MEDICAL MONDAY - Animal Bites! on Herbal Medicine for Preppers

Hey, y'all. Welcome to this week's show. Last week, we got into herbs for treating really stinging insects, what's generally considered to be the more annoying stinging insects, the ones that make you itch. While those certainly can cause an allergic reaction that can be serious or can become infected, I gave a little story about how quickly that can happen. Certainly, animal bites are far more serious. And I'm going to discuss animal bites today, and next week we'll get into the venomous of insects and snakes and such. So this is part two of this three-part series, basically on how to deal with the critters that bite you. The first thing you've got to understand about animal bites is that for however long many million years or whatever you want to believe mankind's been on the earth. I know some people have very definite opinions about that. I really don't, and I'm not going to get into it. Man and animal have both been partners and opponents, foes, we should say. We hunt them sometimes and they hunt us. I will never forget one time I was out with my dog. We were taking a hike Went out a little later than I should have on about a five mile hike and didn't get back before dark. And on my way back about, I'll say a half mile from the house, maybe a mile, a pack of coyotes came up. And it was a big pack of coyotes. And they were circling us for a while. I could hear them as we were walking through the woods. My dog was getting really nervous. He's just a little border collie. And they began coming in. trying to test us out and see if they could take us down. They would essentially come around us like a swarm of bees and one or two would dart in and try to see, you know, what the reaction would be. Would the dog try to snap at them? Could they get us to chase? Could they get the dog to chase them? Or would we start running? Either one of which would have been disastrous. There were, I estimated somewhere between 30 and 40 coyotes in this pack. And had we run, they would have chased us and had my dog gone after them. That would have been the end of my dog, obviously. I had a little. 38 on me, and we had, I think, five bullets. So I had to pace myself. I had to wait and be very careful and not panic and walk deliberately to the house. As they would come in, I'd hit the eyes with the flashlight and shoot right As best I could between the eyes. I think I hit a few. I don't know. But by keeping my head and keeping calm, we were able to get to the house. We got in the house. The coyotes decided to run around the house and on the porch and under the porch. And they literally sounded like a stampede of horses. There were so many of them. That experience, and if you've ever dealt, I mean, if you've ever been near a bear, for instance, which I have many times, or even, you know, a wild dog, an animal that's acting aggressively toward you triggers a primitive instinct of fear, of fight or flight, of defend yourself or run away, essentially. So the first thing we have to remember in any kind of animal attack a bite, even if a little chihuahua gets hold of somebody, that is going to trigger that primitive, primal response of, oh my gosh, I've just been bitten by an animal. Okay, the heart rate's going to go up, the blood pressure's going to go up. Someone can go into shock very easily. So really, when we're dealing with animal bites, first things first, deal with the emotional, physical response. I don't think there's a single person on earth that is not going to react with some form of adrenaline rush, fight or flight, a response to any animal bite. It's just part of our DNA. Beyond that, we're going to look at stopping bleeding. If it's a bad bite, obviously. Here's the deal. Part of that bleeding is washing out the wound. We actually don't want to stop bleeding immediately. An animal's mouth is full of bacteria. It's full of things that can cause infection. We want to let the wound bleed some, believe it or not. Now, if they hit, you know, an artery or something that's gushing blood, yeah, you've got to put a tourniquet on that right away. I mean, you know, you've got to put compression, you've got to put pressure on a serious bleeding wound. As in my first episode of this podcast, I said, when it comes to first aid, Stop bleeding is a primary function because when we bleed, we're losing our life's blood. We can bleed out very quickly. But say you've got a hand or a foot or an arm or a leg bitten. It's a puncture wound. It's the long teeth of a dog, their fangs, or a cat or something like that. It's a puncture wound. They have just injected a good deal of bacteria into your body. Hopefully, they don't have rabies. And I'm going to touch on that just a little bit. But First and foremost, we're thinking disinfect this wound. If we disinfect this wound, even such viral pathogens are less likely to cause tremendous problems. So first things first, we're going to try