> Given the substantial supply of donated human skin, tilapia skin is unlikely to arrive at American hospitals anytime soon.
I'm surprised that there's no shortage of donated skin in the USA. We're always hearing about the critical shortage of organs and appeals for blood. I wonder what makes skin different?
Speculation: skin grafts can be grown basically endlessly from a donated foreskin. Circumcision is more common in the US than in Brazil. As for other organ shortages, well, if a single foreskin can produce even ~100 square meters of skin grafts, you don't need very many of them to meet a country's skin needs. And ~100 m^2 of grafts per foreskin appears to be quite the lowball: http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1999/02/17...
I'd guess also cosmetic surgery in the US produces quite a bit of human skin, although that's not expandable into skin grafts like the foreskin technique you link to.
This is a complete guess. I'd imagine, though, that it's significantly harder to abuse or destroy than other organs. Internal organs can be bad candidates for transplant due to a variety of dietary, lifestyle, or health factors. Skin seems subject to fewer of those.
This is so cool! I learned about tilapia when looking into closed-loop hydroponics; apparently they are good at growing in tanks, growing fast, and fertilising the water.
(if you look it up in youtube though you will get tilapia harvesting videos, which are not the nicest)
It's not really closed-loop though, is it? You still need to buy food to feed the fish (and maybe fish food, which will end up in your vegetables, can be contaminated, e.g. with heavy metals?)
I'm using banana skins to treat wounds, its great, makes the wounds heal much better and they also offer that good protection!! I don't know the science behind it, I heard a lot of women talking about using it on the breast when breast feeding to feel better so I started to experiment with myself and I'm very happy with it too.
My mom would give me these white sugar pills when I was a kid and when I woke up saying I was sick (I had a phase where I did that often to avoid school). They'd just happen to treat my condition specifically and always made me feel better!
This is why I grew up to learn to only trust medical studies over anecdote. Even then it's good to be skeptical. Placebo can be incredibly powerful.
Sounds like it works and achieved the intended effect. This is why I grew past my "I only believe what the scientists tell me to" phase and decided to selectively trust medical studies, since it's my life and my anecdote, and I'll decide what does or does not work in my anecdote.
Only the banana peel is not that placebo since it offers really good protection even though if it don't have any healing property. The last time I used banana peel was when I accidentally got two toes's nails removed at once! I went to the hospital and they just made a bandage but when I got home and replaced them with banana peels, something like if my nails were the banana peels, the inside part of the peel touching my skin (or meat?) and i felt so much better than the hospital's bandage that I could even wear shoes, it was 5 months ago. I tried to search for some science I found only this: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-86502013000100006&... but they tested unriped and I just use the inside part of the peel of a ripe banana, I didn't find anything so specific yet, I need to dig deeper.
It wasn't my intention to be sarcastic, english is my second language so maybe it was that, but anyway my main source is that its a tradicional and indigenous use of banana peel (thanks for pointing out its not skin. I never tried to search for the science behind it, I found this:
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-86502013000100006&...
Someone please correct me if I misunderstood, but once on Regeneratively Speaking podcast one of the researchers explained the reason why burn scars appear is that body is over-producing stem cells (same with many cancers) to fight the inflammation and they've found which compounds can actually slow it down. Was hoping this is something from the same area, but seems like a different step.
I saw this news when it first broke in Brazil, and the one thing that I still haven't fully understood is just what benefit the Tilapia skin is actually offering.
When I read up on it, it seems that it goes through several different aggressive sterilization and processing stages before they are given to the patient. With all this processing, isn't the tilapia skin at that point just a gimmick?
From the article, it appears they're after the high levels of collagen (for repair), the tensile properties (for holding the wound together) and the physical barrier (for protection). I'm guessing those are unaffected by their sterilization techniques as they are using radiation.
The biggest benefit I see that it offers is that it doesn't need to be changed daily and can stay on for the course of the treatment. That's a huge benefit saving patients a lot of pain.
Another thing is that when the bandages are replaced, it tears off bits of new skin that have started to grow.
