten". (They "eat" medicine, not "drink" or "take" it. Using their lingo might help to establish rapport?)
posted by pimli at 2:40 AM on March 11 [1 favorite]

If you have access to the database Natural Standard (via your school or hospital) it can be a great place to look up unfamiliar traditional/"natural" treatments. There's a section about the evidence for effectiveness and another about the traditional/folkloric/theoretical reasoning behind the treatment. It's not completely comprehensive but it's very useful and interesting!
posted by mskyle at 6:13 AM on March 11 [1 favorite]

This is great stuff. Thank you guys so much! Hope future readers stumbling upon this continue to add, too.

I'll definitely look into the resources many of you have suggested. Thanks again!
posted by mschief at 10:58 AM on March 13