#The old adage is true “Doctors make the worst patients”

[ninthnocturne]

🌡[Keigo]

Myde was the kind of person that his friends had to keep an eye on him when he was sick. He had a habit of trying to still over work even from home. So of course his boyfriend and best friend took turns checking in on him.

Currently the Sprite was hunched over his laptop wrapped in a blanket sniffling and coughing as he kept working on patient charts from home. He would put on a smiling face and do some tele-health appointments from home as well since he was an actual trained doctor on top of his healing quirk. He might not have been able to use his power while sick but he could do the other stuff that pertained to his job, even if he should be resting.

Hearing the door open and close he looked up and sniffled a little, he looked like death. "Kei...you shouldn't be here you'll get sick too."

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

HERE IS A PROMPT FOR YOU: scully’s a little sick maybe and mulder tries to be helpful? (maybe he makes her instant ramen bc it’s the only thing he can really make that isnt in the microwave and also hey its got broth? that means it’s nutritious for the sicklies right? :’))

unabashed self-indulgence here because my brain is,,,, slightly rotting shdjdbsj. I fully believe Melissa Scully dragged her little sister out some weekend in mid-1993 to gossip about cute, jerk FBI partners and watch the silly dinosaur movie. you can pry this pointless headcanon from my cold, dead hands.

stop to think if they should

1k words | mid-s2 | tagging @today-in-fic :)

"Mulder, it's me," says Scully's stuffy-nosed voice across the phone line, and Mulder chuckles at how peeved she sounds.

She is the latest casualty to the latest cold bug going around, and had left work early the day before because of it, glaring at him when he called after her to get some rest. He supposes she must be sick of hearing that, after the last few months. First her abduction and subsequent recovery, then the quarantine after their fiasco at Mt. Avalon, then Pfaster. She's back in the field, but it hasn't been an easy time and she's probably going stir-crazy, if not crazy otherwise. She laughs louder now when she laughs, and he can't complain about that, but it's a little desperate, like she's looking for light she can't quite reach.

"Hey," he greets, "How you feeling?"

She sighs. "Achy, congested, and bored out of my mind," she says, then too-quickly adds, "But I'm fine, I promise." Which is when he knows she's not.

He's leaving the office a little late, tosses a bundle of files into the back of his car. "Want me to come over?"

"I said I'm fine, I don't need-"

"I know," he assures her. "But I've heard I'm an entertaining guy, so..."

She hesitates, a silence so thick he can practically hear it over the phone line. "Okay," she eventually says, a little quieter than before. "Sure, if you want to."

"Want me to pick anything up on my way?" He asks, smiling to himself at her acquiescence. "Some food, a movie?"

More hesitation, practically her trademark, and he's already pulling into a supermarket that he knows makes great soup. For someone with a large, obviously caring family, Scully is terrible at allowing others to take care of her. Maybe the old adage about doctors making the worst patients is true, after all. She mumbles a title and he laughs out loud, backtracking when she stammers a quick, embarrassed "nevermind".

"I got it, Scully. Half an hour, tops." He barely shuts his mouth on the casual, instinctive love you that nearly slips out, stunning himself to stillness momentarily.

He does — love her, that is, even if he can't quite pin down what that means. Her abduction proved that; she's quite possibly the most important person in his life and he's still not sure what to do about it. He buys a big container of chicken soup, enough for Scully to have leftovers for the next day, grabs a carton of ice cream — neapolitan, because he doesn't know what kind she likes best — and rents a movie. For now, he can do this for her.

She's curled up in a corner of the couch when he lets himself in, dangling the plastic supermarket bag from one hooked finger. "The party," he says by way of greeting, "Has arrived."

Scully gives half a smile over her shoulder, wrapped in a tassel-ended blanket and draped in an oversized souvenir sweatshirt he'd bought her as an apology in the Anchorage airport, after their disastrous trip to Alaska last year. That, he thinks, feels like something out of a movie. Her nose is red and her freckles are a little hidden by the flush of her cheeks, and she looks a little bit miserable, but miserable is better than genuinely ill.

"I meant to ask," she says, wobbling back and forth on the cool tile of her kitchen floor as he hunts around for bowls and spoons, "Who, exactly, has said you're entertaining?"

Mulder stops his kitchenwide search and fixes her in his gaze for a moment. She's teasing him, yes, but she's also got a hint of genuine curiosity in her bleary blue eyes. "Mostly strangers," he says with a sheepish chuckle. "In bars."

That gets a little bit of a laugh from her, then she coughs raggedly into her elbow and tugs the blanket — which she's holding like a cape, clasped around her shoulders — a little tighter. She points to the drawer where she keeps her silverware, then retreats back to the living room. After presenting her with a bowl — or cup, since it has a handle, but it's too big for him to be sure — of soup, he unveils the last item he brought and watches, maybe a little too pleased, as she flushes even redder.

