How to relieve sunburn at home? This question worries many people who are familiar with this phenomenon first-hand.
The likelihood of getting a burn and the degree of its manifestation depend on individual characteristics structure and functions of the skin. For some people, exposure to the sun's rays is expressed as an even and beautiful tan on the body, while others literally in a matter of minutes are “decorated” by sunburn of the skin. Treatment at home for the affected area depends on the severity of the injury and is aimed at eliminating swelling and reducing pain.
For your information. Most optimal time for adoption sunbathing- before 11.00 o'clock in the morning and after 16.00 o'clock in the evening. It is during this period that the tan goes on evenly and beautifully, without causing harm to the skin.
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First aid: fermented milk products
Redness, a feeling of tightness and burning, the appearance of blisters - these are the symptoms of an ultraviolet burn on human skin. The face, chest and shoulders are precisely these areas of the body, not protected by clothing, that are more susceptible to such an unpleasant and painful phenomenon as sunburn . Treatment at home must begin with cooling the damaged surface.
You can use available products such as yogurt, low-fat sour cream, whey, kefir. From sunburn Gently applying a thick layer of any of these liquids to the affected area will help. Lubrication must be repeated about 10 times as the liquid dries. By the way, sour cream for sunburn is the most famous and sought after remedy that helps reduce redness and relieve pain.
Remember. Fermented milk products, which help cool and soften the skin, are the first aid for sunburn at home.
An effective remedy - black tea
What folk remedies can cure sunburn? What to apply to damaged skin at home? ethnoscience advises using brewed black tea, soak a cloth in it and gently wipe the burned area with it. These manipulations will help relieve swelling and reduce pain.
But it is not advisable to make tea-based compresses: the liquid has a tinting effect and may appear as a pigment spot on the affected area.
Vodka will cool your skin
There is an opinion that vodka is a good remedy for sunburn, although only in mild cases. By cooling the reddened skin, the alcohol-containing liquid significantly alleviates the condition of the victim. Its use will be appropriate immediately after the appearance of redness on the body, then treatment can be continued with others effective means. If blisters appear, it is not recommended to lubricate the burned areas with an alcoholic drink, as this can only worsen the situation.
On a note. If you feel that your skin is sunburned, you should immediately go indoors and take a cool shower. To avoid painful sensations, you should not dry yourself with a towel, so as not to further irritate the burned skin.
Universal vegetable - cabbage
An affordable and effective home remedy for treating negative impact ultraviolet radiation is cabbage, or rather its leaves, which act on the principle of fermented milk products - drawing heat from the burned area .
Advice. To reduce the pain that occurs when damaged skin comes into contact with the bed, ordinary talc, which you need to sprinkle on the sheets, will help.
Sauerkraut, which is an excellent basis for a healing compress, is no less effective in restoring the skin surface. Its preparation does not take much time: the product must be thoroughly mixed in brine and used as a lotion, which must be renewed every 5-7 minutes. Approximately 3-5 lotions should be done in one approach. It is advisable to carry out the procedure twice during the day.
Cabbage is a product that can, in any form (both fresh and pickled), relieve inflammation, reduce fever, and also prevent the appearance of blisters.
Potatoes will help
If sunburn appears on the skin, how to treat it at home? When choosing effective means from the effects of ultraviolet radiation, one should not forget about potatoes - a root vegetable that can calm painful sensations and ease physical state the victim.
To make a compress, the product must be peeled and finely grated. Place the resulting pulp in gauze, apply to the sore spot and secure with a bandage on top. The duration of action is 30-60 minutes, changing the compress to a fresh one 4-5 times a day.
Advice. To reduce pain and speed up the healing process of the skin, it is recommended to use potato starch: sprinkle the product on the painful area or use it as a lotion, first diluting it with water.
It will help if you have a sunburn on your face. potato mask based on root juice and flour, which must be left for 15 minutes, then rinsed with warm water.
Universal healer - aloe
Does aloe help with sunburn? The plant, known in everyday life as a home healer, is a real treasure trove useful substances, each of which carries mass to the body useful properties: healing, softening, protecting.
To carry out the treatment procedure, you need to squeeze out the juice from several leaves and dilute it with water in equal proportions. Soak a cloth in the resulting solution and apply it to the painful area for about 15 minutes. It is advisable to carry out the healing operation 2-3 times during the day.
Effective herbal infusions
How to apply sunburn at home? Oak bark is characterized by healing and anti-inflammatory properties. Natural remedy You can prepare it yourself or purchase it at a pharmacy. A tablespoon of raw material needs to be brewed with a glass of boiling water, cooled and filtered. Within 1.5 hours it is necessary to make lotions, each of which should be kept until the cloth dries slightly.
