Sunday, November 16, 2008

Soapy water

Since yesterday the root of one of my fingernails (I'm not sure if this is an English term also... I mean the section of skin just above the nail, where the nail is growing from) had been irritated more and more. I kept pushing back the cuticle, but no avail. Then I noticed the skin had gone red: dang, infected.

I made a glass of hot water and dissolved a bit of scrapings from a bar of soap in it. (I don't know if detergent or dishwash fluid would work, doubt it.) And I'd heard salt helped, so I put a little bit of that in it too. Then I sat with my finger in it, but only for maybe five minutes before I was interrupted.

And yet, next I looked at it, the redness had gone, and all the pain too. That's pretty durn amazing. (I'll probably have to do it again of course.)
It's good for an ingrown toenail too, they can be very painful, I had one last year. That takes several days and applications though, and it's good to start early.

Pascal, MD, says:

Hot water in itself is a very good remedy against infection. Simply from the temperature. Add to this that salty water AND soap each have an antiseptic effect. (Clean sea water is always good for cleaning a wound.)

Temperature had an amazing effect on immunity. The main reasons why we often fall sick in winter are:
- Cold weakens our body defenses
- Being cooped up inside because of the cold allows for germs to get concentrated by poor ventilation, increasing contamination
- Cold and moisture favor the growth of many germs in nature; not all of them like warmth

Fever is a classic response of the body to microbial agressions, be they from a bacteria or a virus. A few added degrees boost the efficiency of our immune system, antibodies, phagocyte cells, etc. As doctors, we were taught very early to RESPECT fever, and to not insist on "treating" it as such, because not only is it an indicator, it's also a good help with the healing process. The only two downsides of fever are:
- Above a certain threshold, it becomes harmful to the body. 40°Celsius is OK. 41°C is a problem. 43°C can kill a person in perhaps a couple of hours, exactly like heat stroke. So fever needs to be kept under control.
- It makes you very tired. All that extra heat is produced, of course, by an increase in body metabolism, like running your engine on neutral to warm it up. A lot of extra lassitude comes from the fact that the immune response in itself is an intense invisible metabolic effort. Lots of antibody proteins and lymphocute cells etc. to produce. This is why ill people NEED rest, and to be kept warm for a double reason: temperature itself, and saving on the energy that being cold uses up to keep body temperature.
Pretty much stating the basics, but they're not always obvious to the lay man.
So, fever needs to be lowered if it becomes dangerously high, or if it causes real discomfort to the patient. There IS no third reason.

Some cancers of the limbs are very difficult to treat with classic therapies. Among these, osteosarcoma, a very nasty malignant bone cancer that typically hits the young. Like, double "ouch", dude. In the past, fatal issue was usually averted by amputation, which is pretty radical. But limbs have one great advantage: they contain no highly specialized neurons, unlike the brain. Heat kills us by hurting the brain cells, essentially. The viscera also don't fancy it too much.
But the limbs? They're made of skin, muscle, bone, nerves, blood vessels, connective tissue. Pretty basic stuff, and all very resilient to heat. Can withstand 45°C with no problem. Think about when you dip your feet into very hot water, that ALMOST burns you, but if you can withstand the pain it soon goes away and makes your flu feel SO much better.
This is used against the terrible osteosarcoma. Provided the patient can tolerate the discomfort, their limb is put in a heating system that maintains a temperature of 45°C for a few hours, rinse and repeat every day. Wreaks havoc on cancerous cells. Because, although they're originally our own cells, by turning cancerous they become abnormal. 90 to 99% of cancers are naturally eliminated by the healthy immune system and we never even feel them. Heat helps it destroy a limb cancer.
Reversely, AIDS patients, whom by definition have a breakdown of their immune system, encounter a very high rate of cancers, including some which would NEVER evolve in a normal person. Typical example: the famed Kaposi sarcoma, incredibly rare before 1981.

As a conclusion: when using heat (along with salty or soapy water) to snuff out an infection, you just have to make sure you don't give yourself a burn by overdoing it. Burned tissues don't defend themselves very well.

Eolake's method should, by all acounts, also work wonders on warts.

8 comments:

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Hot water in itself is a very good remedy against infection. Simply from the temperature. Add to this that salty water AND soap each have an antiseptic effect. (Clean sea water is always good for cleaning a wound.)

Temperature had an amazing effect on immunity. The main reasons why we often fall sick in winter are:
- Cold weakens our body defenses
- Being cooped up inside because of the cold allows for germs to get concentrated by poor ventilation, increasing contamination
- Cold and moisture favor the growth of many germs in nature; not all of them like warmth

Fever is a classic response of the body to microbial agressions, be they from a bacteria or a virus. A few added degrees boost the efficiency of our immune system, antibodies, phagocyte cells, etc. As doctors, we were taught very early to RESPECT fever, and to not insist on "treating" it as such, because not only is it an indicator, it's also a good help with the healing process. The only two downsides of fever are:
- Above a certain threshold, it becomes harmful to the body. 40°Celsius is OK. 41°C is a problem. 43°C can kill a person in perhaps a couple of hours, exactly like heat stroke. So fever needs to be kept under control.
- It makes you very tired. All that extra heat is produced, of course, by an increase in body metabolism, like running your engine on neutral to warm it up. A lot of extra lassitude comes from the fact that the immune response in itself is an intense invisible metabolic effort. Lots of antibody proteins and lymphocute cells etc. to produce. This is why ill people NEED rest, and to be kept warm for a double reason: temperature itself, and saving on the energy that being cold uses up to keep body temperature.
Pretty much stating the basics, but they're not always obvious to the lay man.
So, fever needs to be lowered if it becomes dangerously high, or if it causes real discomfort to the patient. There IS no third reason.

