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Tag: Arnica

How to Heal from Surgery Naturally

Reader question: “My question is ….. i had done labiaplasty last week. i am not fully recover still my stitches bleed and little bit pain. can i use apple cider vinegar for healing.”
~Xara C., Karachi, Sindh

Hi Xara! Ouch! Luckily, regardless of where the surgery occurred on the body, there are some natural remedies for recovering from surgery that you can use to help speed your healing and feel better.

Open Wound Remedies

While I suspect that apple cider vinegar might sting an open wound –though can be helpful for loosening scabs later– my go-to herb is Calendula when addressing broken skin. Coat the wound with calendula oil or jelly and then cover with a bandage. Change the bandage 4x/daily while the wound oozes.

Colloidial Silver can also be helpful to use on an open wound for its antiseptic and healing properties. Apply it before the calendula.

Wound Healing Remedies

Once the wound stops oozing, continue with the calendula and also coat with Vitamin E frequently. You can continue to keep it bandaged, but better to leave it open to air as much as possible. For your wounds, I might suggest wearing an organic cotton pantiliner during this time.

There are also some homeopathic remedies to help you with the pain from the tissue trauma. First should always be Arnica Montana to address the bruising and swelling from the procedure. You could start with one pellet of Arnica Montana 200C underneath the tongue and then take a 30C pellet if you have any more pain, but if you don’t have the higher level, just take a 30C pellet every 4 hours for a day or two, then only if there is continued pain.

Homeopathic Ledum is helpful for puncture wounds and surgeries. Take one pellet of Ledum 30C underneath the tongue as soon as possible after surgery and daily for the next several days during healing. Even though your surgery was a week ago, Xara, you could still benefit from Ledum.

Post-Surgical Vitamins

Whenever you are post-surgery, taking additional Vitamin C and Zinc are recommended. I would do a big boost of 1000 mg of a Vitamin C complex for several days to speed healing.

It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to take Vitamin D3 (be sure to take it with a fat for better absorption). Calcium, Sulfur, and Magnesium, too, if a broken bone is involved.

Best of luck for a speedy recovery!

For Relief from Back Pain, Try Arnica

Doesn’t it always go this way: you go through  an incredibly busy, stressful period in your life and then your body gives out and reminds you to slow down and taker care of yourself? That’s how I’m feeling about my back right now.

This fall has been an unending stream of physical and emotional demands and now my back muscles have been in spasms for almost two weeks. Beginning with the unexpected “freezer thaw” that challenged me to cook 100 lbs. of meat in one week and continuing with the basement flood and charity dance competition, my body has been working hard. That stress has been intensified by the emotional departure of my father-in-law from pneumonia and leukemia, followed a week later by my beloved uncle who had survived debilitating scleraderma for 8 years.

Our house has seen a lot of tears lately, and we miss them both. It feels too soon for my parents’ generation to begin dying off.

All of this stress has made me not feel like blogging much lately, but it’s the pain in my back from the muscle spasms that keeps the heating pad going all day long.

I had a therapeutic massage last week from my massage therapist, and it helped, but then I picked up a heavy bag and the agony started all over again.

Today, my sister reminded me that the last time this happened I found some relief by taking homeopathic arnica internally and also by rubbing arnica oil directly on the affected muscles. She was right: after just one dose of arnica, the muscle stopped spasming. The aching is still there, probably from the lactic acid build-up, but I will take another few doses over the course of the evening and will expect to have a better night tonight than last night.

I’m also going to get another massage, because, really, there is no substitute for hands-on work when it comes to tight muscles.

Sometimes everyone needs this kind of reminder to take care of themselves.  🙂

Natural Remedies for Strains and Sprains

Last week I sprained my ankle during Jazzercise. It was a bonehead move as I was chatting with a friend while moving along with the class, and I went up and came down with my ankle twisted around the wrong way. Ouch!

SprainedAnkle2009I had to be helped off the floor and hobbled over to the back with an ice pack for about 10 minutes. Then, I went back into class, albeit gently, which was probably not the smartest move, but I still had range of motion and I figured it was better than letting it stiffen up.

By the time I slowed down again in my day — after I got dinner on the table and my husband asked me how it was feeling, forcing me to stop and actually take a look at it — my ankle had swollen up to the size of a baseball. Oops.

Funny how I had been moving so quickly during my day that I hadn’t thought about it beyond the hassle of limping, but once I got a look at it my stomach started turning and I had to go lie down and put the foot up. It appeared I had strained a ligament pretty well. The power of mind over matter.

Homeopathic Arnica

At this point, it was time to start treating it seriously.Hyland’s Arnica Montana, 30X, Tablets, 250 tablets (Pack of 3) “>

I took a dose of homeopathic Arnica Montana for muscle bruising and swelling and a dose of homeopathic Ruta Graveolens to support the ligament itself. I also coated the area with Arnica Gel

Then I wrapped the whole thing in a castor oil-soaked flannel and a low heating pad to help it soak in. Castor oil can help pull swelling out and speed healing.

By the next morning the swelling had gone down dramatically and I’ve been walking around on it for a week now with steady improvement. I’ve stayed away from heels (a hard one for me these days — seems like all of my shoes (or at least all of my cute shoes!) have very high heels. The challenge of being a short person, I guess!), and high-impact aerobic activity, though I did do a pilates class on Saturday.

The ankle still feels tender and I know that it could strain again very easily, so even though I’m headed to Jazzercise this morning (staying away for a week is enough already! I’m jonesing to dance and move!), I’m planning to keep it low impact and watch the twisting. Wish me luck!