Some time ago I wrote an article about wound healing in the context of a surgical procedure (Are You Facing Surgery?). This time I’m going to tell you about something that happened to me that drove the message home very clearly.
Day +0
It was Friday, October 23, 2020 late in the afternoon. I was walking with my daughter across a parking lot toward a grocery store. I went to step up onto the walk in front to the store but didn’t raise my foot quite high enough. My toe caught on the curb and I tripped. My forward motion meant that my centre of mass was well in front of my feet, so I was about to fall on my face.
Fortunately (?) there was a concrete pillar just in front of me, so I put my hands out to the pillar to break my fall. That worked. Unfortunately, my head maintained its forward momentum and came in resounding contact with the corner of the pillar. I put my hand up to the point of impact on my forehead and it came away quite bloody. I tried to use a few facial tissues to staunch the flow but to no avail. Head wounds tend to bleed heavily as a matter or course. Add to that the blood thinner I was taking and things got messy very quickly.
My daughter asked a store staff person for some paper towels to use as a pressure bandage. Fortunately in her younger years she was a lifeguard and had extensive training in rescue and first aid. (She won several competitions as well.) When I asked if we could just put a band-aid on it and get on with things she told me no, the cut was too deep. (What she told me the next day was that she could see the scull bone! But she didn’t want to upset me so kept quiet at the time.)
She asked the same helpful staff person to get a chair for me to sit on. Then she proceeded to call Emergency Services and asked for a Paramedic unit to attend. When they arrived, first they put on their Covid protective equipment and then examined me. Apparently standard protocol for someone over 65 with a head injury is immediately to apply a neck brace. (I’m over 70.) Then they applied a pressure bandage. But because of the position of the wound on my forehead, they had to wrap my head to hold it in place. Then off to the Emergency Room at a local hospital.
I won’t go into all that happened during the six hours at the hospital. (I will tell you that Covid protocols mean everything takes longer.) The doctor who treated me had to apply 4 dissolving stitches deep in the wound and 8 regular stitches on the surface. She told me that due to gravity some of the excess blood in the wound area would drift down my face. I was to go to my regular doctor to get the stitches removed in seven days. The nurse later applied some antiseptic ointment and a bandage over the wound. They sent me on my way about midnight.
I recalled the wound healing study (peer reviewed and published in 2015) that demonstrated several benefits for wound healing by elevating glutathione levels. Because of my age I was already taking multiple doses of glutathione accelerators (Xxxxxxxxxx, XxxXxx, and XxxXXX). So as soon as I got home I started a program of increasing the amounts by 50% with the intent of continuing that for at least a couple of weeks.
Day +2
I decided to leave everything alone for a day. On the second day after the injury I took off the bandage so I could have a shower, clean the wound, apply some antiseptic ointment and put on another clean bandage.
There was still dried blood in my hair. And recalling the doctor’s warning about the blood drifting downward to my face, I can now positively confirm that my eye is part of my face. That’s ugly!
Given my age, I expected that I would have a very nasty “zipper” scar on my forehead. But the reports in the wound healing study gave me some hope for a better outcome.
Day +7
Managed to get an appointment with my doctor to have the surface stitches removed a week after the injury.
Most of the blood around my eye had dissipated.
The wound itself was looking better than I expected. But I still anticipated that evidence of the stitching job would be visible.
Day +14
Clearly the wound healing study has been validated in this human. The scar will always be there. But it looks like what I might expect if a 12 year old had a similar injury. But I am in my early 70s!
The range of benefits delivered by elevated glutathione levels continues to empress!
Update: Day +180
As noted earlier, for the two week period following the injury I increased my intake of glutathione accelerators by about 50%. Then I reverted to pre-injury levels. However, you should note that my usual level is over three times standard doses! This is due to my age (early 70s). Natural glutathione production drops as we age. Most people in their 30s and 40s need some level of supplementation. Those over 60 need even more.
When glutathione levels are raised in the body a wide variety of the body’s systems are impacted. Some of these improvements may happen within minutes, others over several hours, others over days or weeks. Whenever I recommend a glutathione accelerator, I ask the person to undertake a self-evaluation exercise to track the improvements they notice over time. (Ten criteria, self-evaluation, baseline assessment before they start, and then a fresh evaluation every week over a 12 week period.) What we have observed is that for middle-age people (those in their 40s and 50s) who have no significant health challenges, over 90% of them record noticeable benefits within three months (90 days). People with health challenges tend to notice improvements sooner.
So I thought it would be useful to track the progress of the healing of my wound over time as well. Here is the final photo taken six months after the injury.
Over the course of taking progress photos weekly for the first three months, I observed that the wound images were impacted by a couple of factors in addition to the healing itself. One was the characteristics of the lighting when the photo was taken. So I tried to take the photos in a fairly consistent setting. (Saturday late mornings, diffuse natural light coming in a North facing window, supplemented by a ceiling light fixture with CF bulbs. The natural light was impacted on different days by current weather conditions.)
The other thing I noticed at other times was that the redness of the wound would be impacted by my level of physical activity. Immediately following some of my workout routines the redness was more pronounced due to increased blood flow and temporarily higher blood pressure. I think this is to be expected.
Finally, over time the visible width of he scar seemed to diminish, but very slowly. The scar will never disappear. But given the original condition of the wound, I am both surprised and pleased with the impact that elevated glutathione levels had on the wound.
#glutathione #health #healthscience