Mercromina, cotton, bandages or serum… everything that the home medicine cabinet should have (and not)

If practically all homes have one thing in common, it is that they have a small first aid kit.. Sometimes it is a box, sometimes a small bag and in other homes it is simply a drawer where band-aids, adhesive tape and pills are kept for when something hurts.

A space in the house that we don't pay too much attention to until we burn ourselves out making food, the knife slips away, or our little toe hits the edge of the bed.

What are the essential products in the medicine cabinet?

There are a number of items that should be in absolutely every medicine cabinet:

-Protective material. Everything you need to be able to heal small wounds: saline solution to clean the area, gauze pads and an antiseptic such as povidone or chlorhexidine to prevent infection. An ointment for small burns would also be interesting.

-Material for bandages. We are not going to make large bandages, but enough to protect that wound. We will need tape, adhesive bandages such as plasters, scissors and some elastic bandage that, when the time comes, we might need to cover and put pressure on a larger wound while we arrive at an emergency center.

-Thermometer. Essential to know if we have a fever or not.

-Anti-inflammatory cream. Small injuries are the daily occurrence of accidents at home, but fortunately most are resolved with rest and an anti-inflammatory cream.

-Instant cold pack for small blows.

-Analgesics and antipyretics. The classics are paracetamol and ibuprofen, two medications that should not be missing to use on a timely basis.

optional drugs

Depending on the pathologies of each person in the home, there are a series of medications that we should add to that medicine cabinet.

In case of diagnosed severe allergies, pre-filled adrenaline pens can save our lives when the time comes.

And in the case of people with epilepsy we also have special medication for seizures that do not subside after a few minutes.

If someone with insulin-treated diabetes lives at home, our doctor will have also alerted us that we must have a medication on hand that could raise glucose levels if something goes wrong.

The ones we should eliminate from the medicine cabinet

There are medicine cabinets that were set up when we nurses boiled the needles, and the problem is that they are still intact. It can be used for some things, but what is clear is that we should never use it to heal wounds.. The fibers are easily released, they end up stuck to the bed of the wound and that will only hinder its healing.

-Mercromin. It was a widely used antiseptic in the 80s, but over the years it has been shown that its potency is low and that it is inactivated if there is blood. Today we have much more effective antiseptics.

-Hydrogen peroxide. It is true that when it comes into contact with a wound it kills all the bacteria it finds.. but it also destroys healthy cells and that makes healing difficult. Therefore it is not the best antiseptic that we can use at home.

-Usual medications. The medicine cabinet is not the place to store the medicines that people who live at home take daily.

What if I go on a trip?

In this case, we must adapt the first-aid kit depending on the destination of the trip.. Elements such as oral rehydration salts will be useful in cases of diarrhea. We should also include an antihistamine cream to relieve insect bites and if we are going to take long walks, a barrier cream with zinc oxide for skin rashes can be useful.

Where do I keep the first aid kit?

In an accessible place and known to all the people living at home. It should be in a cool, dry place, out of direct light and where there are no large variations in temperature and humidity, so the kitchen and bathroom are not the best places to store it.. Ideally, it should be in an airtight box and easy to carry from one place to another.

Be careful with the expiration dates

Expiration is something that we tend to associate exclusively with medicines, but the rest of the products in the medicine cabinet also have an expiration date, and applying an antiseptic to a wound that has exceeded its useful life date is as inadvisable as taking a pill that also have overcome it.