Any useful herbal infusion should be soaked in a gauze bandage and applied to the burned area. The number of procedures per day is from 3 to 4.
After a long stay on a hot summer day under the direct rays of the heavenly body, such folk remedies for sunburn as herbal infusions from mint, calendula, nettle, chamomile, plantain.
Each of them is an excellent antiseptic that can relieve inflammation, prevent the formation of blisters and speed up the process of regeneration of the skin surface. To prepare the medicine, add a glass of boiling water to a tablespoon of crushed dry raw materials or several components in a complex. Leave for half an hour, then filter. Apply healing compresses until a feeling of relief appears.
After a few days of treatment, the dry skin will begin to peel off, revealing a new layer underneath.
Advice! At this point, home therapy can be supplemented by applying cosmetics(ointments and creams) that can protect and moisturize the skin surface. It's regular Vaseline sea buckthorn oil for sunburn and herbal preparations with similar effects .
When treating burns resulting from exposure of the skin to direct sunlight, you should not:
- “help” peeling of the skin to avoid possible complications;
- pierce blisters - the consequence of this manipulation can be infection of the skin tissue;
- rub the affected area, wash it with soap and scrub, which can cause infection to penetrate inside.
While the sunburn is healing, treating it at home is not particularly difficult, it is recommended to drink plenty of fluids, avoid going out in the sun for a while, and wear loose clothing made from natural fabrics, taking into account their capacity. So, synthetic material can transmit up to 15% of ultraviolet radiation, natural cotton - about 6%. It will be useful to consume vitamins E and C, which have anti-inflammatory properties and accelerate the restoration of damaged cells.
A new study from Vanderbilt University finds that women's hormonal cycles may not only make women more dependent on drugs, but also increase the impact of triggers that lead to relapse. The results obtained are especially important given the fact that scientific work demonstrating the relationship between these cycles and drug addiction has almost never been published.
Erin Calipari, assistant professor of pharmacology at the T.H. Center for Drug Addiction Research. Vanderbilt, notes that women are the most vulnerable group of the population, as they have a higher level of drug addiction. However, research related to drug addiction is mainly focused on studying the mechanisms occurring in the male body. Her research showed that when levels of hormones associated with fertility are at high level, women learn faster and become more reward-seeking.
“For women who start taking drugs, the process of addiction may follow a completely different scenario than for men. This is very important to know because this is the first step in development effective methods treatment,” Calipari said.
The next step, she says, will be to determine exactly how hormonal changes affect a woman's brain. The final step involves developing drugs that could help overcome these changes. However, treatment centers can already use the information presented in this study to help women deal with relapses.
Scientists from the beginning avoided using female animals in medical research, so they did not have to consider the influence of hormonal cycles. As a result, drug development often focuses on correcting dysfunction in men, which may explain why women often do not respond to available drugs or treatments, Calipari notes.
Her work was recently published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. It involved an experiment involving male and female rats. As a result, scientists found that females are more dependent on drugs than males.
“There is epidemiological evidence that suggests women are more vulnerable, but it is unclear what factors influence this. However, thanks to research like this, we are beginning to isolate the environment and physiological reasons"Calipari added.
An experiment conducted on mice showed that fatty acid propionate helps protect against the effects of high blood pressure, including atherosclerosis and cardiac tissue remodeling. Gut bacteria produce a substance that soothes immune cells, which increase blood pressure, from natural dietary fiber.
“You are what you eat,” says one proverb. However, much of our well-being also depends on what the bacterial guests in our digestive tract consume. The fact is that intestinal flora helps the human body utilize food and produce useful microelements, including vitamins.
Beneficial gut microbes are able to produce metabolites from dietary fiber, including a fatty acid called propionate. This substance protects against the harmful effects of high blood pressure. A Berlin research team from the Center for Experimental and Clinical Research (ECRC) has shown why this happens. Their study was published in the journal Circulation.
Researchers gave propionate to mice with high blood pressure. The animals then showed less cardiac damage or abnormal enlargement of the organ, making them less susceptible to cardiac arrhythmias. Damage to blood vessels, known as atherosclerosis, was also reduced. “Propionate helps combat a number of cardiovascular dysfunctions caused by high blood pressure. This could be a promising treatment option, especially for patients who have too little of this fatty acid,” says research team leader Professor Dominik N. Müller.
Bypass via the immune system
“Our research has shown that this substance passes through the immune system and thus directly affects the heart and blood vessels. In particular, T helper cells, which increase inflammation and contribute to high blood pressure, were calmed down,” said Dr. Nicola Wilk and Hendrik Bartholomaeus from the ECRC.
This has a direct impact, for example, on the functionality of the heart. Research group induced cardiac arrhythmia in 70% of untreated mice using targeted electrical impulses. However, only one fifth of the rodents given the fatty acid experienced irregular heartbeats. Further studies using ultrasound, tissue sections and single-cell assays showed that propionate also reduced blood pressure-related damage of cardio-vascular system animals, significantly increasing their survival rate.
