What to Do in Case of a Snakebite

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As summer keeps moving on, many of us will take to the forests and the woods to enjoy some of the natures best camping facilities. Camping is a very fun and leisurely activity and a great way to spend quality time with family and friends. However, there are some dangers that we need to be aware of as well, such as snakes. What would you so if you were bitten by a snake? Would you suck the venom out? Would you run to the park ranger? Would you sit there like many of us crying and screaming not knowing what to do? Well hopefully this article will help you make the right decision if you encountered this situation.

If you or someone with you is bitten by a snake, it is vital to seek appropriate medical treatment. It is equally vital to avoid making inappropriate attempts at treatment; such mistakes can cause more problems that they solve. What to do in any particular case depends on the circumstances surrounding the bite.

What to DO

While not all snake bites are life-threatening, it is important to follow these simple step:

• Remain calm (or, if the victim is someone other than yourself calm her/her down)
• If possible, call for emergency assistance.
• Gentle was the area with soap and water.
• Apply a cold, wet cloth over the bite.

Get yourself or the victim to the nearest hospital emergency room for further treatment

What NOT to Do

The list of measures that should be avoided in response to snakebite include:

• Do Not  apply a tourniquet. This has been the cause of numerous amputations. It is possible that the application of a tourniquet is more dangerous that the snakebite itself.
• DO NOT pack the entire bitten area in ice. This can block circulation and cause injury to tissue, or even gangrene. An ice pack or some cubes wrapped in cloth, applied periodically to the skin, is the maximum you want to use.
• DO NOT cut the wound with a knife or a razor. Older first-aid kits contain cutters, but excessive bleeding can cause more damage. If you happen to cut an artery, the victim can bleed to death. Unless you happen to be a vascular surgeon, leave the razor blades in your pack.
• DO NOT use your mouth to “suck out” the venom. The average human mouth has so many bacteria in it that infection of the would almost be certain, complicating treatment in the long run.
• DO NOT drink alcohol (or give it to the victim)
• DO NOT use an electric shock, Taser, stun gun, cattle prod, or any such device applied to the snakebite. All you will do is make the victim more miserable, and the venom will not be broken down by the electricity.

OTHER MEASURES

IF you can safely kill the snake, do so and decapitate it. Bury the head and bring the body with you to the emergency room for identification. The correct antivenin can then be selected at the hospital. DO NOT BRING THE HEAD!!!  A decapitated snake head can bite up to an hour after its death!

There is one type of snakebite kit that is worthwhile. It is called Sawyer Extractor, and is available from Sawyer Products. It contains a syringe-like device that does work to suck out venom without requiring you to open up the fang wounds with a tool. This prevents excessive bleeding and contamination of the wound. This kit will probably out about half the venom if it is used quickly (within five minutes of the bite is recommended). These are available from many sporting goods stores and on the Internet for less than twenty dollars. If you are going to be someplace in snake country that is really far from civilization, having one of these kits in your backpack is a necessity. After you use it, transport to the nearest hospital is still required so that proper care can be administered!

Bottom line is, like everything we do, we need to be careful. We need to make sure that all precautions are taken and that we are prepared for any type of emergency. Before you leave on your camping trip, sit and think what could go wrong and plan accordingly. It is better to be over-prepaired than under. Make sure you call Goings Natural Health and Bodywork Center when you get back. We will make sure your to get your body back to its normal state with our body treatments or halth consultations.

www.goingsnatural.wordpress.com

916-877-HEAL (4325)

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• When the Snake Bites … Try Ointment (news.sciencemag.org)

Limit your use of Salt

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Although some sodium is essential for survival, inadequate sodium intake is a rare problem. We need less than 500 milligrams of sodium a day to stay healthy. this is enough to accomplish all the vital functions that sodium performs in the body- helping maintain norma, fluid levels, healthy muscle function, and proper acidity (pH) of the blood. Excessive sodium intake can cause a fluid to be retained in the tissues, which can lead to hypertension (high blood pressure) and can aggravate many medical disorders, including congestive heart failure, certain forms of kidney disease, and premenstrual syndrome (PMS).

One of the best ways to limit the sodium in your diet is to limit your use of salt when cooking and dining. Just as important, stay away from processed foods, which often contain excessively high amounts of sodium.

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• Get Smart About Sodium and Salt (everydayhealth.com)
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Coffee Good? Or is Coffee Bad? When will the studies stop trying to scare us?

