Avoid south-facing beds

[snopes]

Comment: good Morning. I remember hearing from older relatives years ago
that you should never have the head of your bed facing South. It will
cause headaches. Something about the magnetic pull of the North or South
pole pulling on the fluid in the brain.
We re-arranged our bedroom two weeks ago and the head of the bed now
faces South. I have woke up with a headache 13 out of 14 days since the
bed was changed. Is there any truth to this. I heard this about 55
years ago and remember no bed in my parents house ever faced Sutth. Mostly
North or East.

[Kallah]

My guess is that moving their bed coincided with another change (pulling summer sheets/bedding out and putting away winter linens) and pinged their allergies or something similar. Or perhaps that was the week that spring finally showed up in their area (it was aweful late getting around to a large swath of the Midwest this year) and their hay fever kicked in when they moved their bed closer to a window. Either that or the giant weather-control magnet is now online, which explains both the strange spring weather and their headaches!

I was given that second piece of advice as a fact from my own parents: never have the head of your bed under a window in the winter, and never push it up against the wall in summer. It took me an embarrassingly long time - I was living on my own as an adult, had moved into a new apartment, and was stressing over bed placement - to realize that those words of wisdom likely had everything to do with the poorly insulated windows in my family home than any sort of magical decorating rules. My current bedroom is set up so that my bed is both against a wall and by a window (and faces roughly South-Southeast, if I just did the measuring right), so I'm going to have to see if they make one of these in tinfoil. I don't want a headache!

[hambubba]

Mine's been facing south for 27 years.

I don't wanna know...

[Gayle]

Kind of reminds me of how one of my coworkers nearly stabs herself when she makes salad because her mother taught her that if you peel a cucumber away from you, it will be bitter. So she peels cucumbers with a knife by bringing it towards her. No amount of reasoning will change her mind.

[Spam & Cookies-mmm]

Originally Posted by Gayle

Kind of reminds me of how one of my coworkers nearly stabs herself when she makes salad because her mother taught her that if you peel a cucumber away from you, it will be bitter. So she peels cucumbers with a knife by bringing it towards her. No amount of reasoning will change her mind.

No no no no no.

It's if you cut off the ends before you peel the cucumber that it will be bitter. Or after. I can't remember. It was definitely about the cutting off of the ends that affected the bitterness, not the direction of the paring stroke.

ETA: I usually peel toward myself with a paring knife, but away from myself with a vegetable peeler. I don't know how you can "almost stab yourself" if you are doing it properly.

[Lainie]

Bitterness in a cucumber is, in fact, concentrated in the stem end, which may be the source of some of these traditions.

Cucumber bitterness explained

ETA: My ex used to tell me I was going to cut off my fingers because of the way I sometimes cut small vegetables -- hold the veggie piece in my hand, cut toward the finger. But he'd shoot his own argument in the foot by saying that his grandmother did the same thing. As I pointed out multiple times, his grandmother lived to be nearly 90 with all 10 fingers intact.

[Singing in the Drizzle]

My bed has the head facing South and under a window now for about 10 years. For the most part I sleep quite well.

Another reason for headaches in the morning is do to mild carbon dioxide poisoning having head under the sheets and blankets when sleeping.

When peeling in the kitchen it was always toward you with a pairing knife and away with a peeler. Also it takes a lot force to cut a finger off or do life threating damage with a knife. So you may end up with a few stitches but I doubt there will any missing fingers or even a death from peeling vegetables.

ETA: My aunt clamed that when I received a knife set as a gift from my parents, that need to give them (my parents) a dime, other wise I would end up cutting my self with the knives. It took me over 15 years to cut myself with a knife after that and it was a knife that I purchased.

[Lainie]

I heard a different version of the dime thing -- if someone you love gives you a gift of a knife or knives, you give them a dime to prevent the gift from "cutting" the love.

The only bed placement superstition I'm aware of is the prohibition against positioning it with its foot towards the door because you're inviting Death if you do. (Corpses are carried out feet first, sleeping is somewhat akin to death....)

Originally Posted by Singing in the Drizzle

ETA: My aunt clamed that when I received a knife set as a gift from my parents, that need to give them (my parents) a dime, other wise I would end up cutting my self with the knives.

The canonical knife superstition says you must "purchase" any gift of a knife from a friend lest it otherwise sever the friendship. Said purchase is effected by handing over a coin, typically a dime or a quarter.

The "purchasing the gift to remove the bad effect" meme also attaches to pearls - if received as a gift without the token coin being handed back, each pearl represents a tear to be shed.

[Mad Jay]

According to Vastu which is the Indian "science" of interior decoration, your bed should be placed so your head is towards the south. The reason given is magnetic lines pulling your head in a certain direction. Vastu is a lot of woo, so take it with a big grain of salt. It could be that this specific UL came from Vastu.

[Skeptic]

Originally Posted by Mad Jay

According to Vastu which is the Indian "science" of interior decoration, your bed should be placed so your head is towards the south. The reason given is magnetic lines pulling your head in a certain direction. Vastu is a lot of woo, so take it with a big grain of salt. It could be that this specific UL came from Vastu.

My first thought was that this was a type of feng shui, which is just as crazy.

[inkrose115]

In les Miserables, Joly, the hypochondriac medical student of the group sleeps with the head of his bed facing south so as to prevent his circulation from being impeded by the flow of the earth's magnetic current. He is a likeable character but even Les Amis think he is a bit odd.

[Mad Jay]

Originally Posted by Skeptic

My first thought was that this was a type of feng shui, which is just as crazy.

IIRC, the rules for Feng Shui are much more complicated. You have to use math to figure out where to place the bed

[GenYus234]

Originally Posted by Barbara

The only bed placement superstition I'm aware of is the prohibition against positioning it with its foot towards the door because you're inviting Death if you do. (Corpses are carried out feet first, sleeping is somewhat akin to death....)

So if somebody dies in bed, you've got to rotate them 180° (or flip them) before you carry them out?

Also, should our antipodean friends reverse all of the instructions or are the magnetic parts of our brains polarized?

[Hero_Mike]

Is this true for the southern hemisphere as well?

If there was any truth to it, people would be advised to check their positioning against "magnetic north" rather than "true north". Magnetic declination is the difference between "true north" and magnetic north and it varies geographically. That can be very high right near the poles but as much as 30° in some highly populated areas. For example, the two line up in a line from Duluth, MN to the tip of the Yucatan in Mexico, but in Boston, for example, the difference is 16 degrees. And it's not quite straight. In the south Atlantic between Brazil and South Africa, it's 25°.

[Sylvanz]

Hmmm, the head of my bed is against the South wall of my room. The foot faces the door. I think I may be in trouble. Of course it's been that way for almost 10 years now, so there's that.