Some cancers of the limbs are very difficult to treat with classic therapies. Among these, osteosarcoma, a very nasty malignant bone cancer that typically hits the young. Like, double "ouch", dude. In the past, fatal issue was usually averted by amputation, which is pretty radical. But limbs have one great advantage: they contain no highly specialized neurons, unlike the brain. Heat kills us by hurting the brain cells, essentially. The viscera also don't fancy it too much.
But the limbs? They're made of skin, muscle, bone, nerves, blood vessels, connective tissue. Pretty basic stuff, and all very resilient to heat. Can withstand 45°C with no problem. Think about when you dip your feet into very hot water, that ALMOST burns you, but if you can withstand the pain it soon goes away and makes your flu feel SO much better.
This is used against the terrible osteosarcoma. Provided the patient can tolerate the discomfort, their limb is put in a heating system that maintains a temperature of 45°C for a few hours, rinse and repeat every day. Wreaks havoc on cancerous cells. Because, although they're originally our own cells, by turning cancerous they become abnormal. 90 to 99% of cancers are naturally eliminated by the healthy immune system and we never even feel them. Heat helps it destroy a limb cancer.
Reversely, AIDS patients, whom by definition have a breakdown of their immune system, encounter a very high rate of cancers, including some which would NEVER evolve in a normal person. Typical example: the famed Kaposi sarcoma, incredibly rare before 1981.

As a conclusion: when using heat (along with salty or soapy water) to snuff out an infection, you just have to make sure you don't give yourself a burn by overdoing it. Burned tissues don't defend themselves very well.

Eolake's method should, by all acounts, also work wonders on warts.

Makes one wonder why the heat seems to be so bad on countries. (Cf "The Heat Is Bad", old post on this blog from a few years back)

Unknown said...

That is called a cuticle in American English.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thank you very much. I was beginning to suspect so. I always thought the cuticle was just the little thin bit sitting on top of the nail, that you have to push back.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

A couple of years ago I made a wart (I think it was) go away with tea tree oil.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Nope, that's just another example of lay man's misuse of scientific terms. Everybody today "knowingly" insists of calling a part of the anatomic cuticle with the name of the whole.
And the appendicitis in not an operation, it is a condition that warrants the surgical removal of the appendix.

Most people similarly tend to imagine laser beams as bright bars of light travelling so slowly that you can actually see them moving, like in Star Wars. By all accounts, those "blaster beams" are more likely to be plasma discharges. Very hot ionized gas.
Same with lightsabers, called in French "laser sabers". No such weapon would have a static beam shorter than a man!
(Um... what am I doing? Trying to find scientific logic in Star Wars? Weak in my brain, the Force must be!)

And you cannot hear ships exploding in the void of space, unless you're aboard that ship. (I wonder how many witnesses lived to tell about it? Even in Mir, a common fire almost spelled their doom). Or MAYBE you'll hear something if you're so close that the exploding gas expands to your ship and can then transmit a vague fraction of the sound.

Ah, but excuse me, I think my "needless rant" alarm has gone off again. Yeah-yeah-yeah, what is it THIS time, ya silly contraption???

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Warts are a fascinating thing (medically speaking). We KNOW they're caused by viruses, but we also know from lengthy experience that their psychosomatic component is very powerful. Basically, any voodoo-shmoodoo ritual or superstition which you believe will remove the warts will usually work, as long as you believe it will.

Naturally, more concrete treatments will also be efficient, probably even more. The thing is, personal faith in healing can have a great power in bringing that healing about, a very real power that has yet to see its limits determined. And this, I should point out, is official admitted scientific fact.

To put it in terms as official and standard as possible, "patient's morale is an essential component in recovery".

There are known and established links between the central nevous system and the immune system. In lay man's terms: the mind affect the health. Asthma for instance is a very real biochemical phenomenon, but is extremely modulated by the state of mind, the mood, and eventual feelings of insecurity.
Some medical "miracles" have nothing to do with any intervention of a supernatural force. You'll see those in every believing community, even those who share contradictory beliefs to yours, even those whose guru-prophet-preacher is later exposed as a fraud. Maybe not all miracle healings, of course. In all objectivity, one is not allowed to generalize the conclusions and decree them universal.

But much of the power we like to attribute to the benevolence of God/Vishnu/Wakan-Tanka is in reality coming from within us. Very often, the High Power is simply the means, the switch, the concentration mantra, through which we heal ourselves.

Having a Doctor you trust can play the same role, even if he/she isn't an exceptionally good one. It used to bother me, that feeling, confirmed in the facts, that many patients view Doctor me as some sort of god. But I've come to accept that it helps them. It's for a good cause.
As long as *I* myself don't start believing I'm God, all's well in the world, and as it should be.

This is turning into a very metaphysical meditation, but in the end, people quite often NEED something to believe into. I guess it's their legitimate right, after all. And it does them good. Including medically established good. :-)

But this great trust implies great responsibility. Too few people are up to this responsibility, to few people know to remain fair and helpful and humble.

And to think all this came from a bit of soapy water. Newton and his apple are definitely left behind! Booya!
(Nobody in THE WORLD is as humble as ME, yo!)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I am always overwhelmed by your humility. If I could bow lower, I would, but the ground limits me.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

The ground? (sigh) Wery well then, thou art absolved.
But don't let this become a habit, okay? (Here's a hint: next time, bring a shovel.)