Body Talk:on the spot remedies

Your cough won't relent even when you're in the midst of an office meeting. What do you do? Try sticking your finger into your ear. Learn these and other tricks when your body threatens to give in.

YOU'RE DYING FOR THE LOO

Next time you get the call of nature in an awkward situation - say, while the boss has called you into his office for a chat - try rubbing the back of your leg.

Australian experts claim that doing this vigorously interrupts the message from your bladder to your brain and delays the urge to get to the loo.

Bum clenching works, too. "Clench your buttock muscles as tightly as you can and hold the tension for a few seconds," advises gynaecologist Dr Abraham Morse in The Doctor's Book of Home Remedies (Rodale). "Doing this several times in a row makes the urge disappear."

FEELING SICK

Whether you're feeling queasy from a few too many the night before or the rocking of the bus is making you nauseous, the panic that you're about to throw up in public only makes you feel worse.

Next time you fear this is about to happen start breathing slowly and steadily. "It's a fact of biology that you can't breathe and vomit at the same time," says Dr John Golding, who studies motion sickness at the University of Westminster.

PERIOD PAINS - AND NO NUROFEN

Nip stomach pains in the bud by grabbing your ankle. Try to find the Sanyinjiao acupressure point (about four finger widths up from the lumpy bone inside your ankle) and press it for six seconds. Release for two seconds. Repeat on that ankle for five minutes, then swap legs. Do this twice.

In recent trials, 87 per cent of women found this stopped the problem in its tracks.

"Acupressure invigorates blood circulation and vital energy which relieves cramping in the uterus," explains Chung Hey Chen, who studied the technique at Taiwan's Kaohsing Medical University.

FEELING FAINT BUT NOWHERE TO SIT

Cross your legs, put one ankle over the other, then tense the muscles of your hips, thighs and bottom. Fainting occurs when blood flows from your brain and into your legs. "This move relocates pooled venous blood back from the region under the diaphragm to the chest," says Dr Wouter Wieling from Amsterdam's Academic Medical Centre. The heart can then pump the blood more readily to your brain staving off the fainting feeling - at least till you can find somewhere to sit down and recover.

YOU'VE GOT HICCUPS

A few hiccups are funny - but if they keep on coming you can soon lose your sense of humour. Stop them quickly by putting something cold, like an ice cube or a can of cola from the fridge, against your throat for about 60 seconds.

"Hiccups occur when something irritates the diaphragm - normally air in the stomach from eating or drinking too quickly," says Washington State neurophysiologist Dr S Gregory Hipskind. "The body panics at this and the diaphragm spasms. But cold interrupts the firing rate of the nerves sending the initial panic signal and calms everything down."

YOU CAN'T STOP SNEEZING

Sneezing is the way your body eliminates irritating substances from your body fast. But there are some times - at the cinema or theatre - when you might want to stifle a noisy sneeze.

"In this case, bite your top lip or pinch the bridge of your nose," says Dr Ron Eccles from the Common Cold Research Centre at Cardiff University. "Both of these actions stimulate branches of the nerves that initiate sneezing. This confuses the sneeze centre in the brain and inhibits the real sneeze."

YOU'RE CLOSE TO TEARS

Your boss has just given you a real dressing down in a meeting and now you are on the verge of losing your cool completely and bawling your eyes out in front of everyone in the office. So how can you stop those tears in their tracks?

"Look up," explains Gladeana McMahon, who is co-director of London's Centre For Stress Management.

"Normally when you cry you look down and scrunch your eyes up, so looking up alters the muscle movement confusing your system."If you can, Gladeana also suggests moving your eyes around which distracts your mind from the emotions you're feeling, which will also make it less likely that you're going to weep.