Plodding the beat

It’s amazing how many different pieces of information a person can acquire in day-to-day routine. Sometimes a person can obtain a useful piece of a puzzle to help solve a problem. Occasionally answers to unasked questions just hang in the air. Every so often a gem of knowledge passes into the ear and gets tucked away into a corner of the brain until it is required to solve a mystery.

It came to pass that one day whilst standing in one of those queues that never appears to move, I struck up a conversation with a lady behind me. She revealed that the previous year she had developed palpitations, a sort of pounding with occasional flutters in the heart. She said that she had been advised that it was caused by stress but nothing she could do appeared to help the situation. Then one day she had a chance meeting with an old gypsy lady. As she had with me, she also told the gypsy about her problem. She told me that the elderly gypsy took her hands and looked at the palms. She pressed the palms with her thumbs then declared ‘Your problem is shortage of sugar!’ Sure enough the woman went back home and swallowed a teaspoonful of sugar as the old gypsy lady had advised … one every morning and one late afternoon. The woman told me that after four days she was cured and had never been troubled with palpitations since. ‘Surely, I said to her sugar is bad for you. Everyone tells you to cut it out of your diet.’ ‘I know,’ she said ‘but it truly did the trick. I cannot explain why but was so grateful that I tried it.’

This, I hasten to add is a hearsay cure for this stress type condition. I cannot vouch for it but it is one of those conversations that has always stuck in my head!

Please remember, it is always best to consult a medical practitioner rather than self-diagnose any kind of condition and follow very carefully your doctor’s advice.