Category: First Aid/Medical

Kitchen Cupboard Medicine, by Barefoot Yankee Gal

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Open your kitchen cupboard and what do you see?  Salt, pepper, ginger, dill, alum, meat tenderizer, honey, molasses, baking soda; and the list can go on.  Viewed as flavor enhancers and condiments these are tasty additions to any meal.  But there is a hidden world of medicinal benefit in many of those little tins and shaker-topped jars. When you reach for the alum to eliminate a canker sore, or swallow a teaspoonful of honey to soothe a sore throat, or make a moist plaster of meat tenderizer to take the sting out of a bee-bite, you are practicing “Kitchen Cupboard …


Post-Apocalyptic Healthcare, by Dr. Daniel Stickler

I first began prepping about two years ago so I am fairly new to this.  In those two years I have been fairly aggressive with my education and training on the topic with much of my real world education coming from reading blogs.  I have found an area where there is a great deal of misinformation and limited preparedness so it has prompted me to address this topic since it is the one area where I possess a skill set that I can share.  The topic is healthcare after the SHTF.  I think it is difficult for any of us, …


Survival Basics: The Tropics, by G.S.

Sometime in the not so distant future our lives will be turned upside down by yet another natural or manmade emergency. Start now by doing your research and figure out which type of emergency is most likely to affect your life. Then get ready! Once the stores close their doors and the gas stations are no longer pumping gas, it’s too late! Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Remember that the survival basics are similar even if the emergency or climatic conditions are different. I’m going to talk about survival in the Tropics. I was born and raised …


Letter Re: Traumatic Brain Injuries

As a physician I would like to share my experience in evaluating and treating concussions (mild Traumatic Brain Injury- mTBI) in military and civilian patients over the last 3 years. In this article concussion and mTBI refer to identical injuries. This is a very pertinent discussion at this time due to the recent unfortunate shooting incident in Afghanistan by a US Military soldier diagnosed with TBI (traumatic brain injury). The Rand Corporation estimates there are over 350,000 US military men and women suffering from concussions symptoms (mTBI) and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from blast incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan. …


Letter Re: Feedback on a Combat Medicine Course

Good Morning Jim, I have to fill you in on this.  I spent the last three days in Ohio at Chuck Fenwick’s (of Medical Corps / KIO3) Combat medicine class and just posted this on my Facebook page.   “I’m the president of CampingSurvival.com. I spent the last three days at Chuck Fenwick and Dave Turner’s combat medicine class in Ohio and I highly recommend it. Check out the stuff we did, here. It was a great experience and I am so glad I got to meet some of the great people I did. We will also have some new …


Rabies – Coming Your Way? by Dr. Cynthia J. Koelker

Rabies – a legitimate concern or fear-mongering?  As I watch my pet Golden Retriever “Doodles” cautiously sniff at the curb sewer, I believe the threat is real.  A family of raccoons lives in the sewer pipes, and just a few months ago a local dog died of raccoon rabies.  Could my children be next? Ohio is on the frontier of raccoon rabies, but despite yearly aerial and ground baiting programs for oral rabies vaccination, the uniformly lethal infection is moving westward.  Bat rabies, the other common threat, is distributed more evenly across the United States.  (If you’re wondering about your …


Caring for Ill and Disabled People, Post-TEOTWAWKI by Mrs. Icebear

Introductory Note: We are not medical professionals. We just have extensive experience working in nursery homes and taking care of injured, sick or disabled family members, here called “patient”, insert whatever is relevant to you. So here are our tips and recommendations, not necessarily in order of importance: If you have a disabled family member, consider getting hold of a wheel chair and a specially designed  “sitting” sleeping bag for wheelchair users. Alternatively make a carpet bag with a side zipper out of fleece blankets. Essential for bugging out or just if the heating fails. Have a bedpan and a …


