health

First Aid: How To Stop A Bloody Nose

People are sometimes misinformed about the best way to stop a nosebleed. The correct way to help someone with a nosebleed is to follow these steps…

1. Press both sides of the nostrils while the person sits and leans forward.

2. Place constant pressure on both sides of the nostrils for a few minutes until the bleeding stops.

3. If bleeding continues, press harder.

4. Phone your emergency response number (or 911) if…
You can’t stop the bleeding in about 15 minutes.
The bleeding is heavy, such as gushing blood.
The person has trouble breathing.

Image credit: American Heart Association

How To Stop Bleeding From The Mouth

You can usually stop bleeding from the mouth with pressure. Bleeding from the mouth can be serious if blood or broken teeth block the air-way and cause breathing problems or if you can’t reach the bleeding area.

Follow these steps when giving first aid to a person with bleeding from the mouth…

1. If you can easily reach the bleeding, apply pressure to the area with the dressings. If the bleeding is from the tongue, lip, or cheek, press the bleeding area with sterile gauze or a clean cloth.

2. Phone your emergency response number (or 911) if…
You can’t stop the bleeding.
The person has trouble breathing.

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Home Remedies for Allergies

It is unfortunate, but when the SHTF, manufacturing and/or distribution of medical supplies and medications may become completely disrupted, if not stopped all together.

People with health problems that used to be easily treatable with pharmaceuticals prior to the SHTF catastrophe, will now be in trouble with limited or no medications available.

If this should happen, what will you do? What can you do? One thing you can do is to consider home remedies for treatment.

Disclaimer: These home remedies should be used for academic purposes only. Never use any home remedy or other self treatment without being advised to do so by a physician.

Allergies. If you sneeze and sniffle your way through pollen season, or experience hives, itching or swelling when you eat a certain food or get stung by an insect, then you’re no stranger to allergies. “An allergy starts when the immune system mistakes a normally harmless substance for a dangerous invader,” explains the Mayo Clinic. The most common types of allergies include food allergies, respiratory allergies, contact allergies and insect sting allergies.

Food Allergies

Knowing which foods trigger food allergies and avoiding those foods is the best way to prevent allergic reactions. If you have severe reactions to certain foods, then you probably carry a epinephrine pen (syringe) and antihistamine tablets. While this isn’t a ‘natural’ home remedy, it is highly advisable to stock up with enough of these.

Nutrients like vitamin B5 and vitamin E prove effective in relieving the sufferer from an allergic reaction or symptom as they contain anti-allergic properties that can control a reaction.

Put five drops of castor oil in half a cup of fruit vegetable juice or plain water and have the solution every morning. This helps in curing the allergies affecting the intestinal tract, nose and the skin.

Squeeze half a lime in water mixed with a teaspoon of honey and drink it every morning. This solution flushes the system of impurities as it is an anti-allergic and anti-toxic agent.

One or two bananas everyday can help in warding off the symptoms of an allergic reaction like skin rashes, digestive disorders and/or asthma.

Carrot juice or a combination of carrot juice with beet or cucumber juices can help in curing allergic reaction from any foods.

Respiratory Allergies

Hay Fever (seasonal allergies). People with hay fever are usually troubled twice a year, in the spring and the fall (pollen seasons). Pollen is a hay fever allergy that is airborne. When they enter our respiratory system, our bodies may start to develop antibodies to resist the allergens. The allergens can also be something like pet dander which will cause the same respiratory symptoms as well as the same reactions from our bodies.

Drinking chamomile tea is supposed to be a big help in relieving hay fever symptoms. It is also beneficial to inhale the vapors from the tea.

Add some honey to boiled minced grapefruit and lemon. Have this solution three times a day. To stop irritation in your nose, apply little petroleum jelly inside your nose. Boil chamomile in water and inhale fumes from the water.

Aroma therapy or steam inhalation is known to help. Mixing a few drops of eucalyptus oil to hot warm and inhaling the steam is known to lessen the severity of the conditions.

Garlic also helps clear congestion and is known to be effective against hay fever symptoms.

Quercitin is another natural substance that you can purchase in a supplement form. If you include quercitin in your daily diet, your allergic reactions should lessen in severity. Quercitin is also found naturally in red onions, apples, broccoli, blueberries, red wine and green and black tea. So stock up on these items allergy sufferers!

