Emergency Preparedness: Medicine in a Down Environment

[TwinSix]

Scenario: F4 Tornado rips through central Indiana... You and your family survive in the basement of your home. Your neighborhood, and surrounding areas are devastated. Med Check Clinics are non existent. Walgreens and CVS = Nope... What do you do? What CAN you do?

Solution: Life saving remedies can be had with Essential Oils. But with anything, just having the tool is useless unless you know how to use it, and practice it.

Unless you posess alternative measures, AND the knowledge and confidence on how to use them you will be among the the 85% of Americans who will be wandering around looking for help.

DO NOT put yourself in that situation. Do your family a favor and collect some skills and tools to take care of them in a down environment.


Join me on February 24th at 12:00 noon at Ella's Frozen Yogurt at Stop 11 and Emerson Ave. on the south side near St Francis Hospital to explore how you can prepare yourself to operate in a down environment at the highsest level possible.

 

[Hoosierkav]

doTerra oils are fantastic!

We have knocked out stomach aches, tooth aches, infected tooth, eliminated two daily prescription medications, kept the colds at bay, all without a single chemical filled, side-effect causing, big corporate pharmacy marketed pill.

 

[DRob]

"Ella's Frozen Yogurt at Stop 11 & Emerson"???? I live less than a mile from there and didn't know there was a frozen yogurt shop there. I must have driven through the lot an hour ago leaving Mexico City Grill.

 

[Hoosierkav]

Ella's just opened... December or January...

 

[bingley]

Scenario: F4 Tornado rips through central Indiana... You and your family survive in the basement of your home. Your neighborhood, and surrounding areas are devastated. Med Check Clinics are non existent. Walgreens and CVS = Nope... What do you do? What CAN you do?

In this scenario, emergency services will generally kick in very quickly to rescue and treat people. The skills you need are those that can keep people alive until first responders get to you. I'm guessing stuff like bleeding, broken bones (especially femur), potential brain/spinal injuries, shock, hypothermia, etc. This sort of stuff you can learn from Red Cross First Aid/CPR/AED and from SOLO Wilderness First Aid/First Responder courses.

I guess I don't know how essential oils can help, especially with things that require a mechanical solution such as traction and splinting.

 

[ghostdncr]

In addition to essential oils, you guys may enjoy this light reading: Military Medicine

Most of this is focused on keeping your patient(s) alive until they can be evac'd and has been proven in the field countless times.

 

[shibumiseeker]

In this scenario, emergency services will generally kick in very quickly to rescue and treat people. The skills you need are those that can keep people alive until first responders get to you. I'm guessing stuff like bleeding, broken bones (especially femur), potential brain/spinal injuries, shock, hypothermia, etc. This sort of stuff you can learn from Red Cross First Aid/CPR/AED and from SOLO Wilderness First Aid/First Responder courses.

I guess I don't know how essential oils can help, especially with things that require a mechanical solution such as traction and splinting.

I have a suspicion the OP is selling essential oils 8-)

What you write above is 100% correct. Disaster response medicine is going to primarily be trauma related and the needs will be short lived (a few hours to a day or so at the most) for the disaster described. Whatever the OP is selling, realistic solutions to those problems is not it.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

We've got a book at home which details various "old-fashioned" remedies for various illnesses and injuries. It seems to have served us fairly well over the past several years.

 

[Hoosierkav]

You're right--oils won't fix a broken bone or stop an arterial bleed.

But, for the things better suited to Doc-in-the-box or PCPs, the right oils can provide solutions; you might be able to get rid of most of the medications in the house. But, I don't want to steal TwinSix' thunder. I knocked it until I tried it...

 

[TwinSix]

Thanks Hoosierkav... and yes you are all correct. If you have broken bones, you will not treat them with EO's. But you may be able to reduce YOUR dependance on some of the common OTC drugs and some scripts as well with EO's. My family has not used an OTC or script in over 2 years. You may just beome very popular in your group if you have stores of "natural" medicines. Basically with any type of prepping, having it and not knowing how to use it is silly. And hoping that services will up in a few days may not always be an option... that is why we prepare.

 

[bingley]

Thanks Hoosierkav... and yes you are all correct. If you have broken bones, you will not treat them with EO's. But you may be able to reduce YOUR dependance on some of the common OTC drugs and some scripts as well with EO's.

OK, so this is not an emergency thing.

 

[shibumiseeker]

OK, so this is not an emergency thing.

The tornado was the sales hype.

