Passing the mung: a folk remedy for sinus congestion

Sickness abounds in my household right now and for well over a week I have not been feeling up to snuff. Up to sniff maybe. Definitely up to snuffle and up to snort but not up to snuff. It's that yucky sickness where you don't run a fever but just generally feel miserable because sinuses are congested far into your skull and breathing through your nose becomes a near impossibility. I can tell I'm on the mend now, but for a while it was rough.

A few nights ago I awoke from a deep antihistamine-induced sleep because my body could no longer sustain itself by breathing its own snot. My throat was sore from drainage and general crapitude and my sinuses were stopped up to the point that my nose was no longer even functional. Having already taken Bootafed (that's code for bootleg Sudafed) earlier in the evening I didn't want to pump more chemicals into my body, so I turned to that oracle of oracles that all desperate and overly trusting souls go to for cyber diagnoses, the internet.

Within moments I was directed to a granola-esque website that offered up folk remedies for everything from premenstrual cramps to conjunctivitis. A quick search on the terms nasal congestion led me to a lengthy list of over-the-pantry remedies to supposedly alleviate my condition and help me breathe again. I felt horrible and wanted to fall back asleep so I was open to just about any suggestions. Take note, gentle reader, desperation leads to increased lack of judgment and poor decision making.

Most all the remedies listed had two common ingredients, cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar. Some had more ingredients like horseradish or garlic or onion powder but cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar were common. Now cayenne pepper was a new one on me but I remember on WSB Radio Ludlow Porch used to have as a guest the Right and Honorable Dr. Dick Frymeyer, who would, after listening to callers rattle on about their symptoms, prescribe some folksy remedies, almost all of which called for apple cider vinegar. This website gained some credibility with me because they also centered on apple cider vinegar as a cure-all.

It didn't matter that I had never tried apple cider vinegar for anything outside of a salad dressing or that the aforementioned Dick Frymeyer was not himself a doctor and probably had a moonlighting job peddling snake oil out the back of his covered wagon. The website looked like it cared about my health, and if as many as two absolute strangers recommend apple cider vinegar for something, surely it must be a legitimate solution. Besides, I was desperate to breathe through my nose again, so I headed for the pantry.

My wife is somewhat the gourmet cook, so our pantry is chocked full of many ingredients that went unknown to me before marriage. In fact, if Monty Hall were to step into our kitchen and offer us $100 if we could produce some obscure food item, I'll bet we'd have a good shot at winning. Just off the top of my head for instance I can tell you that in the kitchen we have anchovy paste, fish oil , turmeric and coconut milk just to name a few. As far as kitchen wraps go, we have clingy plastic, aluminum foil, parchment paper, wax paper, and cheese cloth in addition to several sizes of plastic baggies. I don't mean to ramble. I'm just giving you an idea of what all we keep in our pantry.

Because you might need to know that stuff someday.

But the question is whether we had apple cider vinegar and cayenne pepper. Indeed, we did. In fact we have three kinds of vinegar and who knows how many different kinds of pepper, but the apple cider vinegar and ground cayenne pepper were fairly easy to put my hands on.

Like I said, there were several different recipes for sinus congestion cures, most of which called for cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar in varying amounts, so I thought I'd quickly skim through all of them and then come up with my own medicinal concoction. After careful consideration I took a Swanky Swig from the cupboard, dumped in half a teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper and topped it off with apple cider vinegar. I gave it a brief stir with a butter knife and sat it back down on the counter to admire my creation.

It stank.

To a parent of a one-year-old vinegar just smells like a wet diaper. Not only does cayenne pepper not help the smell, it doesn't dissolve in vinegar either. For a few minutes I just stood there in the kitchen staring at cayenne pepper particles swirling around in a pool of apple cider vinegar thinking maybe they would dissolve and this infusion would evolve into a pleasantly fragrant and tasty treat, much like the kind I might buy at a snow cone stand or a Polynesian Tiki bar.

No such luck.

I finally picked up the glass and threw the mixture as far back into my throat as I could and quickly swallowed without trying to think about what I was doing. Like a well-meaning mother with awful tasting medicine I forced every gritty drop of it down my gullet. For a moment I must have had a look on my face reminiscent of painful death. Even congested, I could tell this stuff wasn't too good.

Ass fire. That's kinda how it tasted. Easy on the fire. Mostly just ass.

As far as curative properties go, this junk made my nose immediate start running a little bit which was a slight improvement over not being able to breath through it at all. But I was still overall very congested, besides, now the misery I was experiencing that stemmed from the burning vinegary taste in my mouth would have far overridden any positive side effects this stuff had. It was just horrible.

The next morning I tried adding some cinnamon and lemon juice to the fray thinking that would improve the flavor. It did not,. The new and improved concoctionnot only left a horrible taste in my mouth but also gave my stomach acids a run for their money. Like the pepper, the cinnamon wouldn't dissolve so long after I swallowed this new concoction I could still feel and taste vinegary peppery lemony cinnamon in the crevices of my molars. I could not get rid of it to save my life. These remedies were of minimal efficacy.

Looking back, the webstie I stumbled upon was probably just some platform for people whose goal it was to bring down the drug companies. After all what would the mensches at Merck or the folks at Pfizer do if we all stopped paying attention to the TV ads instructing us to ask our doctor about XYZ pharmaceutical and instead started pulling spices and acetic acids out of our cupboards to cure our ills? Mayhem would surely insue.

I eventually did come up with a decent folk remedy for nasal congestion that I found worked rather well and tasted much better than the one I found online.

Open up a jar of apple cider vinegar and sprinkle some ground cayenne pepper on the counter next to it. Remove two Bootafeds from the blister pack and then pass them over the apple cider vinegar and pepper, making sure none of the ingredients actually comes into contact with any of the others. Now pop the two pills into your mouth and swallow. Chase with water.