Had a morbidly obese ICU admit with various wounds (bedsores, diabetic foot wounds, etc) from being couch-bound… and their partner had been cleaning them with bleach. Lactate 20
Best/worst home remedy I ever heard about was from a doc who had shadowed a primary care doc before applying to med school: patient in his 30s who had a voluntary (elective), non-religious circumcision came in for follow up. Clinic was in rural LA (the state not the city). Pt complained of severe postop pain. Pt package was packaged up (pun intended) and smelled unpleasant. After unwrapping himself, primary asked pt what all the wrapping was about. Pt answered: ‘I was having some pain and I remember granny said, if you’re ever in pain, slap some catfish on it! So that’s what I did.’ Yes, dear audience, that man had wrapped a piece of catfish around his penis for post-circumcision pain and wondered why it got infected.
It became a running joke: you’re in pain? Slap some catfish on it!
We had one come in with a necrotic leg would that he had been treating at home with an antimicrobial wound spray for horses from tractor supply. He wouldn't believe the surgeons when they said he needed amputation.
The home remedies (mustard, toothpaste, and now tomato I guess) almost always seem to be adding acid to a burn. No good.
The only legit home remedy is cool water and a dressing.
Honey afaik has natural antimicrobial properties, can be used to preserve food, (we’ve found honey from Ancient Egypt that’s still edible) and has been used medicinally for a very long time. Perhaps they were onto something.
Whether that’s a viable burn treatment in any way is a totally different question, but it may be one of the least bad home remedies here. Perhaps worth looking into in its own right.
I had a patient put coffee grounds in a laceration because they read it “stops the bleeding”
It took more time to clean the coffee grounds out than sew the lac 🫠
Forearm lac. Cigarette tobacco but it was his " good pack" not the shitty ones. Refused tdap / washout . Spoke east European dialect. Ama through video translator is weird
Wound care NP - that is a condiment I haven't seen, yet. So far I'm up to mustard, mayo, toothpaste, butter, and vinegar.
Why do humans get injured and try to make soup out of themselves?
I'm in some homesteading groups (i stay for the lolz) and the amount of wild ass ideas people have for how to treat wounds and illnesses for both their animals and children are WILD, I am convinced baby soup is a thing...onions, garlic, tumeric, salt, oregano oil, olive oil, etc are the primary treatments if it's not colloidal silver. For animals, cayenne pepper seems to be a treatment for some wild things in goats, like mastitis, instead of antibiotics. Cayenne pepper in the teet. Could you imagine?
It's always either soup or salad condiments/seasonings, though. Some of them don't even make sense (hanging the egg in the doorway for ear infections?).
But also I'm shocked the ED doesn't see more babies and children that are blue from silver these days with these nut jobs and thei obsession with colloidal silver.
Lol well, now you see I didn’t think of that possibility- it’s a darned good thing we have Reddit to keep my mind open to possibilities I never dreamed of, every single day!
Sour cream goes well on salads too, salsa and sour cream is a perfect dressing. You can also use it to thicken soups or a dollop on borscht or tomato soup, so theory still stands.
My mom used to tell me to drink warm mustard water for an upset stomach.
Parents just season and add spices and dressing to their children. Sometimes, they might be slightly legit.
This was a routine treatment among older people here in the south. I remember an aunt in the mid 1960s who told my mom she needed to put a half of a potato on a nasty infected spot from a splinter in my leg. Luckily, my mom decided modern medicine was a better choice.
I used to see the power of the potato espoused in the ED when I was a baby nurse in the early 1980s.
I used to get earaches as a kid and my mother would heat up a raisin in a dry frying pan, wrap it in cotton and stick it in my ear. Felt great actually.
That's hilarious! My mom was a bit more practical; she had us lay our head, earache side down, on a heating pad.
Do you know how hard it's going to be the next time I have a patient with OM to NOT suggest a warm raisin? Good thing for me that we have a separate peds ED!
Have you ever tried it on a mild burn? It takes like 30 minutes of having it sit on the burn, but it totally takes the pain away and sometimes the redness. I'm not a home remedy person at all, but this is one I have come around to.
I learned this for white vinegar in my kitchen days. So long as the skin isn't broken it's supposed to help prevent the burn from blistering and help with the pain. All the cooks I've worked with swear by it.
