Ouch! Did you just slice your hand cutting onions (or some other slippery food) and there’s not a drop of antiseptic in sight? If you’re in the kitchen, you’re in the right place to grab one of these items for fast treatment…
First things first: The first thing to do when you get a scratch, small cut or graze is to clean it with warm water and soap.
Spicy remedy: Bleeding caused by shaving mishaps, sport scrapes or superficial cuts from a kitchen knife can be stopped in seconds. How? Cayenne pepper. It’s high in vitamin K, a nutrient that’s essential for blood clotting. Just sprinkle a little bit of cayenne pepper on the scrape or minor cut, and the bleeding will stop almost instantaneously. Warning: Don’t try this trick on deeper cuts. The burn from the pepper will outweigh the pain from the cut.
Peel some healing: After cleaning your minor wound, put the inside of a piece of banana peel directly on it and secure it with an adhesive bandage. Change the peel every three to four hours. A banana skin on your arm might look funny, but we’ve seen remarkable and rapid results. This gives you another good reason to pack bananas when you go camping (along with the eating part, of course).
Our favorite for paper cuts: Clean the cut with the juice of a lemon. Then, to ease the pain, dip your cut finger into powdered cloves. Since cloves act as a mild anesthetic, the pain should be gone in a matter of seconds.
Oldie but a goodie: Put honey on the wound and let its healing enzymes go to work. We love how honey stops minor bleeding and pain at the same time.
Caution: If a cut or wound is bleeding profusely, put direct pressure on it with a sterile dressing, or the cleanest washcloth available—and get professional medical help immediately.