But when the researchers deactivated a specific subtype of T cells in the mice, known as regulatory T cells, the beneficial effects of propionate disappeared. Therefore, immune cells are indispensable for the beneficial effects of a substance on the body. A research team led by Johannes Stegbauer, associate professor at the University Hospital Düsseldorf, confirmed the team's findings.
Short-chain fatty acid as a therapeutic option
The results explain why a diet rich in fiber, recommended by many nutrition organizations, helps prevent cardiovascular disease. Whole grains and fruits, for example, contain cellulose and inulin fibers, from which gut bacteria produce beneficial molecules such as propionate and short-chain fatty acids, which have a backbone of just three carbon atoms.
The proven “grandmother’s medicine” - sour cream for sunburns has been revered for many years as a panacea for saving the skin from burning ultraviolet rays. Today, doctors and cosmetologists are cautious in assessing the positive qualities of sour cream, although they do not categorically reject this product, which softens the course of the burn process.
But does sour cream really help with sunburn?
If there are no extensive burns, blisters, swelling of any severity, wound defects affecting the face, you can contact folk traditions, to what is always at hand. One of the long-known and familiar remedies is homemade sour cream.
You just need to smear sour cream on the areas damaged by ultraviolet rays. Available remedy, which helps to quickly relieve pain and redness, is kept on the skin for 30 to 60 minutes.
However, doctors recommend that before using any means, wash the inflamed areas with cold water, which relieves discomfort. Water compresses can be applied 3 times a day daily for 10-15 minutes. And taking water inside is necessary to rehydrate the skin and reduce inflammation and peeling.
Sour cream must be stored in the refrigerator, so initially its temperature is lower than skin temperature, and 100 g of the product contains 78.1% water. The thick consistency of the ointment allows the treatment to cover all affected areas of the skin.
Cold sour cream reduces the feeling of skin tightness. This is achieved due to the predominance of fats among the components of sour cream, which create a film protection that reduces burning and pain when touched. Homemade sour cream contains not only water and fats, but also proteins, carbohydrates, all the most important vitamins, many microelements, which also promotes regeneration skin.
- You can combine sour cream with potatoes. Three potatoes need to be boiled in their skins, peeled and beaten with sour cream, spread on the surface of the burn, leave the ointment for half an hour and rinse with warm water. By the way, this is not bad softening mask for face.
- Cold kefir and yogurt (without additives), containing active cultures of bacteria, act similarly. Five-minute gauze compresses made from equal parts of skim milk, water and ice cubes applied to the burned skin also help.
Homemade dairy products are used at the very beginning of the process to relieve pain as a first-line remedy in the absence of other drugs. But in modern conditions, no matter how much the medicinal properties of sour cream are extolled, it is rather a tradition than a conscious choice from the variety grandma's recipes, offering aloe, oatmeal, teas (compresses and baths), tomatoes, etc. for the treatment of burns.
Transformation of virtues
Experts believe that the advantages of sour cream anti-burn cream can easily be transformed into disadvantages:
- The cream creates a thin but durable oily film on the burn surface, preventing the evaporation of moisture from the skin surface and healthy gas exchange (the work of the sweat glands is blocked).
- To clean the skin of sour cream residues, you need to take a shower using detergents, which worsens the condition of damaged skin.
- Sour cream has no advantages over other means in the regeneration of burned epidermis, i.e. in restoring skin integrity.
- No matter how carefully sour cream is used, it creates inconvenience, leaving stains on clothes and hair. Any movement due to its flow and drops becomes problematic.
- This milk product does not completely relieve pain, especially when palpating and touching hard objects.
But the most important thing that doctors warn about is that excess sour cream on the surface of the skin becomes fertile soil for pyogenic bacteria. The content of own yeast bacteria in sour cream can cause secondary purulent destruction of the epidermis.
Sunburn is fraught with an inflammatory process in the area of skin damage, which is characterized by rapid development and serious complications, including blood poisoning. Local treatment initially must contain antimicrobial components, but sour cream, yogurt or kefir do not have them. Moreover, they themselves contain bacterial agents.
There are more negative reviews about sour cream as a medicine, since the product most often used is store-bought, produced according to modern technologies, not free from chemistry.
The use of sour cream can be considered as a method emergency assistance. However, after this it is necessary to use specially designed products to accelerate the restoration of color, turgor and skin functions.
Additional protection
Tanning is the activation of the body's defenses. Our skin is protected from the sun by melanin - the pigment of the upper layer of skin, the production of which increases under the “fire” of ultraviolet rays. Prolonged UV “bombardment” of the skin breaks through the melanin shield. The body cannot cope with the load, pigment synthesis slows down, and signs of burns appear.