"I thought you were more of a horror film person," he teases, glancing over his shoulder at her as he fiddles with her VCR. "The Exorcist and all that. Not so much Jurassic Park."

Scully shrugs, embarrassed, and Mulder flashes her a smile so she knows he's just teasing, trying to keep her distracted from her stuffy nose and watery eyes. "Melissa made me go see it with her last year," she offers as an explanation. "Some things are just... fun, I guess."

Mulder is taken off guard by the way she shifts and leans against him when he sits down beside her. Scully has never seemed to be as tactile as he is; she's never rejected his touches, even when his heart gets the better of him and he's probably pushing his luck, but the only time she's openly sought him out was after Pfaster. Now, though, with the television playing and blanket tightly around her, she curls against him almost instinctively.

He can feel the warmth of her slight fever through the fabric of his shirt, can feel her gradually go more and more limp. She's going to fall asleep on him, to the sounds of rain and dinosaurs roaring, and maybe to the sound of his heartbeat, also. He wonders for one fanciful moment if she could hear the way he feels about her through a stethoscope.

Eventually, hesitantly, he slips his arm around her back and draws her closer, her hair frizzing out across his chest. "This okay?" He asks softly against the warm top of her head, and she nods, humming sleepily and sniffling. He thinks she mumbles something about Hollywood science making no sense, and Mulder smiles with his lips still against her hair. If he told her he loves her right now, she might be too out of it from sleep and cold medicine, too preoccupied with what little of the movie she's absorbing as she drifts to sleep, to remember it in the morning. His heart beats a little faster at the thought, and he only says it in his mind. For now, this is enough.

[capertonfertility]

Are Affordable Fertility Clinics Also Quality?

Using price as a sole indicator of where to receive treatment is a tricky proposition. Most have heard the old adage, 'you get what you pay for.' This is true to a large extent, but because one clinic offers higher prices than the other it doesn't mean the former is the higher-quality option. Of course, if there is one clinic that is priced way lower than the competition, the quality of care may not be as high as that of more moderately or competitively priced clinics. In the worst case scenarios, the clinic with the way low prices may run some sort of fraudulent pricing to lure patients to the clinic only to hit them with higher prices on their bill.

When you're looking into at which fertility clinic you would like to receive treatment or consultation, first obtain the credentials and licenses of the medical professionals and fertility specialists on staff. Check with your state's licensing board if you have any questions or to verify information. Never receive treatment from an unlicensed or unqualified individual. Prices may be lower initially, but you'll often end up sacrificing the quality of care, which may mean higher bills in the end.

Make sure that you have a good rapport with the doctor. You'll likely be seeing your fertility specialist on numerous occasions and you'll want to ensure that you have a good relationship with the doctor and feel comfortable asking him or her questions. If you feel uncomfortable or uneasy with a certain specialist, it may be worthwhile to seek consultation with another specialist. Just make sure any specialist is qualified and licensed.

Read More Here:Are Affordable Fertility Clinics Also Quality?

[slippinmickeys]

Fever

A lot of people know this by now, but: however improbable, I ended up drawing @admiralty-xfd‘s prompt in the recent Fluff Exchange. I had to convince her that I hadn’t written anything (I had), and that I was panicking (I was), and wrote something super last minute (I did). 

There were far better hurt/comfort fics in the exchange, but this is my Write It In A Day Wearing Your Panic Face So Your Beta Doesn’t Know You’re Lying  stab at fluffy hurt/comfort. But hey, she had something to beta, and my actual piece was a surprise. 

The old adage about doctors making the worst patients would have rung more true if the doctor in question would at least admit she was sick.

Her nose was red and running, she’d been dragging all afternoon no matter how much coffee she drank, and she kept sighing when she moved, like every part of her ached.

“You okay, Scully?”  he looked at her over the car’s console. She had her eyes closed and was resting her head against the passenger side window.

“Mm, yeah,” she said, sitting up.

She was definitely not okay. When they’d gotten to this podunk town three days ago to investigate this case (that was looking less and less like an X-File), she’d been practically vivacious compared to this grey, sniffling version of Scully that he was pretty sure had missed half of what the sheriff’s deputy had been telling them not fifteen minutes prior.

For a moment he thought of testing his hypothesis by asking her what she thought of the deputy’s theory, but when he glanced back over at her, she looked so miserable that he didn’t have the heart to.

“You don’t look okay,” he said instead.

“I’m fine,” she said.

She was decidedly not fine. Her complexion was wan, and her stare empty.

“You’re sick, Scully,” he said, trying to wring empathy out of irritation. If he let on that he was perturbed by her putting on a brave face--which he was--she would do all but climb out of her deathbed to prove him wrong.

He tried a different tack. Guilt.

“The last time I was sick, you told me it was my body’s way of saying ‘take a break, you need rest.’”

“Mulder, I’m fine,” she said, and in counterpoint, she huffed in a long, wet sniff.

