Salt water is incredibly valuable for injury and prevention
Gargle/Rinse in salt water
I am a big fan of salt water rinsing/soaking
Salt has natural antiseptic qualities and is also a topical anti-inflammatory agent. It can kill microbes like bacteria through a process of osmosis where it draws the water out of them.
A salt water soak can dry out your tissue, so you may need to be careful of the concentration of it and put moisture back in a safe way. I use a topical antibiotic ointment like Neosporin for the skin. The salt water draws the water out of microbes that we don’t want, dries them out, and kills them.
Mouth
Helps heal your mouth injuries, prevents infections, and fights plaque on your teeth! When you have receded gums like I do, that is priceless help! It can help fight the acid in your mouth plus the acid created there by sugar ingested.
I personally think there is a great benefit for regular salt water mouth rinses. It kills bacteria well and bacteria cause the plaque that forms on your teeth.
Throat
Developing a sore throat? Salt water gargling can help take care of this too. The salt water reduces bacteria and inflammation to help you heal and fight off infection.
Skin – not serious injury
If you have a surface wound, you can do a salt solution soak of the area. It might look worse, but feels and heals better. In a medical setting, they use what they call a saline solution for cleaning. 0.9 percent sodium chloride is a good match for what is found in our blood. This will clean gently without damage to living tissue that is healing.
In your mouth, there is plenty of fluid, so it is hard to use a wrong concentration of salt there. A topical wound can be dried too severely with salt solution. I have done this. It still heals, just more slowly. If your skin injury is serious, you should see your doctor, they might want a different treatment.
Watch to make sure there is not an infection under a scab
You can tell if there is a problem when there is pain and the area feels hot. Maybe it feels like there is a lump under the area… this could be infection. I have done a salt water soak at this point and recovered. If this is a location for friction from clothing when you move around, this makes it vulnerable to infection.
There can be these and more serious symptoms. That is when you may need to go to a doctor to get help with this.
How much do you love a health solution that is cheap and easy for everyone to use?!?
Salt is easy for us to come by, easy to use, easy to afford. All this makes it easy to use often for a preventative as well as a solution.
My unusual injuries where salt water soak saved the day
Salt water fishing hook in the bottom of my foot
On a vacation, I was playing in the surf. I landed on a salt water fishing hook… those are VERY big and heavy hooks for the big strong fish. As soon as it went in, I knew what it was. I had no idea what to do. There was a family near us and the father heard what I was saying (probably louder than I realized, I was alarmed). He came and carried me to the beach. So many kind people came to help! Such kindness!
The lifeguard advised me to soak it in the salt water for a while. It was a more open cut that was not as deep because I got help and I think even the way the lifeguard removed it. He wanted to see an open wound rather than a puncture. I would not advise anyone to do this with ocean water. There are plenty of live organisms there too. Today, I could not even tell you where that location was on my foot. It did not slow our vacation much.
Soak the feet
Burn from a cold pack that burned my skin – YES you can be burned this way!
I fairly recently burned my skin with a cold compress. The compress felt nice and then numb and I left it too long. The area of skin that was burned felt hard. This may tell you if you are in trouble. That is when it is too late, it is burned.
The burn was in a place where clothing rubbed, so the area under the scab got infected. That salt water soak chased that out. I went on healing.