to disinfect this wound. Now, as I said, you may think, okay, first thing I've got to do is stop this bleeding. Like I said, unless it's gushing, that's not your first priority. I've mentioned before as far as cuts and such how effective comfrey is for healing a wound. We actually want to wait just a little bit to apply comfrey because it causes the proteins to propagate so quickly that wound can actually seal up before it is effectively disinfected and trap infection of the skin. You can end up with a very bad abscess, ulcer, infection under there that can really be a problem. So the first thing you're going to want to do, okay, if you're an herbalist, you probably are going to have some tinctures. You're going to have some herbs that are infused in vodka or another even stronger alcohol, or maybe, you know, a liniment, an herb that's infused in rubbing alcohol, or maybe you just have some alcohol around. So I think the first thing you want to do is definitely try to disinfect that wood with some alcohol, peroxide, iodine, et cetera. You know, just the good old first aid medicine cabinet stuff. Yes, I know medical, um, philosophy these days is to use saline solution. Wash the wound out with pure saline salt water, right? That's great. That's absolutely wonderful. I, for one, don't carry around a quart or a gallon of sterile saline solution in my backpack when I go for a hike or go deer hunting. I just don't. Now, I may have a small amount of iodine or alcohol with me, I may have some iodine tablets even if I'm thinking about I need to sterilize some water. So anyway, I'm going to grab something like that first and try to clean the wound. Then really the next thing I would do were it may again, I don't make any recommendations. I say nothing to diagnose or treat any medical condition. But if it were me, and it has been many times, I have been bitten. I had a wonderful, big, goofy Weimer on her that she was just very scared. She'd bite at anything when she got scared. And one time she just took her big old paw and sliced open the back of my leg. I've got a scar about, oh, I don't even know, probably 18 inches on the back of my calf where that one of her claws just dug in. I mean, a half inch. I mean, it was a serious gash. And of course, there's tons of bacteria on her paws from walking around the dirt. And she was a She was a big dumpster diver too, so she was a pretty dirty dog in general. The next thing I would do, and of course I love the dog dearly. She lived a long, healthy life. She was never put down for her stupidity as she might have been in someone else's household. She was a very dumb dog. But the first thing I would do is get some Oregon grape root or barberry root. These are two plants that are very closely related. You can find them just about anywhere. If you don't have one in your yard, you can probably spot one in somebody else's yard or in a parking lot somewhere within about a half a mile. So just keep an eye out for Barberry and Oregon grape. The small plants, when they come up and they're, say, six inches to a foot tall, that root will probably be enough to last you for six months to a year, even if you were using it regularly. A lot of times they get a little weedy and people actually want them torn up. These things have massive roots. I know even... Like, you know, real environmentalist, tree hugger type herbalists that will literally pull these bushes up with chains attached to the back of their truck. You know, these get a lot for your money when it comes to the roots of Oregon Gray or Barbary. And you can actually use Silesian Quig to some extent as well. But the berberine compound is the yellow pigment that's strongest in the root but pounds without the plant. Other options are golden seal. Golden seal was what everybody used to use, but it's been over-harvested. And coptis, which is called which is a nice little flower, plant it in your garden, have it on hand when you need it. Coptis also has berberine in it. Berberine is a wonderful antiseptic. It's antibiotic and actually has some properties that inhibit viral replication. So the first thing I would do is soak that wound. And after cleaning it, whether it's with soap or rubbing alcohol or whatever I've got, even just a, you know, a tincture that has nothing to do with wounds, I would just use the alcohol in it to clean the wound. Then I'm going to soak it in a hot bath of Oregon grape or barberry, et cetera, tea, a decoction. I'm going to bring a pot of water to a boil, put those roots in there that should be already chopped up and ready to use for an emergency. You don't want to wait to the last minute. Boil that down to the water's reduced to about half. It's good and strong. Let it cool. You don't want to scald yourself. And then soak the wound in there to disinfect it as much as possible and get it cleaned out or doing anything else. Then I'm going to look at a poultice umphrey, umphrey leaves, umphrey. or a comfrey tincture soaked