Growing up, most of us heard an ‘old wives' tale’ or two from our parents to warn us against doing something silly. For instance, swallowing chewing gum means it’ll stay in your stomach for seven years. Or plucking out grey hairs will mean two grow back in its place. Completely factless.
Most of the time these rules are completely fictional, designed to nip bad behaviour in the bud, however, people are just learning that one famous old wives’ tale is actually true. Before scientific discoveries, the belief was that if a parent kissed their baby’s head and could taste salt, it was a sign they were deathly sick.
According to the National Library of Medicine, it went: “Woe to the child who tastes salty from a kiss on the brow, for he is cursed and soon will die.” However, a salty taste to the skin could indicate that the child has cystic fibrosis (CF).
A genetic condition, it is caused by a faulty gene that affects the movement of salt and water in and out of cells. Explaining more, the NLM states: “People with cystic fibrosis tend to have two to five times the normal amount of salt (sodium chloride) in their sweat. Parents sometimes notice this symptom of cystic fibrosis first, because they taste the salt when they kiss their child.”
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Speaking on Reddit, people began sharing their own experiences with old wives tales, in particular the salty forehead theory. One person wrote: “I have cf. I was a year old when my mom saw a commercial with Burt Reynolds talking about tasting your child's forehead. Around 1980-1981? I'd been diagnosed with failure to thrive and they had no other answers as to why I was so sickly. My mom immediately tasted salt and I was diagnosed shortly thereafter. Shout out to Mr Reynolds for helping out my mom, who was barely 16 at the time. I really lucked out.”
Someone else added: “This was the first sign that my oldest nephew had CF. Neither of his parents were aware of CF in the family. But luckily they knew to talk to his doctor and got him diagnosed very quickly.”
And another user shared: “My sibling was diagnosed with CF at the unusually late age of 6. As the oldest sister in a huge family, I often played Other Mother, rocking them to sleep, bottle feeding, etc. The salty thing we all noticed when we kissed her, but this is the first I’ve heard of this old wives tale. I wonder if we had if she would been diagnosed sooner? Luckily there have been leaps and bounds made with CF treatment for the last 20 years, so my baby sibling is doing great at 31!”
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