“Scully,” he said, channeling patience, “take a break. You need rest.”

She looked at him, and then visibly deflated, giving in to sickness, to him.

“Okay,” she said, and her quick acquiesce startled him. She must really feel awful.

He looked at the road for a long moment before speaking.

“Okay,” he said, “how about I get you back to the motel. You get into bed and I’ll finish up with the Sheriff and circle back?”

She nodded and the gravel in the motel parking lot popped under the car’s tires as he pulled in.

She was slow to fish out her room key when he got her to her door, and he watched her with worry as she fumbled with the lock. He was thankful their rooms were adjoining.

“Scully?”

She looked over at him while he opened his own door.

“Get yourself changed and into bed and then open your side of the adjoining door, yeah? I’ll check on you once I get off the phone with the Sheriff.”

She nodded and tumbled into her room.

He gave a soft knock on the connecting door ten minutes later and stuck his head in.

She was already in bed in a ratty tee shirt, the blankets pulled up under her armpits. She was unrolling a bit of cheap one-ply toilet paper she’d brought in from the bathroom and blew her nose with it, making a face of distaste.

“Can I get you anything?” Mulder asked.

She winced.

“A bottle of water and I should be okay,” she said, her voice having the nasally, snubbed quality of a person with a head cold. And then, as if an afterthought, “thanks, Mulder.”

He smiled at her.

“It’s no problem.”

He tried to do her one better. He got three bottles of water from the vending machine in the motel’s lobby and then sweet talked the receptionist into a new box of Kleenex from the housekeeping closet. It was cheap, scratchy stuff, but it might treat her nose slightly better than the toilet paper.

He came into her room bearing his gifts. She smiled at him weakly. He sat meekly on the end of her bed.

“When was the last time you ate anything?” he asked, remembering her picking at scrambled eggs and dry toast in the one local diner that morning.

She shrugged.

“You should eat something,” he said, and felt a little emboldened, hoping for another chore.

“Food sounds terrible,” she said.

“Still,” he said, standing, “I’ll see what I can scrounge up. Will you be alright while I go out and see what I can find?”

She nodded, and let her head fall back on the pillow.

He suspected that she relented only because she knew he needed something to do and had refrained from pointing out that the tiny town they were in had very few options and that he was unlikely to find something open this time of day.

He only hoped he’d be able to deliver.

XxXxXxXxXxX

It had taken him far longer than he would have liked, though he was pretty pleased with his haul.

It was dark by the time he stumbled through his own room’s door, and tripped over a pair of shoes and a dirty towel on his way to the adjoining doorway.

“Mul…” he heard her as he was walking through it, laden with plastic bags.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said quietly, “sorry, I hoped you’d be asleep.”

“Mul… der…” she didn’t sound quite right. Her voice was mumbly and quiet.

“Scully, you okay?” he said, anxiety creeping into his voice.

“Muh…”

He quickly set the bags down and walked to the bed. She had the covers tucked up under her chin, and her eyes were closed. She was asleep, but fitfully. Thankful for that at least, he reached out to caress her face. When his hand touched her skin, he whipped it back. She was burning up.

He stood quickly, a little lost. The extent of his medical expertise was “starve a fever, feed a cold,” and he usually relied on the very person he was trying to help for any further guidance.

He made his way over to her suitcase, hoping to find the medical bag she usually kept there. After rifling a bit through her unmentionables, he found it. He dug around until he found the digital thermometer she kept inside, and brought it back to her bedside.

“Scully? Hey Scully, wake up,” he said, and fought a surge of panic when she didn’t respond.

He pulled the blanket down and pushed the neck of her shirt aside, sticking the thermometer into her armpit, and pushing her shoulder down. He had a vague recollection of Scully once holding the very same thermometer and saying primly “I could do this rectally, if you’d rather.” He shook off the memory.

The thermometer beeped and he pulled it out to look at the display. 103.8

Shit.  

He felt ill prepared for this, like a parent the first time their baby got sick--the reality of making a decision far different than the theory. He should take her to a doctor, he thought.  He racked his brain trying to remember the last hospital they’d passed on their way to this town and recalled that the last city of any size had been over an hour away.

He would have to handle this himself.

He quickly made his way to her bathroom and started running the water in the tub, cool but not cold.

When he got back to the bed, she was moaning a bit, and he had to pull the blankets out of her grip. He assessed her for a moment, biting his lip, considering the best way of doing this.

“Scully, I need you to wake up,” he said, putting some authority into his voice.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at him pathetically. She opened her mouth to speak, but her teeth started chattering.

“I don’t feel good,” she said, her voice sounding small and childlike. His heart clenched.

“You’ve got a really high fever, Scully,” he said, trying to keep his voice measured, “We need to get you undressed and into a cool tub, okay?”

To her credit, or at least to how lousy she obviously felt, all she did was nod and sit up, her head lolling forward a bit. However, she made no move to undress herself. It was up to him.