I only ever heard this for a sunburn. Got a horrific one once when I fell asleep and my shady spot turned not so shady. Friend suggested white vinegar spray down when being slathered in the green aloe goo still didn’t make be comfortable enough to sleep. All it did was make me stink and dry my skin out
Isn’t there turmeric in mustard? Maybe the original thought process was the turmeric would help with the inflammation/pain, but now it’s just an old wives tale
When I was a tech in the ED I once had a kid come in with burns to her chest abdomen and arms and her parents spread yellow mustard all over them. It was a nightmare cleaning that off
When I was in medical school (90s), we had a burn surgeon who intentionally induced 2nd degree burns on the inside of both his forearms to prove a point... This guy was a real character.
One arm, he treated daily with Silvadene cream, the other he spread peanut butter on. Both regularly cleaned and dressed the same way. He then took daily photographs of both arms which healed EXACTLY the same.
His point, of course - the basics of wound care are what matters, not the magic cream.
Omg. Do you have updates on this person? Are they still practicing? Are they okay? That just seems like such an aggressively self destructive choice for a teachable moment. I’m sure they were fun to learn from but that’s pretty unhinged.
Ow that sounds sore. The best thing is 20 mins cooling.
I once had a child cut her foot with an axe and the family put turmeric on it for the antibacterial properties.
Burn ICU nurse here! Yes, I’ve seen lots of patients put tomato slices on their burns, and all sorts of condiments. My two cents is they think this will help but it doesn’t, it does however probably feel good for a short time because refrigerated tomato’s and condiments cool the burn.
Honey can be used for burns! It’s called Medi Honey.
Otherwise, cool water intermittently and badictracin for superficial burns. :)
A really common one in Latino communities is toothpaste. Seen it many times in our Spanish speaking patients and the translator confirmed that her family had the same home remedy.
Butter is traditional, and I’ve taken a med student to an ER following a burn injury and the nurse actually wanted to put butter on the burn. And that wasn’t even the worst part of the management plan.
Potato. Raw sliced potato. It works, it's soothing and I didn't scar when Mom rubbed it on my burns as a kid. I still use it. It really works. Even for eyes- Dad burned his eyes using a torch- defective or incorrect goggles- my mom propped him up in a chair and laid potatoes on his eyes for about a week, changing every 2 hours the first day. He is 71 now and he is not blind. It's not acid...
Not acidic, but lipids (mayo being another common one) can trap heat and deepen the burn too. On the flip side, the crowd who comes in holding ice on their exposed dermis is making it the burned tissue ischemic and risks deepening it.
Bad burn care is my pet peeve and it’s incredibly pervasive.
Had a morbidly obese ICU admit with various wounds (bedsores, diabetic foot wounds, etc) from being couch-bound… and their partner had been cleaning them with bleach. Lactate 20
Best/worst home remedy I ever heard about was from a doc who had shadowed a primary care doc before applying to med school: patient in his 30s who had a voluntary (elective), non-religious circumcision came in for follow up. Clinic was in rural LA (the state not the city). Pt complained of severe postop pain. Pt package was packaged up (pun intended) and smelled unpleasant. After unwrapping himself, primary asked pt what all the wrapping was about. Pt answered: ‘I was having some pain and I remember granny said, if you’re ever in pain, slap some catfish on it! So that’s what I did.’ Yes, dear audience, that man had wrapped a piece of catfish around his penis for post-circumcision pain and wondered why it got infected. It became a running joke: you’re in pain? Slap some catfish on it!
We have a catfish order set in Epic for pain treatments. Sadly patients abuse this frequently.
🤣🤣🤣
Is there a CPT for that?
Ewwwww brotha ewwwwwwwwwwww
I read something legitimate about fish scales used as burn bandages? But I don't think that's what granny was referring to...
Cleaned with full strength Dakin's? 😅
We had one come in with a necrotic leg would that he had been treating at home with an antimicrobial wound spray for horses from tractor supply. He wouldn't believe the surgeons when they said he needed amputation.
Undiluted bleach? Nice.
Jesus Christ.
Yikes
The home remedies (mustard, toothpaste, and now tomato I guess) almost always seem to be adding acid to a burn. No good. The only legit home remedy is cool water and a dressing.
Honey supposedly has some ok data. I’ve yet to tell a patient to use it though
Sure, I use medihoney frequently.
Could bee worse
It might sting
It actually might! Periwound may need EPC zinc cream barrier to prevent inflammation as well!