I know a girl that had 3rd degree burns on ~85-90% of her body. The doctors said she'd die, but her family brought in some people that applied sterile honey and a certain type of leaf over her entire body, which was far more gentle than the bandages. It was one of the fastest recoveries doctors had seen.
The constant care and timely honey and leaf replacement probably played a large part to the speedy recovery, but there's a point to be made that the standard methods for treating burns seem almost backwards as it doesn't promote skin growth as much as protection from infection.
I'm not a doctor though, so maybe someone else has more input on this.
Sterilization just means "the process of making something free from bacteria or other living microorganisms", the only "processing" besides that is adding glycerol which is a lubricant/moisturizer, perhaps also helps to "glue" it all up. At the end it is still raw fish skin being implanted over healing wounds, it just needs to be clean as heck because healing wounds are very pron to acute infections (and the worst of them require the amputation of the limb).
I have seen the use of boiled tea water used as antiseptic for burn victims in rural India. The results were great for the one patient I saw getting treated. Necessity is truly the mother of invention.
Honey also works pretty well if applied immediately on the skin and if the burns are not that serious to begin with. My ex-wife managed to pour burning edible oil on her hand while she was cooking some fries, but no scar remained because we applied honey on the affected skin almost immediately.
Burns need to be kept cool and moist. Applying anything thick and cool (within reason - lotions for example) to the burn will help. Cool the burn under cold running water if possible ('take the heat out'), then put something on it to keep it moist. Anything serious requires a trip to the ER of course.
Even if you forget to put sunscreen on and get sunburned, putting sunscreen on afterwards can help keep the skin moist and improve the outcome.
Brewed black tea (very strong, cold, the stuff you dilute with water to get black tea you drink) was used where I grew up in Russia on eyes after mild trauma. I'm not sure if there are any formal studies on but it didn't hurt.
Hah, funny, I did a double take when I read the article, but couldn't see the typo (my brain just knew something was "weird" about the word.) Thanks for solving that mystery. (For reference, I lived in Brazil for several years.)
Good catch, the article typoed it. I hadn't noticed at all, and that city's name is very familiar to me. By the way of curiosity, the name means "fortress".
Just because you're not familiar with a treatment doesn't make it second-rate. Would you be surprised to learn that US hospitals use maggots and leeches in FDA approved treatments? [1] It sounds like this therapy may have come out of difficult conditions though it appears to be quite effective -- the point of the article.
Back in pre-scientific days one had very little choice when it came to medical advice: it was either a lobotomy, a healthy dose of poisonous compounds, or bloodletting. Naturally, having a bit of one's blood sucked out was far less dangerous in comparison, hence higher survival rates.
"Hirudotherapy" has not been scientifically proven to be effective, and no appeals to ancient wisdom will change that.
What does (lack of) wealth have to do with the effectiveness of the treatment? The article mentions that in the US there's enough donated human skin for grafts; that appears not to be the case in Brazil. Until that changes, this appears to be a better solution, and who knows - maybe it turns out to be better in general too (e.g., the article also mentions the prepared grafts can be kept in storage for up to 2 years).
Besides what another sibling comment has already pointed out, one needs to consider the patient's wealth (that region is not poor, but has huge economic inequality issues) and the absence of research using regional resources.
Sometimes a lot of progress can be made with materials located regionally that could be even more effective than technology developed elsewhere.
> Given the substantial supply of donated human skin, tilapia skin is unlikely to arrive at American hospitals anytime soon.
I'm surprised that there's no shortage of donated skin in the USA. We're always hearing about the critical shortage of organs and appeals for blood. I wonder what makes skin different?
Speculation: skin grafts can be grown basically endlessly from a donated foreskin. Circumcision is more common in the US than in Brazil. As for other organ shortages, well, if a single foreskin can produce even ~100 square meters of skin grafts, you don't need very many of them to meet a country's skin needs. And ~100 m^2 of grafts per foreskin appears to be quite the lowball: http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1999/02/17...
