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?

Set point and holiday weight gain

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 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.

How do you recognize vitamin B deficiency?

Traditional media often run stories about how supplements may cause problems. One of the problems with studies highlighting supplements is they typically use synthetic vitamins, and not whole food supplements. Your body was not made to process unnatural agents, often posing as equivalents to the real thing. The reality is they are frequently not the same and do not provide you with the same health benefits.

Vitamin deficiencies may lead to illness and disease, and contribute to chronic issues such as high blood pressure, dementia and cancer. One nutritional deficiency having the potential to wreak havoc on your health, your cognition and even your respiratory system is a deficiency in vitamin B complex. B vitamins also help your body to detoxify from chronic exposure to pollutants and chemicals.

Can zinc deficiency cause depression?

The health benefits of zinc include a proper functioning of the immune and digestive systems, controlled diabetes, reduction in stress levels, improved metabolism, and an increased rate of healing for acne and wounds. Also, it is helpful in terms of pregnancy, hair care, eczema, weight loss, night blindness, cold, eye care, appetite loss, and many other conditions.

What is the importance of zinc?
Zinc plays a vital role in protein synthesis and helps regulate the cell production in the immune system of the human body. It is mostly found in the strongest muscles of the body and is found in especially high concentrations in the white and red blood cells, retina, skin, liver, kidneys, bones, and pancreas. The semen and the prostate gland in men also contain significant amounts of zinc.

In the human body, there are more than 300 different enzymes that require zinc to function normally. Researchers believe that 3,000 proteins (out of approximately 100,000) have this vital mineral.

A normal person has two to three grams of zinc at any given time. There are organs in the human body which secrete it, such as the salivary gland, the prostate gland, and the pancreas. Even cells involved in the activity of the immune system secrete zinc. It is used up in various metabolic processes and eliminated through normal excretory and urinary channels, so it needs to be replenished often. If it isn’t, you will begin to suffer from deficiency symptoms.

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.