If you follow me on Pinterest you may have seen that yesterday I pinned several remedies for colds, headaches, fevers, and such. I like to use natural treatments when possible instead of pills, simply because, ...well, I don't even know why exactly. At any rate I like them and so the majority of those pins were of the kind. Why was I pinning those things, you might ask?   

I got a cold a couple of days ago.

When I get a cold my nose runs like a faucet.

Constantly.

For days....

....and days.

I only had two little packages of tissues to take with me to classes, and yesterday I (thoroughly) used one and a half of them.Thank heavens for public bathrooms and toilet paper! Just throwing that out there. Anyway, I'd been through this often enough to know that it wouldn't be gone tomorrow, nor the day after that, nor even the day after that. It's irritating enough to constantly have to wipe your nose, and worse still to have to do it in public. "High! *sniff* I'm Lydia. *sniff, sniff* What's your name? *sniiiff*" You probably get the picture....
     It was, unfortunately, advisable to stay home from the first night of RUF because I knew that my meager supply of tissues and patience would run out well before the gathering was over. While I was sitting at home last night I started thinking about one of the cold remedies that I had seen suggested on several different pages.

Eating a clove of raw garlic. Sure it wouldn't taste great, but how bad could it be? I knew I didn't want to sniffling all week so I might as well do it right then. My roommate has a large supply of raw garlic and I had her permission to use some of it, so I chopped two of the cloves up and held them in my hand. My thoughts went something like the following...

"That's a lot of garlic"
"Just stick it all in your mouth at once and get it over with"
"But that's a lot of garlic. I might pass out, and I'm here all by myself"
"Okay half of it now, and if it's not too bad you can make yourself eat the rest in a couple of minutes"
"Get some water to wash it down"

     So I threw the little handful into my mouth before I could change my mind. It sat under my tongue for a few moments where it felt like it was trying to burn a hole into the bottom of my mouth.
I was tempted to swallow it all without chewing but I knew that it wouldn't work if I didn't chew it and then I'd have done it all for nothing, so I chewed as fast as I could and all the while my mouth was on fire and the horrid taste of raw garlic assaulted my taste buds. No, assaulted is too calm of a word. It was more as though my poor little taste buds were being pillaged and burned! I swallowed as soon as I could and tried to wash down the taste with water. Little did I know how long it would last! Meanwhile, I could feel the garlic down in my stomach making a similar ruckus to what which it had just made in my mouth, and I began to feel nauseous.
     I was clearly going to need to cover the taste with something else and I eventually settled on raisins. I lay on the floor and ate clumps of raisins until the sensation had somewhat passed away. The nauseous feeling passed soon enough but the taste persisted even through brushing my teeth. It was one of the first things I noticed when I woke up, but guess what! It worked! The sniffles are almost completely gone!! It is unspeakably lovely to be free of them!
     The taste lasted for a few more hours, but I got my hands on a peppermint puff candy in Statics class this morning and I don't remember noticing the garlic much after that. I was a little more worried about the rather potent garlic gas the came with the morning but that didn't last more than a few hours.

So, after this long and perhaps unnecessarily detailed account, what are my sentiments on the raw garlic cure for colds?

It is simply horrid, but it does work, so maybe, if I find a way to get rid of the taste faster and avoid the garlic gas, I just might do it again.:)