I'd guess also cosmetic surgery in the US produces quite a bit of human skin, although that's not expandable into skin grafts like the foreskin technique you link to.
You can donate your skin that is being removed after heavy weight loss: http://www.livestrong.com/article/126643-donate-skin-after-b...
I can imaging that this is a big source of donated skin.
This is a complete guess. I'd imagine, though, that it's significantly harder to abuse or destroy than other organs. Internal organs can be bad candidates for transplant due to a variety of dietary, lifestyle, or health factors. Skin seems subject to fewer of those.
This is so cool! I learned about tilapia when looking into closed-loop hydroponics; apparently they are good at growing in tanks, growing fast, and fertilising the water.
(if you look it up in youtube though you will get tilapia harvesting videos, which are not the nicest)
> closed-loop hydroponics
Aquaponics?
I guess; I didn't realise there was a difference in the terms.
1 reply →
It's not really closed-loop though, is it? You still need to buy food to feed the fish (and maybe fish food, which will end up in your vegetables, can be contaminated, e.g. with heavy metals?)
Or am I missing something?
Those closed systems involve growing algae which is used to feed the fish.
> closed-loop hydroponics
Aquaponics
I'm using banana skins to treat wounds, its great, makes the wounds heal much better and they also offer that good protection!! I don't know the science behind it, I heard a lot of women talking about using it on the breast when breast feeding to feel better so I started to experiment with myself and I'm very happy with it too.
My mom would give me these white sugar pills when I was a kid and when I woke up saying I was sick (I had a phase where I did that often to avoid school). They'd just happen to treat my condition specifically and always made me feel better!
This is why I grew up to learn to only trust medical studies over anecdote. Even then it's good to be skeptical. Placebo can be incredibly powerful.
Any sources?
Placebo can be incredibly powerful.
Sounds like it works and achieved the intended effect. This is why I grew past my "I only believe what the scientists tell me to" phase and decided to selectively trust medical studies, since it's my life and my anecdote, and I'll decide what does or does not work in my anecdote.
1 reply →
Doesn't surprise me that sugar makes a kid feel better - they love the stuff.
Google "plantains wound healing site:nih.gov"
Only the banana peel is not that placebo since it offers really good protection even though if it don't have any healing property. The last time I used banana peel was when I accidentally got two toes's nails removed at once! I went to the hospital and they just made a bandage but when I got home and replaced them with banana peels, something like if my nails were the banana peels, the inside part of the peel touching my skin (or meat?) and i felt so much better than the hospital's bandage that I could even wear shoes, it was 5 months ago. I tried to search for some science I found only this: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-86502013000100006&... but they tested unriped and I just use the inside part of the peel of a ripe banana, I didn't find anything so specific yet, I need to dig deeper.
7 replies →
Does this work on burn wounds only? Or also on open wounds?
[deleted: sorry my bad, I thought it was a sarcastic comment]
It wasn't my intention to be sarcastic, english is my second language so maybe it was that, but anyway my main source is that its a tradicional and indigenous use of banana peel (thanks for pointing out its not skin. I never tried to search for the science behind it, I found this: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-86502013000100006&...
3 replies →
Someone please correct me if I misunderstood, but once on Regeneratively Speaking podcast one of the researchers explained the reason why burn scars appear is that body is over-producing stem cells (same with many cancers) to fight the inflammation and they've found which compounds can actually slow it down. Was hoping this is something from the same area, but seems like a different step.
I saw this news when it first broke in Brazil, and the one thing that I still haven't fully understood is just what benefit the Tilapia skin is actually offering.
When I read up on it, it seems that it goes through several different aggressive sterilization and processing stages before they are given to the patient. With all this processing, isn't the tilapia skin at that point just a gimmick?
From the article, it appears they're after the high levels of collagen (for repair), the tensile properties (for holding the wound together) and the physical barrier (for protection). I'm guessing those are unaffected by their sterilization techniques as they are using radiation.
