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Researchers suggest that some of the traditional remedies for jellyfish stings might worsen the sting.
STATES CHRONICLE – Specialists indicate some useful remedies in case of jellyfish stings. They asked people to stop using all those old-fashioned remedies which do not even work. Some may have tried to rub sand on the sting or to apply urine on it. These are not useful cures. Christie Wilcox, a postdoctoral fellow at John A. Burns School of Medicine and Angel Yanagihara, a professor at the University of Hawaii have analyzed the effects of common remedies for jellyfish stings.
Using remedies like ice or urine might worsen the effect of jellyfish stings
They examined the cures for stings coming from two box jellyfish species, like the Australian box jelly known as Chironex fleckeri and the Hawaiian box jelly known as Alatina alata. Researchers argued that box jellyfish are known to be one of the deadliest creatures in the oceans, being responsible for the deaths of more persons than sharks are every year.
Yanagihara claimed that people tend to Google common cures for this type of stings and they end up finding a wide range of weird solutions. One of the pieces of advice found on the web indicated that people should rinse the affected area with seawater, scrape remaining tentacles and then treat the sting with some ice.
Specialists advice people to use vinegar to douse the tentacles
Yanagihara argues that she together with her colleagues did not only debunk the effect of these traditional cures, but they also proved that some treatments even worsened those jelly stings. The team of scientists unveiled that some of the recommended actions, such as rinsing with water and using ice, proved to worsen the symptoms of the sting dramatically.
The new study also indicated that scraping the jellyfish’s tentacles could also damage, increasing the amount of venom injected by the stinging cells. They explained that when applying seawater, it allowed those tentacle pieces to remain intact and active. The situations in which the tentacles were scrapped off from the stings and then cured with ice for twenty minutes triggered the formation of hemolytic areas more than 6.5 times as big as stings where tentacles were removed and not treated.
People should know that even if they remove the remaining tentacles, some microscopic stinging cells are left there, making the pain to last for hours. Moreover, researchers argue that the solution which implies urine is even worse. They do not advise people to use it. Specialists argue that people who get stung should use vinegar to douse the tentacles to prevent the release of venom.
Image source: wikipedia
