Instead of heading to the store for some VapoRub, influencers are placing onions on their chest to get rid of stubborn coughs.
In a TikTok earlier this month, Amoreena McNally, a radiologic technologist, said she’d been suffering from a dry, painful cough since the end of the August, and felt there was something in her chest ‘that needs to come up.’
The mom said she had tried traditional medicine – and had taken inhalers and a pill prescribed by a doctor to clear her up – but nothing worked.
So she decided to try a home flu remedy recommended by an Amish social media creator, which recommended putting slices of raw onions on her chest and covering them with a Ziploc bag full of hot water.
For the first time in three months, McNally said she ‘felt something coming up,’ adding: ‘I might look silly, but I’m gonna trust the Amish people.’
But just as fast as she found relief, her symptoms returned. Once the vegetables were off her chest, her cough was back.
She isn’t alone. McNally’s video, which has 1.1million likes, is flooded with comments from users who claim putting an onion wedge in their sock or on their chest can help ‘pull toxins out of the body’ and get over a cold quicker.
But doctors, like New Jersey-based family medicine physician Dr Jen Caudle, said there is no science behind these claims.
On her TikTok, Dr Caudle said: ‘Onion’s not gonna do that, okay? Just by putting onion in your socks, sleeping with it et cetera, it’s not necessarily gonna draw out toxins or make you less sick or things like that. Remember, we have our organs to get rid of toxins.’
Amoreena McNally said using the onions on her chest allowed her some temporary relief from what had been a three month cough. She said the symptoms returned after using it, however, and is going back to her doctor
Rachel Sheppick an Arizona-based influencer and mom, shared a video placing a slice of red onion in her sock in 2022. She said this can ‘help us stay healthy and detox’ during cold and flu season. In reply to one commenter, Sheppick said: ‘I know it seems odd, but totally works’
This is just the latest in a string of at-home remedies for common bugs that have become popular online.
In recent years, influencers have recommended putting potatoes in your socks while you sleep, eating raw garlic and drinking ice water with slices of onion in it to get over an illness.
Onion proponents claim the vegetable has natural properties that attract and kill bacteria. Experts say this is untrue.
Dr Thomas Moore, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Kansas, previously told DailyMail.com even if these remedies make people feel better, it could be because the virus was already running it’s course.
‘All these coughs and colds last about five days, for the typical respiratory virus. It can linger, but generally it clears within five days,’ he said.
‘So when something improves people ascribe it to whatever remedy they chose and start to swear by it.’
As of now, there are no scientific studies that support this claim.
The National Onion Association issued a statement saying: ‘Cold and flu viruses are spread by contact, not by floating in the air where the onion can supposedly attract or destroy them.’
The NOA traced the claim that onions can cure illnesses as far back as the 1500s, when people claimed placing the bulb produce in one’s room could prevent people from getting the bubonic plague.
Today, about 34million Americans get the flu each year and millions more get a cold or upper respiratory illness, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
For centuries, people have claimed natural properties of the onions are able to draw germs out of the air and kill them, removing illness from the home and helping someone recuperate, according to Snopes.
On McNally’s video, a user named Shauna shared that same sentiment: ‘Onions absorb germs. I used to put onion slices on the kids nightstands when they were sick.’
It seems people likewise believe onion-to-skin contact may be able to draw illness or unspecified ‘toxins’ out of the body.
For many people who get sick with a virus, there aren’t targeted treatments or cures. As a result, doctors often send people home with instructions for rest, hydration and over the counter pain killers, expecting for most healthy people, the sickness will run its course.
But this leads many people to turn to their own treatments.
Of the myriad of DIY cold and flu treatments Dr Moore has seen, including onion water and putting pressure on the forehead, he said: ‘Does it work? Probably not. But it is supportive care that makes people feel better and as though they are doing something.
‘In terms of scientific data, there are no convincing scientific papers that say these work, but if it makes you feel better that is what these remedies are all about.’
Still, Dr Caudale and Dr Moore recommend going to the doctor first before relying on items you might already have in your pantry.
Dr Caudale said on her TikTok: ‘See your doctor, cause there’s lots of things we can do, natural remedies and medications to help you get over whatever it is you’re dealing with.’
For McNally, the onion remedy itself wasn’t so cut and dry.
Though she felt relief while using it, she shared in follow up videos that her symptoms returned, and at the urging of her followers, she planned to go to the doctor for an X-ray, fearing pneumonia.
‘After I made that video last night and all the comments, I did call [the doctor] back. And now I’m going to go get a chest X-ray, just because now I’m scared.’
