first aid for sunburn

Treating Sunburn
By John Kaduwanema



You would treat a heat burn or scald with running cold water or a cooling burn relief product, so why not do the same with sunburn?

It's the time of year where millions are outside enjoying the fine weather but it's also the time of year when skin damaging ultraviolet rays are strong. If you don't take suitable precautions, the UV light can result in sunburn. Too much exposure to UV rays overheats the skin which results in it becoming red and painful and it may also peel or blister. Sunburn isn't always immediately noticeable and the pain may not be instant and could take hours to develop, but most people do tend to know when their skin is getting too hot.

A lot of people are likely to do nothing to sunburned skin, and a lot are likely to simply apply some moisturising lotion to help prevent the skin from peeling. But, when sustaining a burn or scald, for instance when cooking, the likelihood is that they would instantly go to treat the area with cold running water or a specialised burn treatment. So, why not with sunburn?

Burns can be categorised in different ways, for instance by the cause; Radiation burns, which include sunburn; Thermal Burns, including burns from flames and hot liquids; Chemical burns and Thermal Burns. The other method of categorising a burn is by the severity or depth; superficial (first degree), partial-thickness (second degree) and full thickness (third degree).

Sunburn is a radiation burn and tends to be superficial, which means that the top layer of skin, or epidermis, has been damaged. Even when the cause of burning has been removed, the burning heat process continues to be active in the skin and tissue and can continue to cause further damage, so it is important that the process be ended by effective cooling treatment. The burn area can be treated and cooled by running cool water over the effected area or by applying specially developed burn treatment liquids or dressings. It is important never to use anything other than cool water or specialised burn relief and to ignore the old wives tales such as applying butter to burns!

On long days out in the sun, it may be a good idea to carry some after-sun or burn relief lotion as cool running water isn't always available. A specialised burn product that is suitable for use on all forms of burns including sunburn, is Burnshield. The Burnshield product range and formula has been specially developed to cool and inhibit the progression of burns and to minimise further skin damage. The product formula is safe to use, non-toxic, non-irritant and CE approved. As the leading online distributor of burn care products, first aid and medical equipment and accessories, First Aid Warehouse are able to offer low cost prices on a range of high quality products including the Burmshield range.

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