Two Letters Re: Your Kidneys in TEOTWAWKI

Dear Mr. Rawles,   Dr. Bob is 100% accurate in telling people subject to kidney stones to give up coffee, tea and cokes (a.k.a. calcium oxalate).  As a man who has given birth to 14 stones in 10 years, 2 by litho., I am glad to say I am stone free for two years and show no signs of having more stones.  Part of my Southern heritage is enjoying sweet-tea.  But it had to go, along with my morning coffee and afternoon Coke.  I had a headache for 6 days before the caffeine left my body.  Still, I can look …


Your Kidneys in TEOTWAWKI, by Dr. Bob

Kidneys are pretty important, and often an underdog in the grouping of organ systems.  Without functioning kidneys, none of us can live for more than about a week, making the kidneys pretty important from a survival standpoint.  Seems interesting that a person can literally be brain dead and survive–but without kidneys you can’t.  Kidneys often get lumped into the “random organ” category and people often think of them like their gall bladder and appendix.  Kidneys are more like lungs if you are looking for a good comparison.  You can live with one, you can’t live without two, and you really would prefer …


Letter Re: Celiac Disease: The Gluten-Free Prepping Challenge

We are a family of survivalists and almost all of us are gluten free, some out of necessity and some by choice.  Here are some thoughts and resources for gluten free food.   Later this year, there is a Gluten Free Expo convention in Sandy, Utah starting October 12.  If you can’t attend, check out the vendors page (there are many) to identify other resources for gluten free food.   Augason Farms has #10 cans of food that are certified gluten free, including oats.   It’s a great company and easy to talk to them on the phone.  If you want …


No More Thyroid Meds…Now What?, by Dr. Bob

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At the request of a reader via e-mail, we will review the topic of thyroid disease from a survival perspective.  Levothyroxine is the most frequent medication that we are consulted about at Surviving Healthy.  Thyroid supplementation is the one of the most frequent prescription medications currently prescribed here in the US.  There is a huge debate about which supplementation is better, why some fail Synthroid, why some only respond to Armour thyroid, among other debates.  Those are beyond my scope as a Family Practitioner, and this article will not add to the confusion of these issues, but will instead address …


Four Letters Re: Celiac Disease: The Gluten-Free Prepping Challenge

Jim: I am also gluten intolerant and I found out much in the same way and the previous writer.  In addition the information provided I would like to point out potatoes.  They can be bought in 50 pounds bags and stored in a root cellar for most of the winter. We buy two 50 pound bags in the fall that last us until late spring.  We also grow 18 different varieties of potatoes and save and grow them from seed each spring.  That way we have the knowledge and ability to ramp up our own potato production in case we couldn’t buy them from the farm …


Celiac Disease: The Gluten-Free Prepping Challenge, by Geoff in Kentucky

In mid-2010 I began to suffer from some relatively severe digestive problems. After several months of discomfort, and many rounds of expensive medical tests, I finally received a confirmed diagnosis. I had Celiac Disease. Celiac Disease is a digestive disorder that is greatly misunderstood. It is not a food allergy. It is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system produces antibodies to a specific protein, gluten, that is found in the ordinary grains of wheat, rye, and barley. This protein adheres to the microscopic villi (fingerlike projections) in the small intestine. As the body’s immune system attacks the …


All You Need to G.O.O.D. You Can Carry on Your Back, by Charles M.

In 2000 my wife and I decided we would do a through hike of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.  The distance traveled would be 2,168.5 miles of foot trails through the wildernesses of the eastern United States.   We climbed more than 250 mountains.  Our elevation change was equal to climbing Mount Everest from sea level to the summit and back nineteen (19) times. The trail is very challenging and can be dangerous (two people died on the trail the year we hiked).  The trail follows the crest of the Appalachian Mountain through fourteen states.  Although this was a …


Dr. Bob on Snakebites in TEOTWAWKI

This article was requested by a reader from SurvivalBlog and therefore is published here before it even appears on my own web site next week.  In reviewing the snake-related material in the history, no review of snakebites was found.  There was some reference to people that have been bitten by rattlers, and the July 2006 run in that the fine editor of this blog had with a 3-footer, but no review of risk and advise for treatment.  We will change all that in one swoop here, and the review will be as thorough as my capabilities allow, but hopefully will also generate …