Wanna Cure Back Pain??

February 11, 2002 6:11 AM

Wanna Cure Back Pain?? Australian Freestyle Skier Jaqui Cooper drank a potion of Diet Coke and crushed cockroaches to help cure her fractured vertebra. Finally, something roaches are useful for!
posted by Lanternjmk (11 comments total)

Surely, it's all the rage in the medical community these days. Virtually overnight entire hospitals were opened to fascilitate the demand for insect treatment.

"My 9 year old daughter broke her leg while playing soccer, a grasshopper with a shot of vodka cured her right up, she scored 3 goals after that same day"
posted by tiaka at 6:51 AM on February 11, 2002

Don't they urine test for cockroaches these days?
posted by pekar wood at 6:56 AM on February 11, 2002

Well, I can see that Olympic anti-doping officials are going to have to broaden their scope a bit.
posted by 327.ca at 6:57 AM on February 11, 2002

It wrecks your stomach inside but it fixed my back

Yeah...this makes sense, like hitting your head with a hammer to make your headache go away.
posted by plaino at 7:11 AM on February 11, 2002

And people laugh at me when I tell them I go to a chiropractor.
posted by tommasz at 7:23 AM on February 11, 2002

Bah, that's pseudo-medical nonsense! She should have used a few leeches and a nice ginsing-root-and-goat-pee poultice! Would have fixed her right up.
posted by UncleFes at 7:40 AM on February 11, 2002

That's not too much stranger than a medically-accepted treatment which employs papayas! (It worked for my ex-partner, by the way.)

"Chemonucleolysis is the injection of chymopapain into the nucleus polpusus of an intervertebral disk. Chymopapain is an enzyme extracted from the papaya plant. When injected into the herniated disk , the enzyme reduces the central disk component by hydrolysis, decreasing the water-binding capacity of the nucleus polposus and thus the intradiskal pressure. With the pressure removed, pain is potentially diminished."
posted by Carol Anne at 7:45 AM on February 11, 2002

Carol Anne, in Food Management school we learned that you shouldn't try to make Jello with fresh papaya (or pineapple) for just that reason. I have also given it to my pet rabbits as a hairball treatment (rabbits can't vomit like cats).
posted by tommasz at 8:16 AM on February 11, 2002

That would be fine example of Coincidental Correlation (post hoc ergo propter hoc).
posted by quirked at 8:30 AM on February 11, 2002

drank a potion of Diet Coke and crushed cockroaches

I'm not sure what crushing cockroaches could possibly do to help back pain. If it's the crushing motion, perhaps one could crush something less disgusting.

The caffeine in the Diet Coke probably helped, though.
posted by kindall at 11:05 AM on February 11, 2002

Well, that concoction does absolutely no good for those of us who are allergic to cockroaches. (Let alone phobic about them.) Guess I'd just better take care of my back.
posted by phichens at 1:01 PM on February 11, 2002