into a cloth and applied as a compress. Or what's more at hand for most people is plantain. Broadleaf plantain, narrowleaf plantain, staghorn plantain, any of the true plantains, the plantagius species, that are generally considered weeds in our lawn that people spray poisons on instead of using them as they should. I mean, plantain's one of our best herbs. And the reason we have so much of it is our ancestors ruled us both herbs and food. So I would do a plantain compress, put that on there, mash the leaves up, chew the leaves up, any way you have to do it, put it on there. You might also consider such things as prickly pear cactus. You take the pads and, of course, you I want the spines, obviously. I usually burn them off with a plumber's torch. You can skin it or just cut it in half, like long ways, and put it right on. That has a drawing property. It has a wonderful ability with a slight astringency to draw out foreign matter. You can use it to draw out splinters. You can use it to draw out dirt from a wound. You can use it to really just all the awful stuff that goes along with a rattlesnake bite. It's amazing to see, and I'll get into this more next week, A friend of mine, you know, actually treated herself this way, a snake bite. And she said, you put those pads on there and in an hour, they'd just be pure black. And you take them off. And every time you put one on, the wound would shrink down. The redness would go down. It would look a little healthier. And she just kept doing it until things were better. That's a good one. You know, aloe can be used the same way as prickly pear cactus. If you happen to have a clean clay, what they call like French clay, That makes an excellent drawing poultice. Charcoal, pure activated charcoal is a very good drawing poultice. But the main thing is before we start, you know, worrying about all that, let's try to get the wound disinfected. We're worried about staph, obviously. The barberry, Oregon grape, wonderful for staph. We're worried about, well, here's the thing. I can't tell you how many times I've been on a forum or in some kind of online discussion group and someone's freaking out. Okay, my grandchild, my child, my niece, my nephew just got bitten by a stray cat or a stray dog, something like that, or scratched. Usually it's more of a scratch. What do I do? Are they going to die of rabies? Okay, you know, I hunt, I fish, I trap. I'm out in the woods all the time. I have not encountered very many rabbit animals. I think there was one raccoon I was a little iffy about. That's how rare, really, rabies is. Now, if there's a rabies outbreak in your area, absolutely. First things first, get on the phone, call animal control, find out, or call your vet. game warden, whatever, find out if, or look online, usually this information is just the tip of our fingers now, is rabies going around? Otherwise, I would just really focus on trying to disinfect this wound primarily and treat it as a wound. Rabies is transmitted through the saliva of the animal, so scratches really aren't that much of an issue. Cat scratch fever actually is, you know, it could be, it's not just a Ted Nugent song, but if you disinfect it real well, especially with the Oregon grapefruit and such, you can really cut down on any danger of cat scratch fever. If the animal is acting normal, If they're not, you know, wobbly and out of it, if they're not acting oddly aggressive, if they're just a friendly puppy that was playing with a kid or a kitten that got a little, you know, defensive. I don't, to me, I don't think it's right to call animal control, have the animal killed, have its brain biopsied and all that, just because of human ignorance. I would actually rather take that animal in, feed it for a few days, And kind of look at it for every 30 minutes or every 15 minutes and think, does this animal look healthy? And if this animal looks healthy, I'm not going to think I or someone in my care have gotten rabies. Now, that's me. That's my choice. Again, I take risks with my own health that I don't recommend other people doing. If you have reason to believe that you or someone else has been bitten by a rabbit animal, you need... All the recommendations I just gave. Clean the wound, disinfect the wound, and all that. But get professional medical help right away. Don't wait. But beyond that, really, we are very much focused on just disinfecting those wounds and then just trying to, you know, help them heal. And another really great, one of the best antiseptic herbs of all is garlic. and onions even. But you can take a clove of garlic, you can crush it, you can put it on a wound, especially a bite. It's going to help disinfect that wound like nothing else. You can use onions as a poultice. Cut it in half or cut it and mash it up, however you want to do it. Squeeze the juice out of it, put it in a cloth. It's up to you. But fresh onion juice is incredibly antiseptic. It's been used for millennia. People throughout