Most minor burns will heal on their own, and home treatment is usually all that is needed to relieve your symptoms and promote healing. The simplest and quickest thing to do is to keep the burned area in cold water or apply an ice pack for at least ten minutes, even if the pain subsides. Never put butter or vegetable oils on a burn, this just keeps the heat in.
To make a compress for burns: Wet a clean clothe in cool water, and/or Witch Hazel, then apply a few drops of chamomile, hyssop or lavender essential oil directly to the burn. Witch hazel is an all purpose remedy for scalds, burns, sunburns and other inflammatory conditions of the skin. Used externally, hyssop, chamomile and lavender essential oils have been proven to be good for treating burns and sunburns.
Fresh aloe gel soothes pain, cools the skin, and stimulates blood flow to burns, sunburns, red painful skin, and blisters. It also encourages healing to occur between tissue cells. 1. Aloe is a great house plant to keep handy in a kitchen window.
Herbal poultices are another good home remedy for burns. Chickweed poultices are useful for cooling and soothing minor burns. Apply fresh mashed and moistened chickweed leaves to the burned area.
Plantain's juice is in fact antibacterial and quite soothing when applied to a burn.1 Like comfrey, it contains allantoin, an anti-inflammatory phytochemical that speeds wound healing, stimulates the grow of new skin cells, and give the immune system a lift. Slippery elm poultices are also used for treating inflamed, or irritated skin and minor burns.
Herbal Oils : St. Johns Wort Oil, which is extracted by macerating the flowers in vegetable oil, is soothing for burns since it lowers the temperature of the skin. Tamanu oil is healing and soothing for sunburns and has even healed severe burns caused by boiling water, chemicals and X-rays.2
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