I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products or activities mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are personal opinion only, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

This post is going to ramble on for a little while before it gets to the real point, so you might want to sit back and enjoy the ride.

It’s guaranteed to leave you in ’stitches’.

I was in Southern California at my daughter’s wedding a couple of weeks ago. At the reception, I went over to a table where my brother-in-law was sitting. He happens to be my best friend from third grade, and it was he who introduced me to the woman who became my wife.

My wife just happens to be the twin sister of his wife. I don’t want to confuse things too much, but I must mention that my wife’s brother, whom I roomed with after high school, never told me about her. I suppose he had good reason for hiding her from me. But some things are just meant to be.

Anyway, sitting at the table was a common friend of ours from high school, and his beautiful wife Janet. As I sat down, he asked me about the scar that was forming above my right eye. He wondered what had happened to cause it. (more…)

Neil says that when he started writing his new book, Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, his fear factor was at about 6 out of 10. Now that he’s learned some basic survival skills, he feels the factor has been downgraded to a 1 or 2. That’s pretty good. Before he started taking EMT classes, he felt he had to flee when faced with an emergency situation. Now he has joined the California Emergency Mobile Patrol, and feels the responsibility to help, instead. Very good.

This is a heavily marketed book, and definitely written for people who are just starting to think about emergency preparedness. But it’s written with a nod of the hat to the gonzo style of personal journalism manifest by Hunter S. Thompson, and so it is a fairly entertaining read as you find out how to kill a goat. Now that I think of it, perhaps it reminds me more of a Maxim how-to-do-it article. Which is natural, because his first book was apparently an iconoclastic treatise about how to pick up girls, a best-seller called The Game (I didn’t read that one… I’ve already got my Amazon Woman from the Avocado Jungle… really, don’t ask). Or perhaps an otherworldly Mother Jones News feature.

As you see, it defies description. Maybe best to just check it out for yourself at Amazon (the booksellers, not the tribe that inhabits the Avocado Jungle).

Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the substances or products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

There is so much controversy about salt. One time I was talking to a fellow gym rat about taking in enough sodium through eating salt, and had a nurse who was working out in the same general area come over to me, literally shaking with rage, and berate me for making such obviously harmful statements. You would have thought I’d been caught in the middle of some particularly heinous act.

Didn’t change my mind. In fact, I gently referred her to a recent AMA release that admitted that their stance on sodium for most people, who do not have a certain relatively rare medical condition, has been in error for years. I asked her to get back to me after she read it. Never saw her again.

The body needs the electrolytes sodium and potassium to function. You die if you do not have enough of each. I’ve been studying this subject for a long time. The action of the sodium-potassium pump in the human body just happened to be the subject of my first college class that I sat in on when I was a senior in high school. If you do not have enough of both, you have huge short-term AND long-term problems. One of my high school classmates learned that lesson the hardest possible way. He died from a diet substance that leached potassium from his body.
(more…)

Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

Skeptical about colloidal silver? I was. Then I read about nurses in England demanding that their hospital allow them to use silver-impregnated dressings for multi-drug resistant staph (MDRS) infections. I can no longer find that article, but no matter. There is a new article in nursingtimes.net from October 14, 2008, that now worries about the overuse of silver… mostly for cost reasons. Nurses are now using silver products so much in their normal care of burns that some people are concerned about the ‘huge amounts’ that patients are being treated with.

So the fact that they are in official use in hospitals is 100% documented. The fact that they are effective is 100% documented. “There is a wealth of evidence supporting the use of antimicrobial silver-based products“, they say in the article. “We know silver has an antimicrobial effect and it is particularly effective in treating pseudomonas.” And this is from institutional people who really prefer the old ways.

Does colloidal silver work for me? (more…)

Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

There are some things about silver and gold that we all know. They are precious. They are valuable. They are useful.

Gold has unique uses in electronics and many other practical things that give it value beyond any sort of monetary system. Silver is very useful too. We are just now remembering what some of the most important practical uses are.

People of long ago, no-AMA-medicine days, knew some of the ways (more…)

My wife started coughing up blood last week. She had a really unusual event of coughing very hard for about three full minutes, so I figured the coughing had broken a blood vessel in a lung and was causing the hemoptysis (which simply means ‘coughing up blood’. But it’s a fun word.)