the world have been treating wounds. We're talking Going back to the very ancient, most ancient people on earth have been treating wounds with garlic and onions because of those antiseptic properties. Other herbs, let's just get into some other herbs. You might use a soak or a poultice or even take internally. Elderberry has antiviral properties. That's a good one to take if you are a little worried. Echinacea, take an interning internally. has antiviral and antibiotic properties. It's also immune supportive. High doses of vitamin C are immune supportive and antiviral. So, you know, if I was a little worried about something, I would definitely slap some garlic on there, but I might take internally elderberry, echinacea, and high doses of vitamin C and, you know, hopefully be all right. I've been all right all along. Hopefully it's going to keep going on, God willing, you know. Another really interesting herb is called cat's claw. This comes from South America. You can grow it seasonally in your garden. You want to probably take it inside most temperate zones of the winter. It is strongly antiviral and can be used in the same way. Now, lavender, the flower that I'm actually very allergic to, is an excellent antiseptic. If you can tolerate lavender, if it doesn't drive your allergies crazy, definitely have some in the garden. It helps keep mosquitoes away and such. But it can be used as a pulpous or the lavender oil is a really good antiseptic. But combined with plantain, lavender, just a fresh plant, fresh plantain or tincture put on cloth is really one of the oldest remedies for bites and other wounds that tend to get infected in European herbalism. So this is going back several hundred years with documentation. St. John's Wort oil is great for wounds taken internally and externally. It's antiviral. um, American arborvitae, that arborvitae, whatever it's, uh, fuchsia is both antiviral and antiseptic. You could make a wash of this just like we would with Oregon grape. That's another very common landscaping plant. You can't throw a rock without hitting 30 of them where I live in the mountains. That's like the hedge plant, you know, uh, skullcap has anti, um, antiviral properties is especially true of Chinese version. Root of the Chinese plant is good. You may, the reason I bring this up really, it's not because you're going to use skullcap for a wound, but you may be familiar with the name mad dog skullcap. Well, skullcap was used by Native Americans and early Americans, all of our ancestors, for treating rabies. Now, it very well may be that the skullcap does have a specific antiviral property against that disease, but it's never been proven at all. You do not hang your hat on that one. It is a sedative, nervine, and antispasmodic. It would have helped with the symptoms of rabies very much, but it probably wouldn't have necessarily save someone's life unless it's got a property that they knew about and hasn't been proven yet medically. That's the only reason I'm hesitating. I would not hesitate, actually myself, to use it, especially because that sedative, antispasmodic, calming property, if I'm bitten by a dog and my heart's racing and my blood pressure's up and there's even a chance of going into shock or something, Skullcap is one that I would use for that purpose, calming the system, even if it had no other properties. But it does, at least in folk use, seem to have a tradition against dog bite. Take it with a grain of salt, look into it, take it for what it's worth. I'm not making any claims about the herb in that way. But we do know that the Chinese skullcap is, It does have antiviral properties, rather strong antiviral properties. You can use it for some of the colds and flus and corona and COVID-type viruses as well. Cocklebur, you know, the annoying cocklebur, has got some antiseptic antiviral properties. Rattlesnake root, very interesting. There are so many roots, especially that were documented in Virginia when the colonists started learning about native plants from native americans that are called snake root rattlesnake root white snake root white rattlesnake there's so many okay but this one let's see i'm going to try to pronounce this in latin the root is what's used native americans and early americans would boil it in milk and use it internally for all manner of bites bites dog bites snake bites you name it again, not one with proven use, but a lot of folk history and work looking into. A lot of people swear by colloidal silver. There's so much documentation, research on colloidal silver. Would it help prevent an infection? I don't know. You can find one doctor who's going to say colloidal silver does absolutely nothing. You can find another one that says colloidal silver is dangerous. And you've got another one that says colloidal silver is like a universal antibiotic and antiviral. Definitely worth looking into. It's not terribly expensive. And, you know, you just have to make your own decision