Some people dismiss home remedies as being too easy and simple. ‘If it was that simple, why do we need medication’ they ask. While it’s a valid question, it misses a critical point — because it’s simple, it doesn’t mean it isn’t effective, at least to some degree.
When I was very young, I suffered from wheezing. This meant frequent trips to the doctor, sometimes late in the night when the wheezing got bad.
At some point, the allopathy doctor we used to go to suggested we try homeopathy as he had seen it work for a few young children. I must have been about six that time. Out of desperation, my parents lugged me to a homeopathy doctor who was an affable man with white hair who would sit and discuss the Bhagavad Gita with my dad. At the end of the visit, he would go behind a curtain, mix something and give them to us. Basically sugar pills in bottles.
He used to also give me something called ‘SOS’*. Basically, sugar pills that had to be put in boiled water and stored in a bottle. True to the term, ‘SOS’ stood for something that had to be given during an emergency — high fever or severe cold or wheezing, basically the first line of defense against any illness that befell me.
Before we move ahead, I need to clarify a couple of things — I haven’t gone to a homeopath in decades and don’t intend to. I’m not a fan or propagator of homeopathy and that largely stems from the fact that I don’t believe in it. That’s just my personal viewpoint. When I have a fever or cold these days, I don’t take ‘SOS’, I take a Crocin or an Allegra. My reason for disbelieving homeopathy also stems from seeing a couple of family members who suffered from far more serious illnesses and whose dalliances with homeopathy ended in near catastrophe. I believe homeopathy works on the principle of a placebo, something I do believe in and am learning more about. I later learned that my overcoming wheezing had little to do with homeopathy and more to do with the fact that some children outgrow it after a certain age and I was one of the lucky few.
In hindsight, the ‘SOS’ that my doctor used to prescribe to me was basically a home remedy, something I could take whenever any illness began to rear its ugly head.
We define home remedies as simple treatments that can be prepared at home. Warm milk and turmeric, buttermilk, jeera soaked in warm water, all of these are forms of home remedies and are sometimes taken before taking proper medicine. Some home remedies are backed by medical logic and some just make us feel good. Hot pepper rasam might not cure your cold but it sure makes you feel much better.
In the same vein, some people dismiss home remedies as being too easy and simple. ‘If it was that simple, why do we need medication’ they ask. While it’s a valid question, it misses a critical point — because it’s simple, it doesn’t mean it isn’t effective, at least to some degree.
I have taken the definition of home remedies a step further from something that is used to assuage illnesses to anything simple that we can do to improve any situation.
What do I mean by this?
I have observed something in myself and others — when something is obvious and easy-to-do, we dismiss it as being ineffective or too simple. This leads us on a wild-goose chase in search of complex solutions that get overwhelming and eventually, nothing gets done, leading to the worsening of an already bad situation.
Here are a few real-life examples:
a) I read a lot about goal-setting but very often, I begin the week or the day without a clear idea of what I want to accomplish. This makes me feel like I haven’t really accomplished much at the end of that time period. There are numerous goal-setting templates available on the internet but at the end of the day, it boils down to something very simple — making a list of things you need to work on, things you need to make progress on, and then prioritizing them. A simple home remedy.
Instead of doing that, I would dream about how it would be to hire a life-coach and keep looking for more goal-setting templates. I then realized I had fallen for the same trap of overlooking simplicity for something complex and not really accomplishing much. I began writing down what I wanted to accomplish and checking in on that list.
b) Back in the day, I used to work for someone who would never tell me if they were coming to the office or reply to emails on time. This was terribly frustrating, led to numerous delays and countless frustration as I would wait endlessly and be forced to ask other people if the person was coming to work. All of this would have been avoided if I just been told by the person if they were coming to the office that day or not. All it required was a message. That experience taught me the importance of informing people, even if I wasn’t very key to a project. Again, it is a simple home remedy but overlooked because not keeping people informed and taking their time for granted is deemed as okay.
c) At some point, I became obsessed with how much (the distance) I ran in a day. This led me to come up with an absurd figure of running/walking a minimum of 5km a day. If I couldn’t do that, I would not exercise. Later, I realized a 20-minute exercise session also helped me break a sweat and gave me an endorphin rush. Simple home remedy and easy to do, but again, overlooked in favor of being able to brag that I had run 5km.
d) A lot of us bank on breaks and vacations to destress. The problem is we can’t go on vacation every week. I realized that going for a walk with my wife or sitting and having a conversation on the terrace on occasion helped me decompress without the stress accumulating. I say walk/terrace as if we sit at home, there is always the temptation to reach for a gadget or watch a show on TV, both of which seem like de-stressors, but really aren’t that effective in that regard.
Here is a simple list of home-remedies that help me from time to time and are easy to do:
a) Read — By that I mean read a book, not someone’s Instagram feed. I have converted my commute time to reading time and it has helped me take the stress out my daily commute to a large extent.
b) Sleep/get the rest you require - It’s a trite topic and I have worked in places where needless overwork was worn as a badge of honor. Studies show that most people need a minimum of 7 hours of sleep a night and that those who claim to get by with less than six hours of sleep a night form a paltry 1% of the world’s population. If you do fall in the 1%, good for you. Otherwise, realize that if you’re not getting enough sleep on a consistent basis, you’re probably functioning in some sort of an impaired state, which ultimately affects your performance.
c) Look at nature through a fresh set of eyes — If you have ever spent time in nature, even if it is a garden, you will emerge rejuvenated. It’s a simple hack to get your mind to slow down. You may laugh at the thought of taking a stroll in the park near your house but that’s precisely why you must do it.
d) Do fewer things without a gadget — See a movie without checking your twitter feed every 15 minutes. Listen to music without doing anything else. One of the banes in my life currently is listening to music from my phone which means the song is interrupted every time I get a call or message.
e) Be less anti-social and serial killer like— That’s very tough for an anti-social person like me. Being social doesn’t begin and end with drinking with your colleagues. Try and physically meet people instead of constantly just messaging them. If you have inadvertently run into a long lost friend and spent just a few minutes catching up on old times, you already know how good that feels.
g) Give solitude a try —The book Lead Yourself First defines solitude as ‘your ability to be free from the thoughts of others.’ That is such a fascinating definition. We are so programmed to believe that solitude is physical isolation, akin to sitting on a mountain top. This again comes back to our inability to sit still in today’s world with our gadgets constantly calling out to us. How do you react if you go to a place where there is no phone or data connectivity? That’s a start point for solitude as you are then forced to be with your thoughts.
When you look at this list, your first reaction might be to laugh out loud. None of these are suggestions from another plane that is so radical. In fact, they’re boring.
But ask yourself a simple question — how many of them are you doing on a regular basis?
If you’re not getting enough sleep, are buried in your phone, have lost touch with hobbies and get little or no physical activity, you will realize how easy it is to miss the simple things that can make you feel better. Instead, if you’re banking on that dream vacation, dream job or the retirement to remedy how you’re feeling, it’s a long shot.
In many cases, home remedies are where a lot of the solutions are.
*SOS is the international Morse code distress sign, mostly sent when a ship is in trouble. In normal parlance, it is used to denote an alarming situation of any kind.