Contact Allergies

Plant allergies like poison ivy, poison oak or Sumac, is something that we have all probably encountered ourselves or known someone that has been smitten. These poisonous plants contain an oil called urushiol, which is an allergen. Urushiol is in the entire plant, the leaves, stems, flowers, roots etc. Contact with this oil can cause the allergic rash reaction. That is why it is very important to wash any clothing, equipment or pets you think may have come in contact with these plants. If they have the oil on them, you can get the allergic reaction by touching the oil on these items.

The rash itself can take weeks to go away. In the mean time, there are a few ways to relieve the symptoms. Using cold water compresses can help alleviate the itching. However a method that has worked for Ken has been to use HOT water on the affected area (only after the oils have initially been washed away with cold water and soap). Poison Ivy Itch Relief. Although it is a pharmaceutical, Calamine lotion can also help with the itching as well as nonprescription antihistamines such as Benadryl (stock up).

For itch relief cut up a lemon and rub the slice over the infected area it will sting but it DOES relief the itching.

Get some rhubarb, break open the stalk and, like you do with aloe, rub the ooze that comes from the stem on the area.

Use plain table salt. Just wet the infected area and rub it with table salt for fast relief and to stop the spread.

Salts ‘take-up’ grease from off the skin. The best is hand cleaner (degreaser) from automotive section of your store. Removes GREASE ‘poison’ completely. Immediately skin irritation relief.

The bottom line is that learning how to identify these plants and then steering clear is the best way to avoid having to deal with them.

Insect Sting Allergies

Bee Stings. Pulling out the stinger and keeping the area iced and clean are your first steps. However, if the person has a history of having severe allergic reactions to bee stings, they probably have a supply of epinephrine (again, stock up).

Meat tenderizer and parsley are both supposed to be fast acting on bee stings. Rub either one of these on the bee sting immediately. the pain should go away and the poison should be neutralized in a few minutes.

Paste of vinegar/baking soda/meat tenderizer Due to the acid/base interaction of the vinegar and baking soda, the concoction fizzes like an Alka Seltzer. The meat tenderizer contains papain, an enzyme found in papaya that supposedly breaks down the toxins in bee (and other) venom. (Though the meat tenderizer and vinegar makes you smell like an antipasto sampler.)

Toothpaste.

Ice.

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How to Purify Water with Sunlight

Did you know that solar radiation from the sun can purify (disinfect) water and make it safe for drinking from harmful bacteria?

While so often we hear or read about the bad things that the sun is capable of doing to us, we should also know that some of the same energy from the sun can be harnessed for doing good. A few good examples include solar electric panels, solar hot water panels, and solar ovens.

Well here is one more good example. Harnessing the solar energy from the sun to purify (disinfect) water from a lake or stream into safe drinking water. It is much simpler than you may think. Here’s how…

UV-A rays from the sun, (Ultraviolet-A, longwave, 315-400 nm), will terminate harmful bacteria, parasites, and viruses in water, given enough sun exposure.

A clear plastic bottle filled with water, exposed to the sun for 6 hours will make the water safe to drink (see the caveat list). In fact, the effectiveness of terminating  harmful bacteria is an amazing 5-Nines, that is, 99.999 percent!

List of germs that are terminated from UV-A sunlight exposure at 6 hours

• Bacteria – Escherichia coli
• Bacteria – Vibrio cholera
• Bacteria – Salmonella
• Bacteria – Shigella flexneri
• Bacteria – Campylobacter jejuni
• Bacteria – Yersinia enterocolitica
• Virus – Rotavirus
• Parasites – Giardia
• Parasites – Cryptosporidium (needs 10 hours exposure)

List of caveats to UV-A sunlight water purification

• This method kills germs. If the water is already contaminated with chemicals from pollution, the chemicals will remain.
• If the water is cloudy and dirty, it should be filtered first to allow the UV-A rays to effectively penetrate into the water.
• The plastic water bottle should be no bigger than 3 liters. In moderately cloudy water, UV-A will lose 50 percent effectiveness at a depth of 10 mm (about 0.5 inch), whereas UV-A will only lose 25 percent effectiveness at a depth of 10 mm in clear water. Just use a typical size soda bottle or water bottle.

