MEDICAL MONDAY: Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Animal Bites

Hey, welcome 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, so once 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 got to understand about animal bites is that for however 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 those we should say we hunt them sometimes and they hunt us. I will never forget one time I was out 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 for 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 him 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 can 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 what the reaction would be. Woul the dog tried 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 thirty and forty codies in his 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 thirty eight on me and only 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 the little Shihuaha gets told of somebody, I mean, you know, 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 is 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 gonna 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 know. If they hit you know, an artery or something'scushing blood, yeah, you got to put a tourniquet on that right away. I mean, you know, you've got to put compression. You got to put pressure on a serious bleeding wound. As in my first episode of this podcast, I said, when it comes to first day, you know, stop bleeding is a primary function because when we bleed, we're losing our life's blood. We can bleed out very quickly. But you know, say you've got a hand or a foot or an armor leg bitten, it's a punctual wind. Say it's you know, the long teeth of a dog or fangs or a cat or something like that, it's a punctual Okay, 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 problem. So first things first, we're going to try to disinfect this wound. Now, as I said, you may think, okay, the first thing I've got to do is stop this bleeding. Like I said, unless it's gushing, that's not your priority. I've mentioned before as far as cuts in Sich, how effective company is for healing a wound. We actually want to wake just a little bit to apply company because it causes the proteins to propagate so quickly that wound can actually seal up before it is effectively disinfected. And trap infection are the skin you can end up with a very bad. You know, abscess alter 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 IRP list, 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, a 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 wound with some alcohol, peroxide, iodine, et cetera. You know, just the good old state medicine cabinet stuff. Yes, I know. Medical 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 court or a gallon of sterile saline solution to my backpack when I go for a hike er go deer writing, I just don't know. I may have a small amount of iodine or alcohol with me. I may have some iodine tablets either. Even if I'm thinking about it, I need to sterilize some water so anyway, I'm gonna grab something like that first and try to clean the wind. Then. Really, the next thing I would would do were at me. 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 limber on her that she was just very skittys. She bited anything when she got scared. And one time she just took a big old paw and sliced open the back of my leg. I've got a scar about oh, I don't even know, probably eighteen inches on the back of my caf or 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 sons of bacteria on her paws from walking around the dirt. And she was a big dumpster diver too, so she's a pretty dirty dog in general. The next thing I would do, and of course I love the dog dearly. You know, 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 spile one in somebody else's yard or in a parking lot somewhere within about a half a mile. So just an eye out for barbary and Oregon grape. The small plants when they come up and they say, you know, six inches to a footfall 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 to porn up these things have massive roots, I know, even like you know real environmental as tree hugger type herbalists that will literally pull these bushes up with chains attached to the back of the truck. You know, these are a lot for your money when it comes to the roots of Oregon gray or barbary. And you can actually use the leaves and quig to some extent as well. But the berber and compound is the yellow pigment that strongest in the roots. It 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 for just bread, which is a nice little flour. Plant it in your garden, have it on hand you need it. Coptis also has Berberin 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. I mean, 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 wood. Then I'm gonna soak it in a hot path of oregon, gray or barbary, etcetera, tea, a decoction. I bring a pot of water to a boil, put those roots in there. They should be already chopped up and ready to use for an emergency. You don't want to wait till the last minute. Boil that down to the waters 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 pots possible and get it cleaned out, or doing anything else. Then I'm going to look at a poultice humphrey humphrey leaves up, or a comfrey tincture, you know, soaked into a cloth and apply it as a compress. Or what's more attand for most people, is plantain broadly plantain, narrowly plantain, staghorn plantain, any of the true plantains, the plantag of species that are generally considered weeds in our lawn that people spray poisons on instead of using them, they should one of the mean plantains. One of our best herbs, and the reason we have so much of it is our ancestors. World is 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 pair cactus. You take the pads, and of course you don't want the spines obviously. I usually burned them off of the plumber storch. 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 the slightest stringency 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 really just all the awful stuff that goes along with a rattlesnake bite. It's amazing to see. And I'll get in this more in the 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 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. Alo can be used the same way as prickly pair cactus. If you happen to have a clean play what they call a French clay, that makes an excellent drawing poultice. Charcoal, a pure activated charcoal. It's a very good drawing poltice. 