As we’ve established by now, I’m full of useless information. Part of my “education” (I put it in quotations because I’m not sure they see it that way) of my parents is imparting my oftentimes useless knowledge. A common exclamation I hear from them (specifically my Mom) is: “How did you know that?” The answer is usually I read it somewhere or saw it on TV/movies. Mostly my “knowledge” isn’t that useful. However sometimes it is. You know how David Letterman used to have his segment “Stupid Human Tricks” on his show “The Late Show with David Letterman?” (Here’s a Mashable article with links to video to get you missing Dave.) Well I don’t necessarily have a stupid human TRICK but I have a few hacks for the human body. And by that I mean I have a few tricks you can use to get your body tricked into stopping something you don’t want it to do. My hacks are similar to the ones in this blog. They aren’t revolutionary but I use them often so they’ve become synonymous with me in my family.
1. 
Take a spoonful 🥄 of sugar (Mary Poppins style) and swallow it to get rid of hiccups. It works almost instantly. Sometimes for particularly tough cases you have to take more than one spoonful. My hack within a hack is to swipe the sugar packets at restaurants and put those in my purse because one packet equals one easy dosage of hiccup-squelching sweetness. My college roommate actually told me this “spoonful of sugar” tip and I’ve been using it ever since (that’s X number of years ago).
2. 
To stop a sneeze when you feel it coming on, hold your index finger under your nose and apply steady pressure until you feel the urge to sneeze subside. This one is all about timing. There are times when this won’t work because you didn’t do it in time. However, when you get the timing right it works!
3. 
Stop an ice cream 🍨 headache 🤕 (a.k.a. brain freeze) by placing your tongue on the roof of your mouth the instant you feel the brain freeze. The heat from your tongue warms up the roof of your mouth and stops the ice cream headache. The more of your tongue you can get to touch the roof of your mouth the better (it’s like a warm blanket for chilled nerves).
4. 
To cool off when you’re hot, run cold water over your wrists. This was one my Mom always used to tell me but on further research it looks like it’s actually based in science. You’re cooling off your pulse points (another pulse point is the back of your knees).
See! I’m not always full of useless information!! Sometimes it’s useful!
Note: All images were found on Google Images but I added words and design to them.
Writing By Laura 