Pinoy Folk Illnesses

Like I said, two days ago was my day off. I had to catch up on a lot of things, reading, cleaning my boys' room, ours as well. That included catching up on my most dreaded household chore, ironing. Two hours, fourteen polo shirts, three khakis, five denim pants and more than a week's worth of my boys' school uniforms later, I took a long, warm bath. Yes, I took a bath immediately after ironing. I could almost hear my Nanay Cora saying 'Huwag na huwag ka maliligo pagkaplantsa, mapapasma ka' ('Don't bathe after ironing, or you'd get pasma').

I actually used to believe that. That is, until I started scouring through pages of health and medical guides, I wasn't able to find the medical term for it, not even an appropriate English equivalent. I may not be doctor but being a nerd does pay off. Filipinos have so many mythical beliefs, some funny, some absurd, some just plain ridiculous. Allow me to illustrate:


Pasma - They say after doing hard manual labor, i.e. ironing, drawing/ drafting, even long hours in the computer, you are not supposed to get your hands, sometimes even your whole body anywhere near water, otherwise you'd get this. They say pasma is characterized by excessive sweating of the palms and tremor-like shaking of the hands sometimes even pain.

This is a very useful ploy for getting off the hook when it comes to other chores like dishwashing or doing the laundry. Extremely useful to design students, ahem guilty, when I was in College, I'd use drawing as an excuse to not do the dishes. Same goes with my sister Roselle who would always use this as an excuse to exempt herself from every possible household chore there is hahaha. The award for 'Most Guilty' goes to Joel for using this ploy since high school, all throughout college, hanggang ngayon. Kidding aside, it's usually his mother who would tell all his sisters, 'o nag drawing si Joel, hindi yan pwede maghugas ng plato'. Thereby sparing him from washing the dishes, every single time hahaha..........

Pilay - Everytime someone gets fever and flu-like symptoms you'll be sure to hear this. The only pilay I know is a person with a limp. It's either fever or flu, stop calling it pilay.

Tigdas Hangin - Whenever my kids would have small rashes anywhere, with no fever-like symptoms whatsoever, I get to hear this 'tigdas hangin yan'. Tigdas is the local term for measles. E ano yung tigdas hangin??? Air measles haha

Lagnat Laki - Whenever I had sinat (when I was a kid), meaning fever with a temperature reading of less than 37.8 degrees, my lola would sometimes say 'lagnat laki lang yan'. I'd even be glad then to have that fever in hopes of getting taller. Alas, useless din, maliit pa rin ako huhuhu....................


Are there any other Filipino folk illnesses I missed??? Please remind me.........