 

[TwinSix]

We are simply offering alternatives in an Emergency Situation. EO's can aid in blood clotting (Helichrysum), be antiviral (Oregano, Clove), Cleansing for the body (Lemon, Orange, Clove, Cinnamon), Cleansing for the air, Aid in treating grief, shock, depression (all of which will likely follow when the reality of the situation sets in). This thread is great for sharing our views and our preparations. I hope we can continue to do so without judgement. Thanks Guys.

 

[shibumiseeker]

We are simply offering alternatives in an Emergency Situation. EO's can aid in blood clotting (Helichrysum), be antiviral (Oregano, Clove), Cleansing for the body (Lemon, Orange, Clove, Cinnamon), Cleansing for the air, Aid in treating grief, shock, depression (all of which will likely follow when the reality of the situation sets in). This thread is great for sharing our views and our preparations. I hope we can continue to do so without judgement. Thanks Guys.

Ok, I will rescind my judgement if you can honestly answer no to this: are you selling these products, acting on behalf of someone else who is selling these products, or otherwise profiting from the class?

Further, what qualifications do you hold to teach the class? I am not disputing the validity of some alternative medicines, a very close friend of mine is probably one of the leading authorities in the US on ethnobotany and I read her dissertation when she got the degree, had no issue with the science involved, and I hold her opinion these matters in high regard. But there's also a lot of snake oil salesmen out there who don't have a freakin clue what they are talking about, and unfortunately those types outnumber real experts in the subject. Convince me you aren't one of the former.

I probably wouldn't have even commented in the first place if you hadn't presented your scenario as such because I feel it does a disservice to proper planning for those types of emergencies.

 

[shibumiseeker]

Twinsix, in response to your rep comment about my not being helpful:

I am trying to be helpful here because disaster preparedness, response, and emergency medicine has been a lifelong passion of mine to the point that I have devoted much of my life to it. People who use hype to sell others on preparations that either give them a false sense of security, or that outright don't work are antithetical to my mission.

Please note: I am not discussing the effectiveness of various types of alternative medicines, many have their place in the mix of ways we can take care of ourselves. But I have a special dislike for people who sell them as the answers to every woe, and your initial post was nothing but hype. If you had simply stated that you were teaching a class on the uses of essential oils I wouldn't have commented. But you hyped it as an appropriate response to a major tornado, and quite frankly they are not, and if it takes away from people having more appropriate responses to that type of natural disaster then you are working against me and I will comment, which *I* do think is helpful. So feel free to give me more negative rep if you like, but I'd like an answer to my question in my previous post.

 

[Joe G]

I am trying to be helpful here because disaster preparedness, response, and emergency medicine has been a lifelong passion of mine to the point that I have devoted much of my life to it. People who use hype to sell others on preparations that either give them a false sense of security, or that outright don't work are antithetical to my mission.

Please note: I am not discussing the effectiveness of various types of alternative medicines, many have their place in the mix of ways we can take care of ourselves. But I have a special dislike for people who sell them as the answers to every woe, and your initial post was nothing but hype. If you had simply stated that you were teaching a class on the uses of essential oils I wouldn't have commented. But you hyped it as an appropriate response to a major tornado, and quite frankly they are not, and if it takes away from people having more appropriate responses to that type of natural disaster then you are working against me and I will comment, which *I* do think is helpful. So feel free to give me more negative rep if you like, but I'd like an answer to my question in my previous post.

I enjoy reading/researching about alternative medicines etc., but really didn't like the OP about how the sky is falling and whatever the OP is selling will save you. Up front and honest always better in my book.

 

[Hoosierkav]

I think the point was that after a devastating event, the usual primary care places will be lacking/nonexistant. The OP wasn't suggesting that essential oils would be your go-to aid for your split skull, but that for the things that would cause you to seek urgent/routine care, oils might be a solution. To me, there is a huge span of need between first aid and an ER, and anything that makes a broader toolbox might be a good thing. We as Westerners have gotten accustomed to popping a pill (sometimes for years and years and years) for the solution to what ails us and we forget that natural solutions have been used for centuries (albeit sometimes peddled by charlatans, though I think their solutions were mostly un-natural), even if no one has done a randomized clinical trial to prove their effectiveness (though there are plenty of studies on Pub Med that do).

Could the thread have been started better? Perhaps. But, without a healthy dose of "What will you do if", it is sometimes hard for people to think outside the box at the reality/potential of a situation.

 

[PistolBob]

Ella's just opened... December or January...

They were at Fairview and 135 for about three years...did they move or just open another store?

 

[Hoosierkav]

Another store.