“I’m going to help you get your clothes off, okay?” he said, and she nodded, mutely.

He reached for her shirt, and thumbed the hem, hesitating a bit.

To hell with it , he thought.

He pulled at her shirt and her arms came up weakly next to her head, the only help she could offer. He tried not to notice that she wore nothing underneath.

He put his fingers at the waist of her pajama bottoms and considered a moment. He could afford her some modesty and leave her underwear on, but then he’d have to get her out of them before getting her back in bed, and he figured now was probably best.

“I’m going to help you out of your bottoms, can you lean back?” he said.

She complied without a word.

Once she was leaning back against the pillows, he peeled her pajama bottoms and panties off in one swoop, thinking briefly that this was not the romantic, sexy tableau he’d always envisioned. Her skin felt like a hot frying pan under his fingers and he snapped back to the situation at hand.

Her eyes were half-lidded and he didn’t even bother waiting for her to sit up under her own power--he scooped her up and carried her quickly to the bathroom, flashing on the one other time he’d done this, in Antarctica, when her skin had had the cold, clammy feel of a corpse.

The tub was shallow and had filled almost to the top--he had to kick the faucet with his foot to get it to turn off. He lowered her gingerly into the water, soaking his own shirt in the process.

When her body hit the water, her eyes flew open.

“Mulder!” she said, a look of panic on her face.

“I know,” he said, soothingly, “I know. It sucks. It’s just for a little bit, though. We need to get your fever down.”

She nodded and clenched her teeth, leaning her head against the plastic lip of the tub. He reached for a washcloth and wetted it, resting it gently on her brow.

He knelt beside the tub, turned away from her to give her a bit of privacy, ignoring the feeling of the cold tile on his knees. The silence was grating.

“Did I ever tell you?” he said, to break it, “Samantha used to get sick on every holiday.”

His eyes darted to her face. Scully’s lips went up in a fraction of a smile.

“Not like with a fever or anything,” he went on, “but she’d get so excited she’d puke. Especially Easter or Christmas. It got to the point that Mom started leaving a bucket in her room the night before, just in case.”

Scully’s chin slowed, her teeth no longer chattering. He kept talking.

“It finally became rote. Cookies and milk out for Santa, a bucket for Samantha. Talk about your weird family traditions.”

He took the washcloth off of her forehead and turned it over, putting the cool side down. He let his eyes rove briefly over her from head to toe, the water obscuring the lines of her lithe body, magnifying the rosy peaks of her nipples, the thatch of bright hair at her center.

His gaze rose to her face and he watched her lick cracked lips, then open her eyes to look at him. He turned away from her and his arms started to itch under the wet fabric of his shirt.

“Ibuprofen,” she said weakly, “in my bag. Can you bring me three?”

He jumped up immediately and dug through her bag until he found the small bottle. He shook out three into his palm and then grabbed one of the bottles of water he’d brought her earlier. When he handed them to her, he turned his back, giving her some privacy.

“Can you grab me a towel?” she said, “and some clothes?”

He laid a towel next to the tub where she could get to it and then went into her room to retrieve her pajamas. In his haste and panic, he’d dropped them to the grubby motel floor where they sat on the carpet in a heap. He’d heard her say “let me know when you need an antifungal” too many times while he traipsed around barefoot in a hotel to even think of letting her put them back on. He toed them aside and went into his own room and suitcase, pulling out an old Knicks shirt that had been washed into a pale blue, heavenly softness, and a pair of clean boxers. He halted at the bathroom door.

“I’ve got some clothes for you, Scully,” he said, “do you… need any help getting them on?”

She didn’t answer right away, and then he heard a resigned, weak, “...yes.”

He entered the bathroom and set the clothes down on the countertop, then knelt down next to the tub and put his hand to her forehead.

“You still feel pretty warm,” he said, keeping his eyes on her face.

“One more minute in here,” she said, “the ibuprofen should kick in soon.”

When the minute was up, she reached a hand out and he pulled her slowly to her feet, and then wrapped the towel around her shoulders. She started drying her arms in halting movements, and finally Mulder reached out and said gently, “here, let me.”

He rubbed her down efficiently, trying not to linger anywhere and make her uncomfortable. Then he grabbed the boxers and held them out for her to step into, and slipped the shirt over her head. He had to roll the tops of the boxers over three times so that they wouldn’t fall off of her hips, and the shirt fell to nearly her knees.

Her posture was not that of a sea captain’s daughter. She was bent over slightly, her face wearing a pinched expression.

He held out an arm, which she gratefully grabbed onto.

“Let’s get you back into bed,” he said.

The short walk seemed to exhaust her.

“I feel so weak,” she said, as he pulled the covers back up and over her lap.

“You should eat something,” he said, and she nodded.

“I probably should,” she said.

