Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, December 5, 2009: The famously pain-resistant Vikings might have approved of the latest fad sweeping Sweden. Nail beds are becoming popular with health-conscious consumers convinced that lying on rubber pads embedded with sharp, plastic pins is good for them. Hindu ascetics of legend favor a wooden bed bristling with metal nails, but the spiky foam version does the job nicely, says Catarina Rolfsdotter-Jansson, a 46-year-old yoga instructor and writer who uses one every day and describes it as being “quite painful actually”. “The back looks picked at, as if with a fork,” when a person gets up off the mat. But then “you relax and feel nice again”, she told the New York Times. Users often claim relief from insomnia, migraines and asthma, while a more zealous group believes that the mat can cure everything from schizophrenia to dandruff.
Not everyone is convinced of the benefits of nail beds, however. The Svenska Dagbladet newspaper concluded recently that there was “nothing that even approaches a scientific proof for the effects” of the nail bed.