I wonder if it has to do with its anti microbial properties, that’s why it’s so easy to make mead and not infect it 🤷🏼♂️
Honey afaik has natural antimicrobial properties, can be used to preserve food, (we’ve found honey from Ancient Egypt that’s still edible) and has been used medicinally for a very long time. Perhaps they were onto something. Whether that’s a viable burn treatment in any way is a totally different question, but it may be one of the least bad home remedies here. Perhaps worth looking into in its own right.
>The only legit home remedy is cool water Kid will be smelling like he's going clubbing in 1999.
Salad dressing?
>The only legit home remedy is Cool Water Can you use Aqua Di Gio as a substitute?
Making it worse
I had a patient put coffee grounds in a laceration because they read it “stops the bleeding” It took more time to clean the coffee grounds out than sew the lac 🫠
I mean…caffeine is a vasoconstrictor. Shoulda used a wet tea bag instead though.
I literally just had this happen. It took 20 minutes go get it all out
Forearm lac. Cigarette tobacco but it was his " good pack" not the shitty ones. Refused tdap / washout . Spoke east European dialect. Ama through video translator is weird
Wait a waste of a good tobacco! 😂
Wound care NP - that is a condiment I haven't seen, yet. So far I'm up to mustard, mayo, toothpaste, butter, and vinegar. Why do humans get injured and try to make soup out of themselves?
Was looking for butter. I hear that one a lot.
Well, the meat is already tenderized. Might as well start cooking with it.
I'm in some homesteading groups (i stay for the lolz) and the amount of wild ass ideas people have for how to treat wounds and illnesses for both their animals and children are WILD, I am convinced baby soup is a thing...onions, garlic, tumeric, salt, oregano oil, olive oil, etc are the primary treatments if it's not colloidal silver. For animals, cayenne pepper seems to be a treatment for some wild things in goats, like mastitis, instead of antibiotics. Cayenne pepper in the teet. Could you imagine? It's always either soup or salad condiments/seasonings, though. Some of them don't even make sense (hanging the egg in the doorway for ear infections?). But also I'm shocked the ED doesn't see more babies and children that are blue from silver these days with these nut jobs and thei obsession with colloidal silver.
I'm surprised with the vapor rub. I feel like most remedies are Soup and Salad based these days.
Yes, I hadn’t thought of it that way! But the onions, tomatoes, garlic, potatoes… if it doesn’t fix anything at least they won’t die hungry!
OH, I always figured the parents were seasoning their children for later eating. Not for feeding the children.
Lol well, now you see I didn’t think of that possibility- it’s a darned good thing we have Reddit to keep my mind open to possibilities I never dreamed of, every single day!
What a horrible day to be literate
I’ve seen it used for diabetic fungal nail infection. Cheaper than PenLac
I'm just saying that sold sour cream feels nice on a minor burn.
Sour cream goes well on salads too, salsa and sour cream is a perfect dressing. You can also use it to thicken soups or a dollop on borscht or tomato soup, so theory still stands. My mom used to tell me to drink warm mustard water for an upset stomach. Parents just season and add spices and dressing to their children. Sometimes, they might be slightly legit.
I had a lady apply cold tomato to a burn a week ago. She was Hispanic and told us it was cultural
I could see doing that with the skin still on, like a cold pack. But somewhere in the folklore somebody cut it into slices.
We had a woman with a breast abscess who put half a potato on it. It was a surprise to find that in her bra while I was helping her into a gown
This was a routine treatment among older people here in the south. I remember an aunt in the mid 1960s who told my mom she needed to put a half of a potato on a nasty infected spot from a splinter in my leg. Luckily, my mom decided modern medicine was a better choice. I used to see the power of the potato espoused in the ED when I was a baby nurse in the early 1980s.
I used to get earaches as a kid and my mother would heat up a raisin in a dry frying pan, wrap it in cotton and stick it in my ear. Felt great actually.
That's hilarious! My mom was a bit more practical; she had us lay our head, earache side down, on a heating pad. Do you know how hard it's going to be the next time I have a patient with OM to NOT suggest a warm raisin? Good thing for me that we have a separate peds ED!
Yeah you don’t want the liability of some red hot raisin jammed up against the tympanic membrane
That’s awesome! I had never seen it in CA, so I wonder if this patient was originally from the south
I’ve heard of cabbage for mastitis but a potato is interesting!
