It’s wild to think that knowledge and information wasn’t as easily and readily available just a few decades ago. Thanks to the internet, it now reaches billions of people on demand, and the world is better off because of it.
Now, old wives’ tales were among the many things that worked before the internet in terms of spreading information. Granted, they were often dubious or even superstitious, but their prevalence was strong.
Well, turns out, not all of it was hogwash as folks on Reddit were recently sharing old wives’ tales that turned out to be true. Thanks, internet!
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So, old wives’ tales as a concept originated centuries ago in the form of the oral tradition of storytelling. The whole idea behind old wives’ tales was to teach lessons and make concepts like death or aging easier to understand.
These tales were primarily aimed at children, but once they grew up, it was easy to understand why some grownups began picking them up too.
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Now, one of the major reasons why old wives’ tales were usually fake was because of the fact that they were most often propagated by illiterate women and communicated to children. If they were trying to scare kids off from a particular behavior, it didn’t have to be true—they just had to stop them from doing something. And it was really hard to fact-check them.
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As the centuries went by and human progress was ever so surely moving forward, old wives’ tales started getting debunked. One of the biggest oofs out there is the idea people can catch a cold from the cold.
That has since been proven to be false because a cold is caused by an infection, and not the temperature.
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Other cold-related myths include: vaccinations can make you sick (they don’t, it’s a killed virus), heaps of vitamin C will keep away illness (studies can’t prove it), and chicken soup cures colds (nope, wrong again, it’s just comfort food that hydrates you, and perhaps can help ease congestion, but otherwise doesn’t have any specific effect on a viral infection).
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Nowadays, old wives’ tales are quite literally a thing of the past and anything can be proven or disproven in just a few moments online without having to rely on dubious maiden wisdom.
However, the fact that something is an old wives’ tale doesn’t mean it’s automatically fake. This listicle is proof of it.
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For example, older folks experience joint pain right before rain because the barometric pressure tends to decrease, which in turn might make the muscles, tendons and other tissue around joints expand and put more pressure on the joints. Hence the pain.
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Another cool trick is to rub ammonia onto a mosquito bite to stop it from itching. The idea lies in the ammonia solution equalizing the counter pH of the itching caused by the bite.
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Since it’s easy to fall prey to a fake kind of thinking, then the same tricks that apply to identifying fake news also apply to old wives’ tales:
Always check the source because if it looks fake or it has a dubious reputation, its content is probably fake too. It also helps to run the information against a quick Google search to see if others confirm it.
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If anything, be skeptical of everything you hear and ask yourself how and why? The more you try to ask and answer these questions, the more likely you’ll find reason to deem something false or true.
In other words, deem it fake until proven true.
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So, have you heard any old wives’ tales lately that you were mind-blown to learn are actually real? Why not share yours in the comment section below!
And if you need a fix of more tales, be sure to check out the original Reddit thread.
