Archive for the Skin Health Category
The latest health news on skin healing is moist wound healing. You have a skin wound and whether it be a cut, abrasion, road rash, or simple skin breakdown, there are new ways to help the healing process along. In the past, we stuck on a Bandaid, waited for a scab to form and when the scab cracked open, waited for the healing process to begin again.
New theories on wound healing, however, promote healthy skin development by healing from the inside out, therefore reducing scar formation.
Moist wound healing is the newest process of healing skin wounds. Why don’t you try the bench mark wound therapy used in hospitals today? This process is known as moist wound healing. How do you do it? The following is a step-by-step process of how you can use this new technique: First, make sure you don’t have a complicated wound that may be infected or is deeper than a simple burn or a bed sore etc. If so, or you are unsure, seek appropriate medical care and advice from you doctor or emergency department.
1. Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water.
2. Make a solution of saline (0.9% sodium chloride) Or purchase sterile saline solution from a pharmacy. It must be a sterile solution. Check out web recipes from a reputable source such as your local health unit or community care access site.
3. Bathe the wound in the sterile saline solution. Make sure it is room temperature. It should not sting. This sterile saline solution reduces inflammation, purges the wound of debris and/or any bacteria.
Let it air dry for a few minutes.
4. Apply Tegaderm, a product made by 3M. It is a breathable yet occlusive dressing. There are demonstrations on various websites including YouTube on how to apply. I’ve added the Youtube video here for you to see how it’s done.
5. Allow dressing to stay in place as long as it adheres to the skin unless there is yellowish drainage or obvious infection indicated by such symptoms as yellow drainage or redness.
6. Repeat daily or even twice daily if necessary.
7. Above all, seek physician care if the healing is not going well, or you any questions or worries whatsoever.
The principals behind moist wound healing are: Moist healing promotes healing of the skin from within, from the dermis to the epidermis layers. Don’t put anything on a wound that you wouldn’t put in your eye !!! That means no rubbing alcohol, or soap!!!
Watch the process of moist wound healing in the following video:
Health news update on melanoma skin cancers and a detection device called Melafind.
Melanoma is a deadly skin cancer and usually requires a skin biopsy to make a diagnosis. However, this may soon change as the FDA has just approved a device that can scan the skin.
The device known as Melafind was developed to scan the skin for lesions that have features common in a melanoma. In the past, the only way to make a diagnosis of melanoma has been a biopsy and unfortunately, the majority of these turn out to be negative. Besides producing scars, surgery is also costly and often disfiguring. With Melafind, the dermatologist can rapidly scan the skin and identify early melanotic lesions. If the machine does detect a cancer, then the doctor can go ahead with a biopsy. If the scan does not find any features of a melanoma, it does save the individual unnecessary surgery and money.
MelaFind has been tested in a large prospective study and found to be extremely sensitive in identifying early melanomas.
Melanomas are rare cancers but usually have a lethal outcome when the diagnosis is delayed. According to statistics released by the American Cancer
Society, at least 10,000 people in North America die each year from melanoma and the number of cases are increasing at an exponential rate, especially in young women.
Said Dr Joseph Gulfo, President and CEO of Mela Science “We are extremely pleased with the results of the panel vote and look forward to working with the FDA during its ongoing review of the MelaFind PMA application. Melanoma is virtually 100 percent curable if detected at its earliest stage.”
What remains to be seen is what Melafind scan will cost and how often will be the screening process.
This health news update on Psoriasis comes from the Science Daily website.
“A new Cochrane review finds that two commonly used topical treatments work best together to treat chronic psoriasis, but are not a cure.
“Almost everyone with psoriasis will try topical treatments and some people will use them throughout their lifetime, so it is important to know how effective and safe they are,” said lead author Anne Mason, a research fellow at the Centre for Health Economics the University of York, in England.
Mason said that chronic plaque psoriasis is the most common form, “typically affecting 1 to 2 percent of the population.” Psoriasis causes thick, red patches — or plaques — and silver scales to form on the skin. Topical treatments are those applied directly to the skin.
This review looked at a wide range of different topical treatments from 131 randomized trials involving 21,448 people with psoriasis. Treatments include synthetic versions of vitamin D called “analogues,” topical corticosteroids and tar-based medications among others. Researchers compared treatments with either a placebo or a vitamin D product, depending on the study.
“The main message from the review is that most topical treatments are effective in reducing the symptoms of psoriasis, but none actually cures psoriasis,” Mason said.
The review appears in the latest issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews like this one draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.
“Another key finding is that combining two commonly used topical treatments — vitamin D analogues and a corticosteroid — is more effective than either treatment used on its own,” Mason said. “Using the two products separately, vitamin D in the morning and corticosteroid at night, can achieve similar effects, and be as well tolerated, as using a specially combined product.”
Up to 40 percent of those who used vitamin D treatments had skin irritation and other side effects that led to lower levels of compliance. The topical corticosteroids showed less irritation, but had higher levels of thinning of the skin.
Mason noted that psoriasis is a lifelong disease, so patients likely will be using prescribed medications for very long periods. However, since most of the studies only followed participants between four and eight weeks, the authors were unable to come to any conclusions about extended use of these treatments.
“It is surprising how little adequate evidence is available addressing long-term safety of treatments or long-term management of psoriasis,” Mason said. “Patients should realize that most evidence is from short-term trials and that there is very little long-term evidence on benefits and potential harms to consider when deciding on maintenance strategies.”
Steven Feldman, M.D., is a professor of dermatology, pathology and public health sciences at Wake Forest University. “The goal of therapy for psoriasis is to strike a balance between the irritation sometimes seen with Vitamin D analogues and thinning of the skin that is an adverse effect of long-term corticosteroid use,” he said. “This study makes it clear scientifically that there will be no one-size-fits-all solution in treating this condition. The review is an evidence-based confirmation of what most of us knew from experience.”
While the results show that the corticosteroids work as well as the Vitamin D products with fewer short-term side effects, he cautioned against interpreting this review as a call to forego the more expensive Vitamin D analogues.
“The idea that corticosteroids are safer somehow is misleading,” Feldman said. “That doesn’t take into account that the more serious side effects that occur with long-term continuous use of the corticosteroid drugs.”
The review disclosed that three of its five co-authors have received funding from pharmaceutical companies that make medications used to treat psoriasis.”
Source: Sciencedaily.com
Moist wound healing is the newest process of healing skin wounds. Why don’t you try the bench mark wound therapy used in hospitals today? This process is known as moist wound healing. How do you do it? The following is a step-by-step process of how you can use this new technique: First, make sure you don’t have a complicated wound that may be infected or is deeper than a simple burn or a bed sore etc. If so, or you are unsure, seek appropriate medical care and advice from you doctor or emergency department.