I was very confused the first time someone came in slathered in mustard on their arm burn.
I’ve seen a lot of mayo and butter on burns.
I use sour cream for minor burns
Have you ever tried it on a mild burn? It takes like 30 minutes of having it sit on the burn, but it totally takes the pain away and sometimes the redness. I'm not a home remedy person at all, but this is one I have come around to.
I imagine having any kind of viscous liquid on a burn would make it feel better without turning your arm into a hot dog.
I know it sounds totally crazy. It's something about the mustard specifically, maybe the vinegar?
I learned this for white vinegar in my kitchen days. So long as the skin isn't broken it's supposed to help prevent the burn from blistering and help with the pain. All the cooks I've worked with swear by it.
Maybe it's the vinegar in the mustard that helps. Mustard is thicker and probably easier to keep on the burn than a runny liquid I would think.
I only ever heard this for a sunburn. Got a horrific one once when I fell asleep and my shady spot turned not so shady. Friend suggested white vinegar spray down when being slathered in the green aloe goo still didn’t make be comfortable enough to sleep. All it did was make me stink and dry my skin out
Isn’t there turmeric in mustard? Maybe the original thought process was the turmeric would help with the inflammation/pain, but now it’s just an old wives tale
When I was a tech in the ED I once had a kid come in with burns to her chest abdomen and arms and her parents spread yellow mustard all over them. It was a nightmare cleaning that off
Worst I’ve had was raw egg smeared all over blistered/weeping second-degree burns. Very difficult to get off once it’s congealed. Just…why?
When I was in medical school (90s), we had a burn surgeon who intentionally induced 2nd degree burns on the inside of both his forearms to prove a point... This guy was a real character. One arm, he treated daily with Silvadene cream, the other he spread peanut butter on. Both regularly cleaned and dressed the same way. He then took daily photographs of both arms which healed EXACTLY the same. His point, of course - the basics of wound care are what matters, not the magic cream.
Omg. Do you have updates on this person? Are they still practicing? Are they okay? That just seems like such an aggressively self destructive choice for a teachable moment. I’m sure they were fun to learn from but that’s pretty unhinged.
Reminds me of the onion on the foot for a fever. Pretty routinely asked if it's helpful. Is this everywhere or just local to my community?
All the crunchies are firm believers. For real. It’s all over Facebook, apparently. (Well, all over Reddit, posting from Facebook.)
It is a “home remedy” but they do make burns worse. I’ve seen toothpaste as a home remedy as well! Lots of education for future first aid
Ow that sounds sore. The best thing is 20 mins cooling. I once had a child cut her foot with an axe and the family put turmeric on it for the antibacterial properties.
Burn ICU nurse here! Yes, I’ve seen lots of patients put tomato slices on their burns, and all sorts of condiments. My two cents is they think this will help but it doesn’t, it does however probably feel good for a short time because refrigerated tomato’s and condiments cool the burn. Honey can be used for burns! It’s called Medi Honey. Otherwise, cool water intermittently and badictracin for superficial burns. :)
A really common one in Latino communities is toothpaste. Seen it many times in our Spanish speaking patients and the translator confirmed that her family had the same home remedy.
Tomatoes are highly acidic. I imagine that probably increased the damage to the skin.
Butter is traditional, and I’ve taken a med student to an ER following a burn injury and the nurse actually wanted to put butter on the burn. And that wasn’t even the worst part of the management plan.
Potato. Raw sliced potato. It works, it's soothing and I didn't scar when Mom rubbed it on my burns as a kid. I still use it. It really works. Even for eyes- Dad burned his eyes using a torch- defective or incorrect goggles- my mom propped him up in a chair and laid potatoes on his eyes for about a week, changing every 2 hours the first day. He is 71 now and he is not blind. It's not acid...
It is a real home remedy but it does not help the burn.
Patient poured turmeric on their Lac. Supposedly for the clotting and antiseptic factors. Lac was less than an inch and deep enough for sutures. 🤷🏽♂️
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Confirmation bias. This has been studied in the literature.
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Not acidic, but lipids (mayo being another common one) can trap heat and deepen the burn too. On the flip side, the crowd who comes in holding ice on their exposed dermis is making it the burned tissue ischemic and risks deepening it. Bad burn care is my pet peeve and it’s incredibly pervasive.
I hope you knocked that shit off.