Folk remedy - Definition and Overview

A home remedy is a treatment or cure for a disease or other ailment that employs certain foods or other common household items. Home remedies may or may not have actual medicinal properties that serve to treat or cure the disease or ailment in question; many are merely used as a result of tradition or habit. A signifigant number, however, have been demonstrated to effectively treat things such as sprains, minor lacerations, headaches, fevers, and even the common cold.

One of the more popular examples of a home remedy is using chicken soup to treat respiratory infections such as a cold or mild flu, and according to recent studies, this may actually be effective [1] (http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/short/118/4/1150). Other examples of home remedies include the use of willow bark tea to cure headaches and fevers and duct tape to help with setting broken bones to using superglue to treat plantar warts.