How to purify water with sunlight

The recommended bottle to use is a “PET” bottle. It is very common and is typically used for soda or other soft drinks.

PET, PolyEthylene Terephthalate, Recycle code #1 on bottom of bottle.

The bottle must not be colored. It must be a clear bottle. Again, it must be a clear plastic bottle. Not glass (glass blocks too much of the UV-A for this purpose).

The bottle must be clean. Common Sense.

Know your water source (as best you can)… if you believe it to be chemically toxic, don’t use it.

Fill the bottle with water. If the water is very cloudy, it must be filtered by first pouring through a cloth or such material to capture sediment.

Lay the bottle down in the sun. Do not stand them up. Ideally the bottles would by placed so that they face the the sun at a similar angle, to maximize the UV-A penetration.

Even better… lie the bottles on a reflective surface to increase the UV-A exposure using direct and reflected sunlight. This is not necessary, however it would shorten the required time and ensure optimum UV-A exposure.

If the sky is partly cloudy with only a few clouds, then 6 hours sunlight exposure will be enough.
If the sky is half filled with clouds, or more, then 2 days will be required.

Note that the outdoor temperature does not matter, so long as the UV-A sunlight exposure has been 6 hours.

A few notes:

An excellent source for more information on this subject is from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Sciences and Technology.

For those that are concerned about using plastic, the WHO (World Health Organization) states that the limiting values (plasticizers) for drinking water are never exceeded when using PET bottles for this method.

Sediment or other particulate matter should be removed first by a filtering process.

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How Long To Boil Drinking Water?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that 90 percent of the world’s water is contaminated in some way. There are a variety of microscopic organisms that can contaminate water supplies and cause potentially serious, even fatal, illnesses among wilderness travelers. Dipping your head into a cold mountain stream and taking a long refreshing drink is an experience that has basically vanished from the wilderness areas of America. With the increased use of the wilderness there has also been an increase in the amount of bacteriological contamination of backcountry water supplies.

Biologically contaminated water is water that contains microorganisms such as Giardia (a common microorganism that, if not killed, leads to intestinal disorders), bacteria, or viruses that can lead to infections.
Toxic water sources contain chemical contamination from pesticide runoffs, mine tailings, and so on. Boiling, filtering, or chemically treating water can remove or kill microorganisms, but it will not remove chemical toxins.

Boiling is the most certain way of killing all microorganisms. According to the Wilderness Medical Society, water temperatures above 160° F (70° C) kill all pathogens within 30 minutes and above 185° F (85° C) within a few minutes. So in the time it takes for the water to reach the boiling point (212° F or 100° C) from 160° F (70° C), all pathogens will be killed, even at high altitude.

So the correct answer is… The moment your drinking water reaches a rolling boil, the water has already become safe to drink (except for the risk of chemical toxins).

Stop wasting fuel. You do not need to boil water for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, double for high altitude, whatever else you’ve heard, etc.

If you have a thermometer, you don’t even have to wait until the water begins to boil for safe drinking water.

30 minutes at 160° F
-or-
3 minutes at 185° F
-or-
you’re already safe at 212° F

…I’ll bet you didn’t know that

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Helping A Choking Victim With The Heimlich Maneuver

A person may be choking when food or another object gets stuck in the airway in the throat. The object stops air from getting to the lungs.

Some choking is mild and some is severe. If it’s severe, act fast. Get the object out so the person can breathe.

The choking is mild if…
The person can make sounds or can cough loudly. Stand by and let the person cough.

The choking is severe if…
The person cannot breathe or has a cough that has no sound or cannot talk or make a sound or makes the choking sign (grasping at the throat). Act quickly with the following steps.

If you think someone is choking, ask “Are you choking?” If he nods yes, tell him you are going to help.

The Heimlich Maneuver

Get behind him. Wrap your arms around him so that your hands are in front.

Make a fist with 1 hand.

Put the thumb side of your fist slightly above his belly button and well below the breastbone.

Grasp the fist with your other hand and give quick upward thrusts into his abdomen.

Give thrusts until the object is forced out and he can breathe, cough, or talk.

image source: the American Heart Association

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