How To Fake A Fever With Garlic
You may want to feign illness for many reasons. Maybe you want to skip school or college. You might have a dreaded dinner at the in-laws’ house. Whatever it is, sometimes lying is simply easier than hurting someone's feelings. You may also want to fake a fever if you want to go home early and you can't tell your boss without getting in trouble. Although you don't want to actually make yourself ill, there are ways that you may fake an illness. This oneHOWTO article will tell you how to fake a fever with garlic. Garlic is easily available in the kitchen, the odd clove won't likely be missed. Students often use garlic to fake a fever and get their parents’ permission to skip school. Let’s find out how far it works.
How to use garlic to take a fever
This trick to fake a fever is not going to work for everyone and the scientific evidence to support it is scarce (although we'll explain the theory below). Some may not be aware that if students want to skip school and show their parents they are ill, they often grab a garlic clove. Garlic has a lot of chemicals in it and the skin of your armpit is tender. When you place a clove of garlic in your armpit, these chemicals can enter into your blood stream and cause symptoms.
Cut a garlic clove lengthwise in half and place it in your armpit, left or right (or both). Keep them under your armpits overnight and in the morning, you will have some of the symptoms of a fever. You will also smell unwell due to the garlic's pungent odor. If you don't leave the sliced garlic for long enough, then it will do little to give you fever symptoms. At least an hour will be needed to have any noticeable effect (if any). This garlic method to fake a fever isn't foolproof and if the one checking up on your fever to see whether or not you will goto work/school knows it, they will suspect you pretty quickly.
Theory of how garlic causes fever symptoms
There are different theories that explain why one experiences higher body temperature after placing a garlic clove in the armpit. They are:
- Garlic is known to have faster antisepsis effects when its smell enters your blood stream through the thin membrane of armpit. Armpit is the best place from where air absorbs into your body. It is also one of the most common body parts from where your body temperature is measured with the help of a thermometer.
- When you keep garlic in your armpit, it attracts microorganisms and viruses towards your body. As a result, the number of microorganisms increases near your body. This triggers your body’s defense mechanism and it starts fighting against the potential threat it senses. While your body’s system is busy fighting against the microorganisms, your body temperature increases and you start showing signs of fever. As we know, fever is not a disease itself, but the body’s way of fighting against potential diseases and infections.
- When smell of garlic enters your blood stream, your body identifies it as a dangerous substance and releases immunoglobulin E antibodies. These antibodies are responsible for fighting against the garlic proteins. As a result, mast cells in your body’s soft tissues produce histamine. Increased histamine content in your body causes tissue inflammation and leads to symptoms of fever. Typically, symptoms develop within a few minutes of placing the garlic in your armpit.
- It is possible that local application of garlic slices in your armpits may cause temporary inflammation. When you apply the thermometer at the same site after removing the garlic, you may find a slightly higher body temperature.
- Garlic contains natural pesticides like syn-propanethial-S-oxide which cause irritation in the area. When this chemical comes in contact with your thin membrane in the armpit, it may raise its temperature and give an impression that you have fever..
There may be some misapplication of how the chemicals in garlic affect the human body, but it is the theory nonetheless. If you have allergies, be warned that the garlic can cause a skin irritation beyond the desired effect, so it's always good to try a little bit against another piece of skin first.
Other Convincing Signs of Fever
Placing garlic in your armpit may raise the temperature of that area, but that’s not enough to convince others that you are sick. You need to fake some other symptoms as well to look really ill and down with fever. Some other signs that you need to fake include:
- Shivers: Making your body shiver is not that difficult. Just tighten the muscles of your arm and let your body shake. You may also fake a shiver by hiding some ice under your clothes and feeling the real chill.
- Sweat: Sweating is not that hard too. Just run around the block to get some good sweat. If you have people in your house and you can’t go outside, go to a private place and do some on-the-spot jog. But make sure that you don’t over-do it so that you keep breathing normally. Otherwise, your face will become red and there will be so much sweat than needed. If you can run around the block, put on a bunch of layers of clothes and do pushups in front of the radiator for five minutes.
- Headache: Fake having a headache when you stand up or move around your head. Fake it even when you try to turn around in the bed. Don’t make sudden moves as it may actually hurt your head. When you move, tighten your facial muscles and don’t move for a few seconds. This will make you look as if you are really having a headache.
- Muscle ache: Fake pain when you try to lift a heavy thing or when you do something that needs muscle strength. You can do everything, but just complain that your muscles are hurting.
- Appetite loss: Remember, when you have real fever, how you resist eating and what foods you like to eat. When someone offers you something to eat, reject it at first. If the person insists, take a few bites and then dismiss saying that you don’t want to eat.
- General weakness: Since you have fever, just show symptoms of general weakness by being lazy. Make an excuse whenever someone asks you to do something.
Precautions To Take While Faking a Fever
Now that you know how to fake a fever, there are a few precautions that you need to take. Some of them are:
- Ensure that while you are doing something weird to fake the fever, no one sees you.
- Staying in bed under a blanket would be enough to keep your body warm and making you sweat as if you are having a fever.
- Make sure .the temperature does not go so high that your family takes you to the hospital.
- Don’t smile, but stay lethargic and down as if you are under pain.
- Close your eyes for around 5 seconds once in a while. When you have fever, you feel pain in your eyes and shutting them relieves it.
Conclusion
Putting garlic in your armpits may increase your body temperature and you may fake fever with it. Even if you are able to convince others that you are sick, this won’t relieve you of your responsibilities and you may end up having too many tasks that you have to catch up to later. So, to anyone who is reading this, you may want to avoid doing this, do your work and face the situations head on. It's the grown up thing to do (whether or not you are a grown up).
However, you may also not want to go to school for very good reason. Perhaps other students are bullying you or treating you badly in some way. They may have even told you not to tell anyone and tried to intimidate you. If this is the case, seeking help from a trusted adult is the best thing to do. If you want some more advice on how to do this, check out our article on how to report bullying in school.
This article is merely informative, oneHOWTO does not have the authority to prescribe any medical treatments or create a diagnosis. We invite you to visit your doctor if you have any type of condition or pain.
If you want to read similar articles to How To Fake A Fever With Garlic, we recommend you visit our Family health category.