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Home : Health : Remedies : Burns : When you touch something hot...
When you touch something hot... Get instant relief from a burn
Submitted by Steve Martin
As you're undoubtedly aware, the parts of the body which receive the most burns, scalds and blisters are the finger tips, particularly the tips of the index, middle finger, and thumb of your preferred hand.
You know the feeling - you accidentally or unwittingly touch something which is very hot and the tip of your finger 'lights up' with an intense stinging pain. Well, here's a tip which came from my great grandmother, (I remember her speaking about it to my mum and gran when I was young)... The moment you get burned, touch the tip of the offended finger to your ear-lobe. You will find that if you do this quickly enough, the stinging will go away almost instantaneously and there'll be no lasting pain or damage!
Why does this work? Well, I've examined the problem scientifically and I can tell you and my dear old granny, (if she were still with us), that it's all about heat conductivity…
You see, when your finger tip touches something hot, kinetic energy is transferred to your finger tip which is poorly conductive. It will, therefore, linger there for a few moments and the immediate pain you feel is that energy firing off pain receptors, (while also 'burning up' and destroying healthy cells in your finger tip!)
What happens when you touch your ear lobe? Well, have you ever noticed that your ear lobes always feel slightly cooler than the rest of you? That's because the fatty tissue and cartilage in there is a particularly good conductor of heat. So good in fact that if you can manage to make your reflexive response to the pain in your finger tip be to quickly touch that finger to your lobe, the laws of thermo dynamics mean that the heat will be conducted away very quickly, (because of the conductivity differential between finger tip and ear lobe), stopping those pain receptors from firing, and even preventing the destruction of healthy cells by heat which would have otherwise lingered in your poorly conductive finger tip for several moments longer!
So, the next time you catch a finger in a flame, touch a hot pan on the stove, decide to test a soldering iron the SILLY way or whatever, you know what to do - just whip that finger STRAIGHT to your ear lobe!
(By the way, don't worry about your ear, the fat cells in your lobe will be just fine, all you'll feel is immediate and sweet relief from that terrible stinging!)
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