Wound healing: leave a wound exposed or not? On popular assumptions and role of vitamins

Sometimes it seems I'm the Überklutz as bad balance and absent mindedness made me crash down on my knee after forgetting to unfold one pedal of the folding bike and trying in vein to unfold it while riding.
Thinking it was only a minor wound it only occurred to me to visit the physician two days later when the wound wouldn't stop bleeding : turns out I should have gone immediately as it actually should have been stitched, for which it was too late some 48 hours later.

The assistant told me to clean the wound with water three times a day and take antibiotics for a week.
Can't remember whether plasters were recommended or not, but by chance, that same night I listened to that very same topic on a Dutch cycling podcast (Tweewielers). Apparently wounds should be covered up and kept moist rather than to let them dry and exposed to air.

Apparently this discovery to keep wounds moist was already known by physicians in traditional medicine around the world such as China Egypt or Greece, with methods of which some are being rediscovered, such as the habit to treat wounds with honey.

Seems I'm not the only one to have a wrong perception on what's best for wound healing. Covering up always seemed superfluous to me.  What other popular assumptions are false or true? And what about supplements to take?

The true danger of COVID-19 vaccines : why we should avoid leaky vaccines

Two weeks ago I wrote in my blog on how I did not want a vaccine out of madness because governments won't allow the use of HCQ or ivermectin, both of which are both safe and cheap treatments against COVID-19.
However, I said to not see anything wrong in the vaccine itself. By now I've changed my mind. No, I don't actually deem mRNA vaccines to be unsafe, nor am I too worried about the very rare side-effects of clotting.

What truly spooked me is the fact these are 'leaky' vaccines, which allows viruses to still infect people despite being vaccinated. They just won't get sick, but can become hosts of viruses that may still infect unvaccinated people. Who , in the end no longer will have any other choice but to get vaccinated when a virus has mutated into a too dangerous variant.

At least this is the theory from dr Geert Vanden Bossche, a prominent virologist who spoke out against massive vaccination.

Why is the fact those vaccines are leaky so scary? Let me explain with an article on Marek's disease in chickens.

Set point and holiday weight gain

Are eggs good or bad for diabetes?

Outside COVID-19 very little health news catches the attention of newspapers, unless it is something out of the ordinary.

One such news item was the result from an observational study among Chinese citizens of whom it was reported how those eating more eggs had a higher risk of diabetes 2.

Oh boy, here we go again was my first thought. First eggs were vilified due to their cholesterol content, and now that nonsense has been put to rest [link], they try to come up with another BS research. Yes, calling it BS.
Imagine, you are a notorious smoker and decide to give up smoking because your lungs are suffering and have developed COPD. Yet, it is too late and a lung tumour has been detected. Guess what? The clickbait headlines would go like "people that give up smoking, will develop lung cancer!".

That's how it works! Time and again we have to repeat: correlation is NOT the same as causation. This was an observational study, in which people were asked about their habits.
snsly
A much better research method is a clinical study in which people are meticulously followed after treatment.
Or a meta study in which several studies are lumped together and analysed.

How to prevent getting sick from the flu

You can prevent germs from making you ill in two ways: prevent entry into the body by careful hygiene, and if they do get in, make sure your body’s natural immune system is able to fight these germs, so they self-destruct before overwhelming the system.

Most flu germs are spread in two ways:

• touching such as hand-to-hand contact
• droplet spread when germs ride along on tiny water droplets that are sneezed or coughed into the air

Try these flu prevention tips to avoid person-to-person spread:

• avoid shaking hands, but bow or give a head nod
• avoid nose-picking as the nose is a breeding ground for germs
• sneeze into a disposable handkerchief and if you don't have one available, sneeze inside your elbow
• shun coughers and sneezers as much as possible.
• avoid crowded rooms

Why does stress make us sick more easily?

Most diseases that we are dealing with nowadays are chronic diseases as a result of poor lifestyle choices that will only affect us later in life. However, we can get sick much sooner when exposed to chronic stress. How can this happen?

Stress is defined as a series of events, starting with a stimulus leading to a stress response known as the 'fight-or-flight' reaction that can affect many body systems.
Physical or physiological stress is mostly short-lived, while psychological or emotional stress can last for a very long time.

Why are multivitamins important for your health?

Sometimes, when your only source of news is from mainstream media, it seems as if taking nutritional supplements is worse than taking medicines. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Especially multivitamins and fish oil can be your cheapest way to top health in addition to a healthy diet. People following healthy diets, are as rare as diamonds and it most certainly doesn't mean following the latest fad diet where you must buy expensive exotic ingredients to be doing it right.

Sadly this is possible when the general public is not being educated properly. Even our national nutritional council (Voedingscentrum) still keeps spouting how you should be consuming artificial margarine instead of real butter as it 'contains extra vitamin D' while butter from grass-fed cows will contain this naturally.

However, there is one truth that is universally embraced by almost everyone: in order to become healthier one has to consumer larger amounts of vegetables and fruits and less heavily processed foods. The sad truth is how most Dutch citizens don't even ingest 200 grams of vegetables and fruit on a given day, a far cry from the recommended 500 grams never mind the optimal 750 grams that is considered to be ideal when you're striving from longevity.

A multivitamin a day keeps the doctor away 

With so many supplements available, and a lot of supplement advertisements in sports magazines targeted at athletes, one is rarely seen: ads for a multivitamin and mineral. 

When you think about supplements, what are the first thoughts that go through your mind? Whey protein, nitric oxide, creatine, fat burners, or maybe something else? These are the ones that consume the ads.

What if I told you though that the most important supplement that you must have in your arsenal is not on this list? That is your basic multivitamin. From the chewable ones you took as a kid to the ones you have now. Oh, you don't take them? If not, you better change that immediately if you want to meet your fitness goals.

For the human body to complete all the tasks it has in a normal day, it must be given a wide and complex variety of vital nutrients. Becoming deficient in any one of these essential vitamins or minerals causes breakdown of the metabolic pathway that produces optimum efficiency and performance goes down quick. Obviously, this is NOT what you want!

Timing of supplements

We frequently receive the question whether it really matters when to use a particular supplement.
Most supplements come with instructions to ingest them with a meal. This is in the assumption that meal contain fat, as fat will aid with absorption through the gut wall. Whether or not this can be your first meal of the day, depends on how much fat it contains. Especially fat-soluble vitamins, such as A,D, E and K need fat for proper absorption.
A work-around is to ingest them together with a larger amount of fish or krill oil softgels if your first meal doesn't contain enough fat.
Another reason take supplements with a meal, is that taking it by itself, can cause nausea or discomfort.

Fears about contamination of eggs or supplements

In the past week of early June, a lot of fear was placed in the heart of the public of both Dutch, German and French customers, when officials from the National Food Safety Board announced eggs had to be destroyed due to contamination with a banned substance, called fipronyl.
The reason this happened, is that fipronyl is an amazingly effective insecticide that was perfectly legal for use in stables where egg laying poultry live. This insecticide was however banned from January 1 onwards for use on animals in the food chain, with the main reason behind the ban being its toxicity to bees.