The biggest benefit I see that it offers is that it doesn't need to be changed daily and can stay on for the course of the treatment. That's a huge benefit saving patients a lot of pain.
Another thing is that when the bandages are replaced, it tears off bits of new skin that have started to grow.
I know a girl that had 3rd degree burns on ~85-90% of her body. The doctors said she'd die, but her family brought in some people that applied sterile honey and a certain type of leaf over her entire body, which was far more gentle than the bandages. It was one of the fastest recoveries doctors had seen.
The constant care and timely honey and leaf replacement probably played a large part to the speedy recovery, but there's a point to be made that the standard methods for treating burns seem almost backwards as it doesn't promote skin growth as much as protection from infection.
I'm not a doctor though, so maybe someone else has more input on this.
Sterilization just means "the process of making something free from bacteria or other living microorganisms", the only "processing" besides that is adding glycerol which is a lubricant/moisturizer, perhaps also helps to "glue" it all up. At the end it is still raw fish skin being implanted over healing wounds, it just needs to be clean as heck because healing wounds are very pron to acute infections (and the worst of them require the amputation of the limb).
I have seen the use of boiled tea water used as antiseptic for burn victims in rural India. The results were great for the one patient I saw getting treated. Necessity is truly the mother of invention.
Honey also works pretty well if applied immediately on the skin and if the burns are not that serious to begin with. My ex-wife managed to pour burning edible oil on her hand while she was cooking some fries, but no scar remained because we applied honey on the affected skin almost immediately.
Burns need to be kept cool and moist. Applying anything thick and cool (within reason - lotions for example) to the burn will help. Cool the burn under cold running water if possible ('take the heat out'), then put something on it to keep it moist. Anything serious requires a trip to the ER of course.
Even if you forget to put sunscreen on and get sunburned, putting sunscreen on afterwards can help keep the skin moist and improve the outcome.
4 replies →
Honey should extract water from the area. Is sugar. Could avoid blisters formation?
Having had oil burns heal without honey I'd want to see some peer-reviewed studies on its efficacy as a burn treatment first.
6 replies →
Brewed black tea (very strong, cold, the stuff you dilute with water to get black tea you drink) was used where I grew up in Russia on eyes after mild trauma. I'm not sure if there are any formal studies on but it didn't hurt.
The Shadow over Innsmouth?
*Fortaleza
Hah, funny, I did a double take when I read the article, but couldn't see the typo (my brain just knew something was "weird" about the word.) Thanks for solving that mystery. (For reference, I lived in Brazil for several years.)
Good catch, the article typoed it. I hadn't noticed at all, and that city's name is very familiar to me. By the way of curiosity, the name means "fortress".
Damn, are they this poor?
Please stop posting like this here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Just because you're not familiar with a treatment doesn't make it second-rate. Would you be surprised to learn that US hospitals use maggots and leeches in FDA approved treatments? [1] It sounds like this therapy may have come out of difficult conditions though it appears to be quite effective -- the point of the article.
[1] http://bottomlineinc.com/health/medications/what-are-leeches...
Pardon my French, but I smell bullshit here.
Back in pre-scientific days one had very little choice when it came to medical advice: it was either a lobotomy, a healthy dose of poisonous compounds, or bloodletting. Naturally, having a bit of one's blood sucked out was far less dangerous in comparison, hence higher survival rates.
"Hirudotherapy" has not been scientifically proven to be effective, and no appeals to ancient wisdom will change that.
8 replies →
What does (lack of) wealth have to do with the effectiveness of the treatment? The article mentions that in the US there's enough donated human skin for grafts; that appears not to be the case in Brazil. Until that changes, this appears to be a better solution, and who knows - maybe it turns out to be better in general too (e.g., the article also mentions the prepared grafts can be kept in storage for up to 2 years).
Besides what another sibling comment has already pointed out, one needs to consider the patient's wealth (that region is not poor, but has huge economic inequality issues) and the absence of research using regional resources.
Sometimes a lot of progress can be made with materials located regionally that could be even more effective than technology developed elsewhere.