He walked over to where he’d dropped the bags on his way in and pulled out several containers and a couple of plastic utensils. He held them up to her.

“Soup?” he asked.

She nodded.

He handed her a small container and a spoon.

“How did you manage?” she asked as she took a small bite.

“I happened upon the waitress we had two days ago while she was closing up the diner. Convinced her to open it back up and get me a few ready-made things. What they say is true; flattery will get you everywhere.”

She gave him a small smile.

“I may or may not be engaged to her, now,” he went on, sitting on her bedside, “things got kind of weird.”

She huffed a laugh.

After a few bites, she lowered the soup and spoon to her lap.

“That’s all I can do for now,” she said, “thank you, Mulder.”

He moved them to her bedside table.

“You should get some sleep,” he said gently. She nodded and scootched down under the covers. “I’m going to stay here with you,” he went on, “if that’s okay? In case you need anything.”

“Mulder I don’t want you getting sick, too.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said, settling onto the narrow bed next to her, propping himself up against the headboard, “I’ll Purell.”

She argued no more as sleep took her under. He pulled off his wet shirt and settled in for the night.

XxXxXxXxXxX

When she woke, it was to the smell of skin and cheap industrial detergent, a warm body in a scratchy bed. Her head was pressed against Mulder’s side, his arm above her as if to trap her heat. Her body felt overworked and her joints ached with the fatigue of fever, but she could tell the worst was over.

She tried feeling embarrassed about all that had transpired last night, but found she couldn’t. At the time she’d just felt too awful, and now she just felt grateful that she’d had help at all. The light in the room had a dull, early quality to it. She closed her eyes and let herself drift back to sleep.

When she woke again, there was bright sunlight leaking beneath the thin material of the room’s drapes, and the space next to her was empty. She could hear Mulder’s muffled monotone through the partially closed connecting door--he was on the phone and trying to be quiet.

He paced in front of the door and she took in what she could see of him through the crack. He was in dress pants and dark socks, his shirt halfway buttoned-up and his hair was damp.

A tickle in her nose brought her sitting up, and she reached for a tissue from the box Mulder had brought her last night. She blew her nose delicately and looked up to see Mulder looking in at her, his eyes a little anxious. He slipped his cell phone into his pocket.

“Hey,” he said, “how are you feeling?”

She was quiet for a moment and did a self-assessment. The blow had cleared out her sinuses and she could breathe fully through her nose for the first time in two days. She looked up to him.

“Hungry,” she said, and he smiled at her--a big beaming smile he only trotted out on rare occasions.

“That’s a good sign, huh?” he said, moving into her room.

“Definitely,” she answered, as he sat down on the foot of her bed, “Who was on the phone?”

“Skinner,” he said, “and the Sheriff. We’re off the hook. The Sheriff’s office got a tip last night that looks like it’s going to shake out and Skinner’s pulling us back to DC.”

“Not because of me, I hope,” she said. While she was happy to head back home, the thought of being pulled off the case because of some vulnerability--however universal--pulled at her.

“Not at all,” Mulder said, “I didn’t even mention you weren’t feeling well. The Sheriff’s office seems to have it well in hand now and Skinner doesn’t want any further expense.”

She nodded and looked down at the faded, worn tee shirt of his she was wearing and had a vague inclination to try to steal it.

“Thanks for last night,” she said, “for… everything.”

He brought a hand up as if brushing away her gratitude.

“You’d do the same for me,” he said.

She nodded and held his gaze for a moment, and then he stood.

“Are you feeling up to going out for breakfast?” he asked, “I’d bring you something back from the diner, but I’m afraid if I don’t take some backup with me, I’ll get out of there with more than just an omelette.”

“Such as?” she asked, swinging her legs out of the covers and over the side of the bed.

“A wife,” he said, “and for as helpful as Waitress Fern is, I’m not exactly in the market.”

Scully slid on the socks Mulder had thoughtfully placed on her bedside table.

“Ah, but think of the alliteration possibilities, Mulder,” she said, “‘Fox and Fern’ just rolls off the tongue.” She stood slowly, getting a feel for her legs under her. “You could have a woodland themed wedding. I’ll dress as a dryad and give you away.”

He made his way toward his room to give her a bit of privacy. He paused in the doorway, turned and said, “I’d pay money to see the former, but can’t abide the latter.”

With that, he closed the door.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Fern had seemed delighted that her charitable gifting of soup had cured Scully, so had forgotten about any promises Mulder may or may not have made to her the evening before. They escaped breakfast at the town’s only diner with their single statuses in check and two pieces of strawberry pie for the road (“for whatever else ails you,” said Fern).

Mulder leaned his head back against the headrest as they were about to begin the six hour drive back to DC and sighed tiredly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Would you like me to drive, Mulder?” she asked, glad that her head seemed to clear more by the minute. Eating good, hot food had certainly seemed to help.

“No,” he said, squinting at her, “you should see if you can get some more shut-eye. I’ll be fine.”