if that's something you want to have in your medicine cabinet or not. You know, it's not an herb. And, again, I'm not recommending anything except that you do your own research on that. However, honey. has folk use for treating wounds, going back at least as far as garlic and onions. I mean, our ancestors have been treating wounds, especially bites and anything that was prone to infection, with honey since the dawn of time. Honey is proven antiseptic and speeds the healing of wounds. Yes, it's sticky and unpleasant, but would you rather have stickiness and unpleasantness or gangrene? Okay, yes. Sometimes you have to use something a little unpleasant to prevent something that's a whole lot worse. And you can infuse honey with some of these antibiotic and antiseptic herbs and make it even stronger. There are many ways to use honey. Swedish bitters... I've mentioned before, it's an old formula that goes back to at least 1400 or so in Germany. It's a combination of somewhere between 11 and 27 herbs. This has folk use in treating wounds and bites and spider bites and major tissue injuries as an external poultice like you wouldn't believe. Look into it. You can find a lot of information from Maria Trebin. She wrote extensively on Swedish bitters. A compress, and you can actually, you know, when you make Swedish bitters, it's a formula you're normally going to buy because it's so many herbs. Maybe it costs 25, 30 bucks for about six months worth of these herbs, right? You put them in a jar, you pour your vodka over it, let it steep, and you take just like a little spoonful a day for digestion, to help with immunity, for all manner of things, okay? At the end, you have all these spent herbs. The herbs have given up most of their properties. Those spent herbs, save them. Put them in a bag. Stick them in the freezer. They make wonderful poultices and compresses. They're still, you know, plenty strong. You just can't get any more of the properties of the herb out of it into the alcohol. And they're going to be soaked with alcohol as well. So I think it's really good to use those antiseptically because they're full of alcohol and they're full of herbs that have antiseptic and healing properties. And I think Swedish bitters makes a whole lot of sense as a remedy, as a compress, as a disinfectant. So, you know, a variety of things. People have used it on infected eyes, various abscesses. And certainly for bites and burns, it's a common burn remedy in the Germanic-speaking herbal tradition. I like my Swedish bitters. And I've already mentioned the drawing poultices. We will get more into that next week as we discuss venomous bites and stings. See y'all. Always remember sort of those ABCs of first aid. You know, you're looking out for trauma. You're looking out for shock. You're looking out for bleeding. But with these deep puncture wounds, especially like dog teeth, if you got bitten by a bear and somehow survived it, okay, you would have deep puncture wounds. Say you run into a wild hog in the woods, you're going to really get torn up. I've known a lot of people that's happened to down in the east part of the state where my grandparents lived. first thing you want to do disinfect the wound and that can sometimes mean letting it bleed a little bit longer than you normally would but the bottom line is keep your head because your body's going to react even if your mind is trained to deal with a lot of situations you're uh your nervous system is going to react to that trauma. It's just primal, you know. It's just one of those things like a lightning strike or a hurricane. Our ancestors feared these things for millions of years, and we still have that. So keeping your head is top priority, top priority. And then, you know, make a list, keep a few of these things on hand, and God willing, you never have to use them. But if you do, at least you'll have them nearby. All right, y'all have a great weekend. I'll talk to you next time. The information in this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The U.S. Government does not recognize the practice of herbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herbalists. Therefore, I'm really just a guy who studies herbs. I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true. I can tell you what herbs have been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience and if I believe in herbs, help me. I cannot nor would I tell you to do the same. If you use an herb anyone recommends, you are treating yourself. You take full responsibility for your health. Humans are individuals and no two are identical. What works for me may not work for you. You may have an allergy, a sensitivity, an underlying condition that no one else even. Shares and you don't even know about. Be careful with your health. By continuing to listen to my podcast or read my blog, you agree to be responsible for yourself, do your own research, make your own choices, and not to blame me for anything ever.