A prep cook once cut his thumb really bad and packed coffee grounds in it. He didn’t speak much English but I understood it was to slow the bleeding. That dude was a beast.
That’s funny that’s what my mexican friend does
I got i good hack i wish i knew sooner, fucking cold sores, rubbing alcohol will kill them, you kinda rub it until it breaks the skin, they’ll never keep growing, kinda gross sorry bhaha but if you get that shit you know the creams or whatever don’t do shit
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superglue seals most cuts and stops bleeding
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Except make it look shiny and way more noticable, lol
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Oh I’ve got a million of these, here’s a few off the top of my head:
-Manuka honey is a scam, just use regular raw honey or granulated sugar like @Gpaw all you’re doing is creating a hygroscopic environment in which the moisture from bacteria and other germs is sucked out of them, killing them before they can reproduce. Same theory behind why an old forgotten pail of honey or maple syrup is good to go once you scrape the mold off the top, too much sugar to live. Honey does have natural anti-microbial properties which is why I say raw, it also gets most of that from the stuff that’s not sugar.
-Always carry a few sizes of tampons, besides being a good dude (if you are a dude) when a lady friend might need one, they’re the absolute best thing short of Combat Gauze to stuff into a puncture wound to staunch bleeding. If you or someone around you gets shot or stabbed, stuff a tampon into it, it’s sterile and will expand to block the wound. Related, women’s menstrual pads make great trauma dressings, again, sterile and highly absorbent, just wrap it with an Ace bandage or something else stretchy like some leggings and you’ve got a homemade Israeli bandage.
-Superglue is great, like everyone is saying. They use cyanoacrylate glue in surgery and emergency rooms very commonly. Cheap easy and super useful.
-Belts make terrible tourniquets, you won’t be able to apply and lock off enough force to be effective. You’d be better off with a bicycle tube or other rubber strap, there’s a cheap and very versatile first aid product called a SWAT (Stretch Wrap And Tuck) tourniquet that’s basically a big strong physioband that I recommend, not because it’s the best tourniquet but because it’s better than nothing and also works as a sling, splint wrap, compression bandage, or joint wrap. If you’re going to improvise a tourniquet you’re best off using a t shirt rolled up from the hem to the collar and slipped over the limb through the neck hole. Take a stick and put it through the remaining space in the neck hole and start twisting it as a windlass, the collar will rip but the rolled body of the shirt will take the force, and it’ll be wide enough to hopefully prevent damage. Regardless of what you use as the band, it needs the windlass or you’ll never get it tight enough and lock it off. Really, every first aid kit should have a CAT or SOF-T tourniquet in it, they’re cheap light and last forever.
-for blisters just use duct or Gorilla tape, you’ll need rubbing alcohol to dissolve the glue to get it off, but it works great
-in the absence of anything else to wash a wound with, irrigating and debriding wounds with salt water works great despite hurting like a motherfucker
-ginger is an excellent anti-nausea drug and settles upset stomachs, it also boosts circulation in cold weather
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Oh! Here’s a niche one, but:
-pepper spray/OC is an oil based capsaicin spray, you need lots of soap and water to remove it, and it’s persistent, it will stay on your clothes and skin until removed by chemical means. You can make homemade Sudecon wipes by blending 60% water, 30% sugar, 10% unscented baby shampoo, and 0.5% powdered citric acid, then soak disposable shop towels in it. That’s the same stuff the police and military use to remove the chemicals when they accidentally get themselves with it, or that paramedics or ER nurses would use.
-tear gas/CS is a chemical irritant powder that you breathe in and then it also sits on your skin and is activated by water, including sweat. This means that it’ll reactivate later when you least expect it, and transfer in the meantime without your realizing it. There’s not much to do other than wipe your skin with the Sudecon and then get showered as soon as possible. In the field the best approach is to just get hit with a hose from head to toe.
In no situation is milk the correct answer to either of these, despite a lot of bad advice to use it because people think the fat will help wash away the pepper spray. It’s no more useful than water and less useful than soap and water, and ineffective against CS. It will also give a person eye, nose, and ear infections and they’ll smell like hell and be out of the game for the day, vs just being wet and able to dry off.
If you want to wash someone’s eyes out from exposure to either of these chemicals, you need a bike bottle or similar squeezable water bottle with a strong tight stream. Have the person kneel and sit on their hands (keeps them from slapping the bottle away). Stand over them facing each other and have them tilt their head up looking vertically at you, take the outside of your thumb and roll their eyelid up from the nose side of it and spray with the other hand across the eye from the tear duct outward toward the ear. We’re basically doing a high-pressure version of what your tear ducts do, sheeting a clean solution over the eyeball to drain out the corner. This lifts and moves the chemicals off rather than driving them farther into the socket like if you sprayed straight at the eye perpendicularly. Do that a few times on each side and then see how they’re doing. Their vision should come back after a round or two, depending on how much of a hit they took and whether it was civilian or military grade. Wear gloves while doing this or wash your hands right afterwards, there will be transfer from their face to your hands. Also make sure they wash their hands before they touch their face or they’ll recontaminate since everyone gets hit and then rubs it into their faces trying to get it off, which means their chest and hands are the main sites of possible recontamination. Some people have respiratory issues afterwards, that can be either throat and lung mucosal membrane irritation or just panic causing hyperventilation and gasping/choking. Either way, it’s a thing to monitor. Also, you need to identify yourself and ask permission to help before trying these things. Someone who’s just been hit with chemical weapons is just as likely to run or hit you as understand that you’re trying to help.
In advance: no asking me how I learned these things, if you weren’t there you don’t need to know.
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There’s a lot to be learned about makeshift first aid from both backcountry/wilderness medicine guides and also medical books written for international aid to be used by non-medical professionals in low-tech settings, the best of them is Where There Is No Doctor/Donde No Hay Doctor, which has been being updated continuously since its original publication in the 70s and is freely downloadable in PDF. Well worth having in your phone as a reference or printed out in hardcopy and stowed in your trunk or other places.
I’m not a medical professional, but I have been an outdoor professional and worked with many Paramedic-W, W-EMT and WFR, and have extensive first aid training and experience, particularly in laceration/gunshot/puncture wound trauma as well as blunt trauma and bone breaks, in addition to some sports medicine experience and chemical weapons treatment. My training has been primarily from nurses and doctors, and my mother is an ER nurse of forty years, so I started learning this stuff early.
Available in over a dozen languages:
Also excellent and free is Hakan Geijer’s recently published “Riot Medicine” which is the sum knowledge of decades of experience by volunteer medics from social movements around the world, including the Arab Spring. Super good, and contains information you won’t find in most medical texts:
For traditional print first aid guides written for wilderness use and thus with lots of improvisation, I can recommend these without reservation as highly accurate, current, and based on hundreds of years of cumulative experience from medical professionals and outdoor guides.
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