After the ninth day without my voice, I got quite desperate. So I reached out to my ultimate favorite hipster hypochondriac, Toddy Wiseman. He is the type of person who does not drink tap water because it has fluoride in it. (He’s convinced it causes epilepsy.) He also warns of the dangers of aspartame (found in artificial sweeteners) and regularly avoids sending his pH balance out of whack by eating lots of alkaline foods.*
Because the cough drops and teas and vocal rest weren’t working, I asked Toddy for a suggestion. He found one on a Yahoo! forum an EarthClinic.com forum, posted by a woman who uses Yahoo!. It involved drinking or gargling apple cider vinegar with cayenne pepper in it. I went to Whole Foods to get the unpasteurized kind (because Toddy told me to), got a hot dog outside on the sidewalk (because it was a hot dog and it was only $2), and headed home to spike my vinegar with some cayenne pepper.
I wasn’t strong enough to swallow this combo so I just gargled it and nearly puked afterward. Half an hour later I tried it again. The next morning, I awoke with the ability to make some sounds for the first time in more than a week. I sounded like Kathleen Turner with bronchitis. But at least sounds were sort of coming out.
So. While I can’t say for sure, I gargled some of the vinegar concoction at the advice of my friend. And the next day, some of my voice returned. This has not been rigorously tested with the scientific method, but anecdotally, I took some vinegar and the next day I was sort of better. Thanks, Toddy?
*Other Todd wellness practices: Regular cold showers. Consuming spoonfuls of straight coconut oil. A stretch routine every night before bed. Neti-potting every morning.
A few corrections: The fluoride added to municipal water supplies is probably not correlated with epilepsy, though it is with plenty of other toxic effects in both the brain and body. Please visit fluoridealert.org for the top ten reasons to oppose public water fluoridation. Aspartame, an excitotoxin found in many sugar-free products including Diet Coke, is most likely associated with epilepsy and should be avoided by everyone–but especially by those with an epileptic condition like me. The information about the Apple Cider Vinegar was taken from earthclinic.com (an excellent resource for alternative medicines) and most definitely not from Yahoo Answers (the worst source of information on the internet). Lastly, I resent the hipster description. On the spectrum I’m closer to a hippie. Hipsters are hopelessly cynical elitist/nihilists without any ideals that matter. They just pretend to like things until other people find out about them and then turn around and crap on everything.
PS: Didn’t mean to sound so mean. Just wanted to set the record straight. Glad you are feeling better!
I’m pretty sure ginseng, ginger and apple cider vinegar soup will cure anything.
That sounds so disgusting.
tom kha gai (aka “miracle soup”) is the singers’ secret to vocal resurrection.
BREAKING NEWS: I have it on good authority that Elise’s mom, a.k.a. “Mamma Hu,” takes Raw Organic Apple Cider Vinegar every day for “good health!”