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If you are like many Americans, you wake up in the morning and your first impulse is to start the coffee maker for your very needed cup of Joe. And why is it called joe, anyways, you do not want your coffee, you NEED your coffee. Is drinking coffee which is a natural stimulant a bad thing for you health wise? Not according to this article in webMD. Take a look!

Old Joe

For true coffee connoisseurs, the day doesn’t get started until that first cup of joe. And when the afternoon slump occurs, there’s no better pick-me-up. The real news, however, is that after years of hand-wringing, scientists are admitting that coffee poses very little risk for most people, and may keep us sharp. That’s no surprise to java junkies.

“If it weren’t for the coffee,” David Letterman once quipped, “I’d have no identifiable personality whatsoever.”

That’s a sentiment most coffee lovers can understand.

Treasured as it is, however, coffee has been blamed for a range of ills, from heart disease and cancer to osteoporosis. Are health dangers really lurking in our lattes?

Health experts offered reassuring words at the 1999 annual meeting of the American Dietetic Association: Drinking up to three cups of coffee a day poses no risk. What’s more, coffee appears to have some surprising benefits.

False Alarms

It’s easy to see why researchers take coffee seriously. One cup contains about 100 milligrams of caffeine — enough to give infrequent coffee drinkers a potent kick, says Tony Chou, MD, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and an authority on how coffee affects our health. Half an hour after a good strong cup, a coffee drinker’s resting metabolic rate — the number of calories burned just sitting quietly — increases by as much as 10%. Blood pressure climbs. Heart rate accelerates. Breathing speeds up.

Researchers used to worry all that commotion was harming our hearts. But regular coffee drinkers quickly develop a tolerance to caffeine, Chou says. After a week or two, they don’t get so much as a wobble in their blood pressure. Habitual coffee drinkers are no more likely to suffer from hypertension than people who never pour a cup.

Even patients with irregular heartbeats, or arrhythmia, don’t seem to be troubled by caffeine, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in January 1991. Toronto scientists reviewed five studies of people with arrhythmia. Drinking up to five cups of coffee a day, they found, didn’t make anyone’s heart more likely to skip a beat.

Nor does coffee appear to increase the risk of heart disease, according to a 10-year study of more than 85,000 women. In the February 1996 Journal of the American Medical Association, Harvard researchers reported that women who drank six or more cups of coffee weren’t any more likely to have a heart attack than women who drank only one or two cups.

Plenty of other alarms have turned out to be false. A few years back, headlines warned about a possible link between coffee and breast cancer. But in the February 1998 European Journal of Cancer Prevention, Italian researchers reported finding no link. The other worry, concerning osteoporosis, didn’t hold much water either. Results of a study published in the June 1997 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that bone thinning wasn’t more likely in women who drank coffee.

Jogging the Brain

The bottom line: Coffee seems to be harmless for most people. And studies suggest that a cup may actually offer some impressive benefits. In the August 1999 issue of Physiology and Behavior, for instance, English researchers reported that volunteers who drank caffeinated coffee in the morning performed better than nondrinkers on tests that involved learning new information. That holds true for the elderly as well, according to a study in the January 2002 issue of Psychological Science. And a study published in International Journal of Sports Medicine in August 1999 found that attention, psychomotor skills, and long-term memory all improved during the few hours after volunteers drank caffeinated beverages.

Why? Caffeine keeps us alert not by speeding us up but by keeping us from slowing down, according to Michael Bonnet, PhD, professor of neurology at Wright State University in Ohio. Each time brain cells fire, they produce a squirt of a chemical that serves as an “off” switch that keeps neural activity in check. Caffeine, in effect, blocks the chemical — jamming the switch so that it can’t be turned down.

Caffeine also may boost levels of brain-cell calcium, a mineral we know is important in memory. In experiments reported in the October 1999 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an Israeli researcher observed a calcium increase in brain cells exposed to caffeine.

Is There Any Reason Not to Love Coffee?

However, too much caffeinated coffee can cause problems, experts say. Because caffeine is a stimulant, it can aggravate sleep problems like insomnia.

If you’re having trouble getting pregnant, you might want to think about laying off coffee. A few studies have linked caffeine to infertility (although others have found no association).

Finally, if you’re feeling anxious or depressed, it’s worth easing up on the caffeine, which can exacerbate symptoms.

Related articles

• Still More Reasons to Drink Loads of Coffee (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Deaths No Higher in Coffee Lovers with Heart Disease (nlm.nih.gov)
• My head hurts if I have not had any coffee, is it because I am addicted to caffeine? (zocdoc.com)
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