Although a little gory, a few milliliters of hemoptysis is not necessarily immediately life threatening… but the underlying cause can be any of over a hundred different things, including cancer and a lot of other deadly and semi-deadly diseases. So we got on the hump and make it in record time to the local hospital, where they did X-rays and a CAT scan and more on that later. In any event, they could not figure it out. So we got Air Evaced to the big hospital about a hundred and fifty miles away. Where we ended up staying for several days. I slept on the floor, which was fine, because I wanted, and in my mind needed, to be with her.

I had about half an hour to get whatever we needed for the journey and stay at the hospital. Home was twenty minutes or more away from the hospital. No way I could get there and get things and get back in time. I would have missed going with her if I’d tried it. (more…)

Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

Additionally, some people are allergic to honey. You must never use honey if you are allergic to it, or put it on anyone who is allergic to it. You could initiate an anaphylactic reaction that could be life threatening.

(Read Part One)
(Read Part Two)
(Read Part Three)

I came across a source that talks about using honey for wound care that I think is important to read.

The page is at WorldWideWounds.com and goes deeply into the subject. There is some very good information, presented lucidly and interestingly.

It brings up points I had not thought to mention, including the need to use a ‘low-adherent dressing’, such as Telfa or equivalent non-stick bandage, when using honey with a dressing. I forgot to mention this because I almost never use any kind of dressing that will cause the healing wound to stick to the pad. Kind of defeats the purpose. The exception is in a first aid situation where there’s nothing but cloth from someone’s clothing to make a bandage with. Actually, using honey in this situation is helpful, because it provides some degree of lubrication to the wound, and actually lessens the sticking. But when I change the dressing, I would hope to have a non-stick type available. It’s better.
(more…)

Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

Additionally, some people are allergic to honey. You must never use honey if you are allergic to it, or put it on anyone who is allergic to it. You could initiate an anaphylactic reaction that could be life threatening.

(Read Part One)
(Read Part Two)
(Read Addendum)

I’d like to share some of my experiences with using honey for wound care on myself. They are personal, and may not be applicable in any given situation to any other person. But perhaps they will be interesting to read as entertainment. This post is long, but it’s something I cannot break into parts. Please bear with me and read it all the way through, or please do not even start reading it.

First, how effective is honey? A study reported in the Annals of Burns and Fire Disasters
“shows that in burn wounds infected by multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, honey may be useful for controlling infection.” That is a double-tough situation, and to me it is indicative of what honey can do for a wound.
(more…)

Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

Additionally, some people are allergic to honey. You must never use honey if you are allergic to it, or put it on anyone who is allergic to it. You could initiate an anaphylactic reaction that could be life threatening.

(Read Part One)
(Read Part Three)
(Read Addendum)

After researching the kind of honey used for treatment of wounds, I found that most sources said that local honey was best. That makes sense to me, because perhaps the more local it is, the better suited it is for the disease-causing organisms of a particular area. We get an organic, raw, unfiltered honey produced within 15 miles of our house, when it is available. When it is not available, I get one made about 50 miles away. I ‘feel’ that the more local honey does better, but I have no solid proof of that. Both of them have been effective when I’ve used them, so maybe there is no difference.
(more…)

Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

Additionally, some people are allergic to honey. You must never use honey if you are allergic to it, or put it on anyone who is allergic to it. You could initiate an anaphylactic reaction that could be life threatening.

(Read Part Two)
(Read Part Three)
(Read Addendum)

I’m not allergic to honey. I do not know anyone who is allergic to honey. So I use it on wounds.

If your mouth dropped open just now, you are in good company. Mine did that when I first read about using honey on wounds. I was looking through my copy of the best wilderness emergency first aid book ever written, A Comprehensive Guide to Wilderness & Travel Medicine, by Eric A. Weiss, M.D. when I saw that he recommended honey for first aid treatment of open wounds. Frankly, I didn’t believe it. I said to myself, okay, he gives very wise information on just about everything he writes about, so he’s entitled to one clunker. (more…)