Avoiding tanning can be considered better protection. But a beautiful and even tan is a gift of summer and a memory of a wonderful vacation. Especially if everything worked out without sunburn, which became an obstacle to swimming, air baths and walks.
A wealth of eco-friendly sunscreen brands will protect us if we apply them regularly before sun exposure.
Tanning has long been firmly in fashion. It is no coincidence that many girls regularly visit the solarium, and cosmetic companies produce self-tanners, which are very popular in our region, where the sun is active only three months a year.
That is why in the summer everyone strives to have time not only to have a good rest, but also to tan. However, this must be done correctly, otherwise, instead of a beautiful chocolate one, you can get unpleasant sunburn. If this does happen, folk remedies and products that are always at hand will come to your aid!
Read about what kind of folk remedies for burns these are in our article!
Sunburn Remedy #1: Baking Soda
Soda – required product not only in the kitchen, but also if you get sunburned. If you severe burns on your back or legs, add half a cup of this miraculous folk remedy to the bath and lie in this water for at least 10 minutes. If the burn is limited to a small area, mix baking soda with ice water and apply to the skin with a clean, soft sponge or cloth.
Sunburn Remedy No. 2: Tomatoes
Sunburn Remedy No. 7: Aloe Vera
This plant will not only serve as an interior decoration, but also as a faithful assistant in the treatment of many diseases, including sunburn. Of course, you can buy ready-made products for burnt skin with aloe extract, but believe me, Fresh Juice This plant is much more effective than its cosmetic counterparts.
To make a miracle folk remedy for sunburn, cool the aloe leaf, then carefully remove it upper layer and lubricate the skin with the resulting fleshy pulp.
Is it possible to smear sour cream on burns?
Sour cream is a very common remedy for treating sunburn. At the same time it does not have special significance the degree of skin damage from sunburn to decide whether to treat it with sour cream. Another thing is that when large areas of the skin are damaged by the sun, it is not recommended to use sour cream, even if the victim was initially allergic to it. In such cases, the use of sour cream may cause allergic reaction and harm the patient. In such cases, it is best to seek help from a qualified doctor as soon as possible, without self-medicating.
How does sour cream help with sunburn?
Sour cream cools the skin during sunburn and this is its main therapeutic effect. In addition, when the sour cream dries, it covers the surface of the burnt area with a continuous film through which the sun's rays do not pass, thereby providing additional protection for the affected surface.
Before lubricating the skin with sour cream for a sunburn, it is recommended to first wash the affected areas under running water. You should not use a washcloth or soap, so as not to irritate the skin. To relieve pain, you can add some baking soda to the water.
Sour cream relieves pain and helps skin heal. The layer of application does not matter; it is important that the sour cream is applied evenly to the burn site.
Beneficial properties of sour cream for skin
Sour cream heals the skin in places of burns and relieves pain. In addition, the burnt surface is moistened and receives the missing amount of fat. Also, for burn injuries, sour cream can cool the affected skin areas. The skin is rejuvenated, skin pores are unclogged, and blood circulation in the treated areas improves. Sour cream is suitable for all skin types and oily levels, and can be used for both dry and oily skin.
Bad influence
The use of sour cream for the skin has its contraindications. These include:
- sour cream is not recommended for preparing skin masks if you are hypersensitive;
- expired sour cream should not be used to lubricate the skin;
- the skin must be cleaned before applying sour cream;
- you should not apply sour cream to the skin for less than twenty minutes, the proper effect is in this case there is no need to wait;
- It is not recommended to use sour cream masks for wounds on the skin;
- Sour cream should not be washed off the skin with hot water.
If there are none of these contraindications, it is fashionable to safely lubricate the skin with sour cream.
Burns can be lubricated with sour cream only after pre-treatment of the skin. The skin at the burn site should be washed and wiped dry to ensure proper cleaning. Apply sour cream in a continuous layer over the entire surface of the damage. The layer should not be too dense so as not to cause clogging of skin pores. It is best to apply sour cream with a sponge or a ball of cotton wool soaked in it. Burns should be lubricated with sour cream carefully so as not to cause pain with pressure. You should also carefully wash off the sour cream from the skin after it dries.
How long to keep sour cream for sunburn?
If you get a sunburn, sour cream should be applied to the skin for at least half an hour, otherwise the expected effect will not follow. It is necessary to keep the sour cream on the skin until it dries and covers the skin with a thick crust. Wash sour cream off the skin with warm, but not hot water. The procedure can be repeated if necessary to ensure that the achieved effect is consolidated. The duration of use of sour cream for burns is individual in each case, but on average ranges from one day to a week, depending on the severity of the burn skin lesion.
