If you play a field sport like football or soccer you definitely know about turf burns. This painful phenomenon is generated by friction and heat. When your skin rubs aggressively against the turf, the friction and heat causes layers of your skin to peel off. The resulting wound is oftentimes referred to as a raspberry. If this is happened to you and you’d like to speed up your healing and treat the wounds properly, you should continue reading.
Pressure
First thing that you want to do is press on the wound to halt any bleeding that is occurring. Blood should only continue to pour from the wound for a couple minutes, but clear liquid may continue to exit your skin for a while after.
Topical Treatment
Your next move is to break out the salt so you can clean the wound with a salt solution. The purpose of this is to clean out any leftover gunk or dirt, or potentially even turf. It’s recommended that you add about 1/4 teaspoon of any type of salt to some clean drinking water. Grab some moth balls, dump them in the salt water, and rub the wound clean. Many commonly used items such as hydrogen peroxide or alcohol solutions may actually make the situation worse, so you should just avoid those.
Ointements
If you don’t already have some, run to the store and purchase some hydrogel. Gob on as much as you feel is necessary. The hydrogel will give you a wet dressing when you are done. Wet dressings have been shown to speed up healing time, kill germs, and even reduce the amount of pain that you’re feeling.
Dressing
From there, you’re going to want to seal off the abrasion from any further damage or germ invasion. In order to do this, you should use an occlusive dressing. If you do not have one on hand, you can find one at most grocery stores and pharmacies. Pick one that seals the area. Again, we’re just trying to keep the area moist while it heals.
Changing Frequency
In order to keep the area in an optimum environment for healing, you will need to change the dressing and reapply all of the topical products previously mentioned. Its best to exchange the occlusion bandage every 1 to 2 days. Depending on the severity of the actual wound, it could take a few days, to 2 weeks, for the entire thing to heal back to normal.