And so she did, coming to consciousness 90 minutes later to the sound of Mulder sneezing four times in a row.

She stretched in the seat and turned to him.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said, with a small smile, “sorry if I woke you. Allergies.”

Spring had come to the West Virginia hills they were driving through--cottonwood seeds drifted thickly through the air and the ditches that lined the highway were filled with green water scummed with pollen and bursts of frogsong. Nevertheless, she eyed him skeptically.

“You’re sure you’re feeling all right?” she asked him.

“I feel great!” he said, and promptly sneezed again.

An hour later she was convinced he was coming down with whatever she’d had. His complexion had paled and he was trying to huff in little sniffs without her noticing, which of course she did.

A few miles later they stopped for gas, and when he went inside to pay, she slid into the driver’s seat and turned down his increasingly weak protestations that he was fine when he came back.

He slumped against the passenger side window an hour outside of DC.

When she pulled onto Hegal Place, he slowly lifted his head, surveying his surroundings in a confused, disjointed lethargy. She found a parking space right in front of his building and when she cut the engine, he turned to her with a hangdog expression, his cheeks tinged with pink against an otherwise pale face.

“Scully?” he said, his voice quiet, “I don’t feel good.”

“Oh, Mulder,” she said sweetly, and reached out to run her fingers through the flop of hair on his forehead. “Let’s get you into bed.”

[itsiotrecords-blog]

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When it comes to our health, we’d be dumb not to take it seriously. There’s a huge industry surrounding health, wellness, and fitness, and we’ve all invested in our health at some point. Some people do that by watching what they eat and keeping to a certain calorie count. Others do it by working out a few times a week and setting goals for themselves that they strive to meet. Still, others go out of their way to adhere to different health tips to jump start their own health. There’s no problem with doing any of these things or all of these things for that matter. However, problems will start to arise when you rely too much on health tips that seem like they work, but actually, don’t do anything to make you healthier. Some of those tips can even harm your health. We decided to take some of the biggest health tips out there that aren’t so healthy and debunk them. Some of these health tips, while not especially helpful, are pretty harmless because they don’t really do anything. However, some of these tips that have been passed down through the generations, sometimes over the course of hundreds of years, are actually quite harmful. The worst part is that a lot of people don’t know, or they’re unwilling to acknowledge it. While most of these tips aren’t “ancient,” they have been around for awhile, and old health tips die hard. Here are fifteen health tips that we should probably leave to history.

#1 Eat Less, Move More While there is some truth to diet and exercise leading to weight loss, this adage is some of the least useful advice you could give someone who’s trying to take charge of their health. While health can depend on your choices, most aspects of health are beyond what we can control. “Eat less, move more” is the advice professionals have been giving for years. This advice doesn’t work though. Yes you have to do those things but telling people to do that in itself is useless. There are strong biological/environmental factors at play working against that very advice. “Having obesity isn’t just some decision that people wake up and decide on,” says Dr. Spencer Nadolsky, a physician that specializes in treating patients with obesity. It’s because of this that just telling people to eat less and move more is actively harmful. Willpower isn’t the answer to weight loss, positive reinforcement is. The people who successfully achieve their health goals do it not because they’re forcing themselves, but because they’re essentially being rewarded by their own health and wellness plan. The best way to take charge of your health is to figure out what works best for you and just do that.

#2 Don’t Eat After 8 PM One major dieting tip that many of us have heard is not to eat after 8PM. Late night snacking, according to people who support this, is the death of any diet. However, those people are wrong. A study published in 2015 in The Journal of Nutrition found that eating healthy food at night led to more muscle mass and strength gains. As long as you pick healthy food to eat at night, you should be totally fine. If you have a health issue like diabetes, you actually have to eat at night in order to stay healthy. You can even lose weight while eating at night, because it’s not about what time you eat, it’s about what you eat. If you’re not trying to lose weight, you can still benefit from eating at night: having a small snack before you go to sleep can actually help you sleep better.

#3 Get Stung On Purpose Because Bee Venom Can Fight HIV Some people have been intentionally getting stung by bees for the health benefits, sometimes in an actual therapeutic setting. Like a lot of different alternative health crazes, this one isn’t really backed up with scientific evidence. However, this hasn’t stopped people from claiming that it cures a ton of different diseases from allergies to psychological evidence to HIV. Seriously, a study found that a component in bee venom could help fight HIV. While this is certainly interesting research, we need to stress that this is preliminary research that could end up getting debunked as scientists explore this further. If someone trying to sell you on bee stings as a health treatment as a treatment for diseases as serious as HIV, know that they’re not nearly as informed about health issues as they think they are.