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 staff. Obviously, the barbary organ grape wonderful for staff. We're worried about Well, here's the thing. I can't tell you how many times I've been on a forum or it's 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 or something like that. We're scratched. Usually it's more of a scratch. What do I do? Are they going to die of rabies? Okay? You know, hunt, I finish a trap. I'm out in the woods all the time. I am not in count or 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, you know. First things first, you know, get on the phone, call animal control, find out or call you know, your 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, as you know, it could be. It's not just a ted nugent song. But if you disinfected real well with especially with the Oregon grape root and such, you can really cut down on any danger of cat scratch fever. If the animal was acting normal, if they're not you know, lobbly 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 defensive, I don't to me, I don't think it's right to call animal control, have the animal killed, have its brain, biop seed and all that just because of human ignorance. I would actually rather take that animal in, feed it for you for a few days and kind of look at it for after every thirty minutes or every fifteen 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 I have gotten rabies. Now that's me. That's my choice. Again, I take risks with my own help 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 all the recommendations. I just get clean the wound, disinfect the wound, 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 at all is garlic and onions. Even but you can take a clover garlic, you can crush it, you can put it on a wound, especially a bite. It's going to help disinfect that woman 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 out of it and 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 anti viral properties. That's a good one to take if you are a little worried. Achinationia taken internal internally has anti viral and antibiotic properties. It's also immune supportive. High doses of vitamin C are immune supportive and anti viral. 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 echination, high doses of vitamin C, and you know, hopefully be all right. I've been all right all along. Hopefully that'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 probably take it inside most temperate zones in the winter. It is strongly anti viral 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 aology is crazy. Definitely have some of the garden. It helps keep mosquitas away in such but it can be used as a pulpits or the lavender oil is really good antiseptic, but combined with plantain. Lavender, just the fresh plant, fresh plantain or tincture put on cloth is really one of the oldest remedies for bites and other wounds that are tend to get infected in European herbalism. So this is going back several hundred years of documentation. Saint John's wort oil is grateful wounds taken internally and externally. It's anti viral. American arbibiding that arbibida whatever it's ethusia is both anti viral 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 thirty of them where I live in the mountains. That's like the hedge plant. You know. Skull cap has anti anti viral properties. Is especially true of the Chinese version. The root of the Chinese plant is good. You may the reason I bring this up really is not because you're going to use skull cap or a wound, but you may be familiar with the name mad dog skull cap. Well, skull cap was used by Native Americans and early Americans, all of our ancestors or treating rabies. Now it very well maybe that the skull cap does have a specific anti viral property against that disease, but it's never been proven at all. Okay, you do not hang your hat on that one. It is a sedative, nervine and anti spasm. It would have helped with the symptoms of rabies very much, but it probably wouldn't have necessarily saved 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 anti spasmodic calming property. If I'm bitten by a dog and my heart's racing and my blood pressures up and there's even a chance of going to 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 God 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 skull cap it does have anti viral properties, rather strong antiviral properties. You can use it for some of the colds and flus and corona and covid type viruses as well. Cockle burr, you know, the annoying cocker burr is got some anti sepid anti viral 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 the Native Americans that are called snake root, rattlesnake root, white snake group, white rattlesnathers. Many Okay, but this one, let's see, I'm going to try to pronounce this in Latin. Nanthy's alba. The root is was used Native Americans, and early Americans would boil it in milk and use it internally for all manner bites, bites, dog bite, 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 that's good saying anti colidal silver do is absolutely nothing. You can find another one says coloidal silver is dangerous, and you've got another one says colloidal silver is like a universal antibiotic and anti viral. 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. It's that you do your own research on that. However, honey has folcuse for treating wounds going back at least as far as garlican onions. I mean, our ancestors have been treating wounds, especially bites and anything that was prone to infection with 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 unpleasant or pleasant pleasantness or gangreen? Okay, yes, sometimes you have to use something a little unpleasant to prevent something that's a whole lot worse. And you could 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 thirteen fourteen hundred or so in Germany. It's a combination of somewhere between eleven and twenty seven 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 Ariatrebne. She wrote extensively on Swedish bidders 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 cost twenty five thirty bucks for about six months worth of these herbs. Right you put them in a jar, you pour your vodko it, let us steep, and you take just like this little spoonful of day for digestion, to help with the 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 poulpices and compresses. They are 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 disinfected soak for you know, a variety of things. People have used unaffected eyes, various abscesses, and certainly for bites and burns. It's a common burn remedy and the Germanic speaking herbal tradition. I like my Swedish bidders. And I've already mentioned the drawing poultices. We will get more into that next week as we discussed bites. Instincts. So y'all always remember sort of those ABC's 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 were you got bitten by bear somehow survived it, okay, you would have deep puncture wounds. So you run into a wild hog in the woods, you're going to really get torn up. A lot of people. That's happened to down to the east part of the state where my grandparents live. First thing you want to do disinfect the womb, 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 is going to react. Even if your mind is trained to deal with a lot of situations, 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 striker, a hurricane. Our ancestors feared these things for millions of years and we still have that. So keeping your head is top, top priority. And then you know, make a list, keep you through these things on hand, and God willing you never have to use them, but if you do, at least you have them nearby. I have a great weekend. I'll talk to you next time. The information this podcast is non intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or right it's been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The US government does not recognize the practice of verbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herbless 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 earths been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience, and if I believe in herb has helped me, I cannot nor would I tell you to do to say. 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 of sensitivity and 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 read it. Be responsible for yourself, your own research, make your own choices, and not to blame me for anything ever.