Why Applying Honey to Small Hand Injuries is Practical
I am the poster child for easily injured adults.
Within the last year I’ve sliced, gashed, scraped, cut, and lacerated each of my digits doing normal everyday things. Got a bagel you need sliced? I hope you like blood on it. Want me to wash the dishes? Keep the glass and cutlery out of it or else you’ll have pink water. My hands look like the aftermath to an old horror movie.
Even as I write this hub I have to be careful to use the spacebar delicately and sparingly as I injured my thumb last night.
I came home last night with a pizza precariously balanced in one hand along with a small bag of groceries hanging off of one of my pinkies. My other hand was fishing the keys to my front door out of my pants pocket. I’d just gotten the door unlocked and opened when the pizza began to fall forward. Luckily my wife was there the catch the box. However the impulse to catch the box had already signaled in my brain before I’d gone through the threshold of my door and my hand was unaware of the large door frame that was in between it and the pizza. My thumb struck the door so hard that I jammed the joint and cut my thumb with my own thumbnail.
The pain was excruciating and I began to curse loudly in many non-alphanumeric characters because blood was quickly gushing from my thumb.
My wife, who is now numb to this, walked me over to the sink and began to run the cold tap water on the wound. She has the special “Oh-God-I’ve-Married-A-Clumsy-Idiot-And-I-Need-To-Know-How-To-Make-A-Tournequette-Out-Of-Toothpicks” knowledge of healing that comes with every wedding ring. She really should be nominated for sainthood for enduring me.
As she was doing her healing magic on my thumb, she grabbed a jar of honey and began to drip it onto the wound.
“Honey is a disinfectant and helps blood coagulate quicker,” she said.
Before I go on, this is what she did.
How to apply honey to a wound to get it to stop bleeding.
- Calm the injured idiot (me) by saying soothing things like, “Fingers bleed a lot. Don’t worry.”
- Apply pressure to the wound with some kind of absorbing material. Paper towels or toilet paper work just fine if you don’t have gauze available immediately.
- Wait for the bleeding to slow down and keep your hand above the level of your chest. If it doesn’t stop bleeding and it continues to gush or spurt, head for a hospital. The bleeding should slow down within a minute or two.
- Once the bleeding has tapered off, drip honey on the wound, and apply new gauze, cotton, or paper towel with pressure to the wound for a few minutes, making sure to hold your hand over the level of your heart.
- The bleeding should have coagulated and stopped. After an hour or so, clean the wound again and apply fresh gauze. If the wound is severe, go to a hospital for sutures.
Final Words
According to my wife, honey is a disinfectant. It also works as a natural antibacterial and a natural coagulant. You can do the same thing with sugar, but apparently, honey works better. Hospitals and doctor’s offices are flooded with people who have become whining hypochondriacs and are willing to spend whatever money they have to get patched up.
Almost all of us have forgotten the basics of first aid and how to deal with a situation without panicking. In our grandparents’ day, they essentially were able to get a band-aid or plaster and get on with their day without worrying too much about anything. Chances are things won’t be that terrible.
Of course, there are times when you actually need to go to a hospital because something is happening and whatever preliminary things you’ve done to solve the problem using over the counter medications are not working.
And, trust me, you’ll know the difference.
What we as people need to know are these little home remedies that our grandparents used with great effectiveness. I’m only lucky that my wife is one of these people who knows how to wrap a bandage, heal a wound, or know that lavender is a great way to relieve a headache.
You may not have what you need at the time and sometimes you need to make do with whatever is at hand before going to a doctor.