#4 Smoking Cigarettes Will Keep Your Weight Down Many smokers start smoking or continue the habit because they think it helps keep their weight down. This is actually true: since nicotine was first discovered, people have been using it as an appetite suppressant. Many people who quit smoking find that their weight ends up going up, and that can be really discouraging for those people who are trying to quit cigarettes but appreciated the lower weight that smoking gave them. While this is one of those things that works, this is one of those tips that you absolutely should not be using. While you are suppressing your appetite, making it easier for you to lose weight and potentially keeping it off, you’re also suppressing the health of your lungs and the rest of your body. This is a good example of unhealthy weight loss. Many people believe that all weight loss is actually good, but when you’re using cigarettes to keep your weight down, you’re losing weight at the expense of your short and long term health.

#5 Detoxing The detoxing myth has been pretty pervasive, especially over the last few years. People have been creating detox water recipes for years now, and many people who swear by it have said that it’s the best thing they could have done for their health. Unfortunately, a lot of this seems to be placebo effect. “Let’s be clear,” says Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University who sat down with the Guardian, “there are two types of detox: one is respectable and the other isn’t.” The respectable one, he says, is the medical treatment of people with life-threatening drug addictions. “The other is the word being hijacked by entrepreneurs, quacks and charlatans to sell a bogus treatment that allegedly detoxifies your body of toxins you’re supposed to have accumulated.” He’s right: if toxins actually built up in a way that our bodies couldn’t get rid of, we’d literally be dead. Detoxing is basically trying to fix something that was never broken in the first place.

#6 Cutting Out Fat To Lose Weight Fat-free foods have been around forever now because many people believe that you can lose weight by simply not eating fat. The truth is actually a bit more complicated than that. It turns out that eating fat helps you lose weight, not the other way around. The key to losing weight isn’t cutting out fat, it’s cutting out food that makes your body store fat. You want to eat food that helps you burn fat instead. Fat-free food tends to have more sugar in it, and if that sugar doesn’t get burned off, it gets stored in your body as fat. Processed carbohydrates are what cause you to gain weight, not the healthy fat that in foods like salmon and avocado. Just make sure you’re eating healthy fats, not unhealthy ones. The more natural healthy fats you eat, the better it is for your health: your blood sugar will stabilize and won’t trigger the insulin high that causes your body to store fat.

#7 The Tapeworm Diet While some diets are all about restricting the food you eat or even maximizing the food you eat, the tapeworm diet is all about the parasites you literally put in your body. While many people do subscribe to this, I hope it goes without saying that this is a very dumb thing to do. Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, the medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, wrote a health directive about it last year detailing why this diet is a terrible idea. “Tapeworms will cause you to lose weight because you have this huge worm in your intestines eating your food,” Quinlisk said. That goes without saying, but the effects are even worse. “Ingesting tapeworms is extremely risky and can cause a wide range of undesirable side effects, including rare deaths,” Quinlisk wrote in an email statement, according to the Des Moines Register. “Those desiring to lose weight are advised to stick with proven weight loss methods — consuming fewer calories and increasing physical activity.” Having a tapeworm in your body, aside from being extraordinarily painful, can cause human cysticercosis, which can cause eye damage and get spread very easily.

#8 You Need To Feel The Burn When You Workout Many people believe that the best thing to do during your workouts is to make sure you feel the burn afterward. You want your workout to hurt, or else you didn’t work hard enough, right? Wrong. Sure, you want to push yourself as far as your body can go to see the best results, but if you’re leaving the gym feeling terrible, sore and wrung out, that’s not the best results at all. This idea has already been debunked by doctors and experts, but this idea is still hanging around because we as people tend to conflate pain with success. If something is hard, then it’s worth doing, isn’t it? It’s not, and if you’re feeling real pain when you work out, you should stop and reconsider your workout plan. Your workouts should totally be challenging, but if they really hurt, it’s just going to discourage you from actually doing them and keep you out of the gym, which simply defeats the purpose.

#9 The Sleeping Beauty Diet The Sleeping Beauty diet is one that literally involves getting sedated to lose weight. Either you take pills to sleep, or you force yourself to sleep whenever you’re feeling hungry. Not only does sleeping a lot, let alone several days straight not help you get any thinner, using pills to sleep that much could cause you to get hooked on the very addicting sleeping pills. Sure, you can wake up a few pounds thinner from sleeping that much, but if you use chemicals to help you stay asleep and end up using too many, you might not wake up at all. Even if the pills didn’t cause health issues, sleeping too much can lead to diabetes, heart disease and an increased risk of death. It could even lead to weight gain, which is the opposite of the goal you’re trying to accomplish with this. Basically, this just leads to more harm than good.

#10 Over-Reliance On Essential Oils The essential oil craze has been everywhere these days. Essential oils are basically concentrated extracts from different plants that are known to have health benefits. While essential oils can be beneficial, they can be downright harmful if you use them wrong. Using undiluted essential oils on your skin can actually cause dermatitis, and that effect is even worse if you ingest the oils the way big essential oil companies want you to. The issue with essential oils is not their efficacy, though. Some oils have been proven to have beneficial effects, like tea tree oils and lavender. The problem is when essential oils are said to do a lot more than they actually do. For example, doTERRA and Young Living, two huge essential oil peddlers, have made the claim that their oils can treat ebola. Yes, that ebola. Essential oils work, but we need to be realistic about it and look at the evidence to show what exactly they can be used for.

