Have you ever seen TikTok remedy videos that made you question everything?
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve returned to my college town and I’m already sick. It seems like anytime I’m here I immediately catch a cold that lasts for weeks on end. It’s a universal experience for every college student, and we all want to find a magic potion to never be sick again. We search online trying to find anything that will help our stuffy noses and sore throats and then give up. This can become overwhelming to do, especially when faced with a bunch of fads and repetitive tips, especially “Just drink more water.”
As I was on my search for home remedies, I came across a few TikTok videos that sparked my interest while simultaneously making me wonder “Does that really work?”
Potatoes in your socks?
The first video I saw was about cutting a potato and putting it in your socks overnight. The narrator said it works because we have large pores on our feet, allowing the potato to pull out toxins and mucus, and reduce fevers. The next morning, her potatoes were moldy and gross looking, which apparently meant they worked.
I tried out the potato hack first; before bed, I cut two slices of a potato and put them into a comfy pair of socks. The potato slices were slimy and cold, and it definitely felt weird, and they got warmer the longer they were in my socks.
When I woke up, I was actually excited to see if my potatoes looked any different. When I took them out of my socks, they looked very similar to the video, and I was disturbingly surprised.
As for my symptoms, I didn’t notice a change in my mucus or how sick I felt, but I do think it is interesting that the potatoes did end up looking how they did in the original video.
Onion water.
The second TikTok remedy for colds that I saw was onion water. In the video, a person cuts up a yellow onion, puts it in a cup of water, then covers it with saran wrap and places it in the fridge for 10 hours. The goal is to help sinus infections, cough, colds, and RSV.
When watching the video, I was apprehensive; I like onions but drinking onion water sounded awful. I imagined drinking onion water like biting into one, pungent and spicy.
All of the comments praised the onion water and claimed it helped them, so I thought I’d try it out. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I cut up a yellow onion and put it in a cup of water and let it sit in the fridge for 10 hours.
I nervously poured about three tablespoons of the onion tea into a separate glass and drank it. The taste was a lot less flavorful than I thought it was going to be, with more of a strong aftertaste of onion that disappeared after brushing your teeth or using some mouthwash.
I did that every three hours, and I honestly did feel a difference. I ended up using it over its three days of shelf life. I felt like there was a lot less mucus in my sinuses, this hack felt like a win to me.
Facial steaming.
The final hack I tried was steaming my face, which is definitely a lot more common. The video I saw showed a person boiling water and putting it in a bowl, then putting their head over the bowl and covering their head with a towel. It’s basically creating a sauna for your face and sinuses to loosen mucus and relieve a stuffy nose.
When I tried facial steaming, it worked! It was also calming and felt sort of luxurious, like a form of self-care. The steam did loosen the mucus and made blowing out my nose a lot easier, this is something I would do again for sure.
Overall, these TikTok hacks were wacky but two out of three helped me. Out of all the ones I tried, I would do the face steam hack again the most. It was instantly effective and gave me fast relief.