#11 Putting Things In Your V– One very strange health trend that’s been circulating around is the idea of the stone yoni egg. Yoni eggs are heavy stones, often made out of jade or quartz, that are put in your vagina to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. Basically, you insert the egg like you would a tampon, and then use your muscles to hold it in as you go about your day. If you’re a man, you might think that that seems easy, but any woman knows that holding a heavy stone egg with your pelvic floor muscles isn’t all that easy. There’s even a device called Elvie that basically combines the yoni egg idea with the mechanics behind the Fitbit. While the Elvie has been tested and many women have found that it actually helps their pelvic floor muscles, inserting big crystals into your vagina is a monumentally bad idea. Jade is porous, so leaving the stone in your vagina while you sleep can actually allow for bacteria to develop in there, which is not what you want because that can cause toxic shock syndrome, the thing women can get if they leave their tampons in for too long. This tip was popularized by Gwyneth Paltrow, the woman behind other crazy tips like “vagina steaming.” To add insult to injury, these jade eggs are really expensive. If you’re looking to strengthen your pelvic floor, either get a device like the Elvie and use it as directed or just do Kegel exercises, which are good for both men and women.

#12 Bundling Up From The Cold To Avoid Getting Sick One piece of advice we always heard as kids is that we need to bundle up when it gets really cold out to avoid getting sick. While bundling up to shield ourselves from the cold is a good thing because it keeps us warm and comfortable in tough winters, it doesn’t really shield you from illnesses like the common cold. Basic science tells us that cold doesn’t cause illness, germs do, and germs can’t really be stopped by winter clothes. What the cold actually does is make it really hard for your body to bounce back once you’re already sick. Lower temperatures make it harder for your body’s immune system to kick in. It’s still good to bundle up during the winter anyway because it’s good to not be exposed to the cold and the potential complications of that, but the benefits have nothing to do with warding off illness.

#13 Drink Apple Cider Vinegar To Cut Sugar Cravings (And Cure Cancer?) One health tip that’s been circulating around recently is drinking apple cider vinegar with every meal. There’s a weird cult-like following around this because of the potential benefits involved: drinking apple cider vinegar is said to have a ton of fiber and nutrients and has the potential to everything from curing sugar cravings to cancer. While there are studies that back up the benefits of apple cider vinegar, by no means should you be drinking this stuff undiluted every day. Drinking it on an empty stomach can make you feel nauseous, but drinking it after a meal negates that, acting as an appetite suppressant so you don’t overeat. On top of that, drinking it undiluted can actually burn your esophagus, kind of like the way vodka burns your throat without the pleasant buzz that comes afterwards. If you plan on trying this out, mix a tablespoon of vinegar with 8 oz of water, and drink it with a straw so you don’t taste feet, which is kind of what apple cider vinegar tastes like. Ultimately, apple cider vinegar is great for some things (like your hair, for example), but drinking it is overrated.

#14 The Grapefruit Diet The grapefruit diet has been a big deal because of the claim that you can lose ten pounds in ten days on it. You don’t eat just grapefruit for ten days thankfully, but you do have to eat or drink a lot of it, accompanied with high protein and low carbs. While grapefruit does cause you to lose weight, this diet’s effects aren’t nearly as pronounced as celebrities say. A research study was done to see how grapefruit affects weight loss, and they found that while the people eating lots of grapefruits had lower blood pressure and cholesterol because of their restricted diet, they didn’t lose more weight than the control group. Grapefruit is great for you because it contains a ton of vitamin C and an antioxidant called lycopene that fights free radicals and helps prevent cancer, and it should definitely be a part of your diet. However, the effects of the grapefruit diet are highly exaggerated, and it’s just not practical to do this.

#15 The Cabbage Soup Diet The cabbage soup diet has been around for a long time, and a lot of people have sworn that it works. Unfortunately, this diet plan isn’t just terrible and ineffective, it’s boring. Sure, you’d lose weight on this diet, but you wouldn’t be doing it because of the cabbage soup, you’d be doing it because you’re literally starving. Eating mostly cabbage soup for a week robs your body of nutrients that aren’t in the soup. What’s really dangerous about this is that people are still going out of their way to say this works. Some people are even writing books about it, claiming erroneously that the diet is prescribed for heart patients when that’s not actually the case. That claim is even more laughable once you realize that cabbage soup is very low in protein and very high in salt, which isn’t a great mix for those trying to lose weight in a healthy, effective way. A good rule of thumb to go by when it comes to choosing a diet is to not pick something that makes you rely on one kind of food only.

Source: TheRichest