I burned my tongue. It was some tea, it was way too hot, I should have been more patient, but it burned my tongue. And over the course of the three or four days that it took for my tongue to heal, I got thinking, what actually is happening inside our bodies when we are burned? I'm Mimi Fotz, and that's what we're talking about today on Hello from the Van. In its simplest definition, a burn is damage to your skin. That's the simplest definition. I was hoping for something more complicated, but everything I looked up just said the same thing. Damage to your skin. And the reason that the definition of a burn is so simple is that burns can be rather complex. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but let me explain. There are many different types of burns. When we think of burns, we normally think of the one like I had on my tongue, you know, a thermal burn, something caused by heat. But there's also electrical burns caused by electricity, friction burns caused by rubbing things together. Have you ever slid down stairs that are carpeted and gotten what looks like a heat burn on your legs? We always used to call them rug burns. That's an actual burn. There's radiation burns. There's so many different kinds of burns. It's not just heat. The other very interesting thing, there are different degrees of burn. We call them first degree, second, and third degree burns. And this is the part of the podcast where I would normally jump into here's what first, second, and third degree burns are. But before we get to that, we have to talk about the skin. Yep, we need to talk about the skin on your body. Your skin is the largest organ of your body's systems. You probably think of your heart is an organ or your lungs or your liver are organs. But guess what? Your skin is. It is your largest organ. It makes up about 16% of your body weight. That's no small feat. That means if you weigh 100 pounds, your skin is about 16 pounds of weight. Your skin is how your body is protected from the world. It's how your body interacts and touches and feels and senses. And this interaction with the world is dependent on nerve endings. For every one inch of your skin, you have over 1,000 nerve endings. Your nerves are what help you interact with the world. And finally, your skin is composed of three different layers. The epidermis, that's what you can see, the dermis, which is right underneath the epidermis, and then the hypodermis. So basically top, middle, and bottom. Epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis. Remember those because we're gonna need them when we talk about burns. Speaking of burns, let's get into that, shall we? Like I said before, there are three degrees of burn. The first is the exact type of burn that I had on my tongue. It's called a first degree or a superficial burn. And you guessed it, it only affects the epidermis. There are three degrees of burns. There are three levels of your skin. See the correlation? This first degree of burn, it doesn't leave any permanent damage. It's not going to scar you for life. These, again, are very, very superficial. They don't take long to heal, and they don't normally require any sort of medical attention aside from some cool water and a band-aid. The second degree burn is called a partial thickness burn, and these burns blister. This is the big difference between a first degree burn and a second degree burn. This burn goes through your epidermis and gets to the second layer of skin. It gets to that dermis portion. These burns normally require some sort of medical attention if they're larger than about two inches in size. These burns can be especially dangerous if they're on your face or joints or places that have a lot of friction. The last degree of burn is called a third degree burn or a full thickness burn. These burns require medical attention. It does not matter if it's only a very small area of your body. If it's a third degree burn, you need to be seen by a doctor. We're not messing around with this. A third degree burn is a deep, deep burn. It goes completely through the top two layers of skin and can even damage bones, muscles, and tendons. The interesting thing about third degree burns is that they appear different than a first or a second degree burn because the skin can actually look white or black when it's burned and it's a third-degree burn. It just depends on what caused the burn. According to Stanford Health, when the burn, no matter what degree, first, second, third, covers at least 10% of the body of a child or 15% of an adult, it requires hospitalization. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I'm a big motorcycle girl. I love riding my motorcycle. Part of riding a motorcycle is protecting your skin and protecting your body. One August, while riding through the Black Hills of South Dakota, I came upon some people who had dropped their bike. The rider had gone one direction with the bike, and his passenger had gone the other direction. As his passenger tried to stand up, she burned her leg on the exhaust pipes. She wasn't wearing full gear, she was wearing shorts. Because she didn't have anything protecting her skin, she got a very severe burn from these Harley Davidson pipes all over her leg as she fell against the bike when she tried to stand up. There was a little bit of a panic throughout the group, trying to figure out how to handle this burn. Luckily, my husband keeps a first aid kit on his motorcycle in his saddlebags, so we were able to give just a little bit of assistance. I'm not saying that you're going to, you know, dress in shorts and lean against a motorcycle pipe, but burns like this can happen. So if you find yourself burned, what's the best course of action? What is the first aid for burns? According to the Mayo Clinic, the first thing you need to do is assess the situation. Does it look like a major burn or a minor burn? In the case of our friend who fell off the bike and burned her leg, it was definitely a major burn. In cases such as that, the first thing you want to do is keep the person safe. Make sure that they're breathing. Designate a person to call 911. Here's the thing about burns: they can swell really quickly. So, for example, if the burn is on your hand, if you can't, gently take off jewelry or bracelets or anything that might be stuck once the swelling starts. Be careful, don't pull off any clothing that is stuck to the burn skin. Let the professionals take care of that. If it's a deep burn, cover the burn with a clean sterile gauze or a clean dry cloth if you can. If you can't, that's all right. Just remember, call for help. The next thing you're going to do is raise the burned area. If possible, keep it above heart level. I don't know if you've ever burned your finger. When you put it below your heart, you can kind of feel the blood pooling in the place that's below the heart that's burned. It's very painful. So if you can, raise the burned area above the heart. The next thing you're gonna want to do while you wait for medical assistance is watch for shock. Symptoms of shock in a patient include things like cool pale skin, a weak pulse, or very rapid, shallow breathing. So if someone burns themselves and then they start breathing like this, that can be a sign of shock. So try and calm them down. So that's what we do for a major burn. But what about a minor burn? Let's say you just got too close to the kettle when you were making your tea, a little bit like I did. The first thing you're gonna want to do with a minor burn is cool it, but not freeze it. Cool the burn. Run cool, not cold. You don't want icy cold water. You want cool water over the area for about 10 minutes. If the burn is on your face, you can apply a cool, wet cloth. According to the Mayo Clinic, don't be putting ice on your burns. A lot of the suggestions for first aid for minor burns are very similar to the major burns. You're going to want to remove tight items because the area will swell. You want to cover the burn if you can. Then if you still are having a really hard time, you can take a pain reliever that you can get over the counter. Think ibuprofen, advil, alive, tylenol. One thing that they did mention is that moisture helps burns heal. So after the burn has cooled and begins to heal, you can actually put aloe vera or cocoa butter on it to soothe the skin and prevent dryness. Again, this is after the burn has calmed down, not right when it's happening. And here are your big burn no-nos. What to avoid? Again, don't use cold water to cool a burn. Use cool water. Also, don't use butter, toothpaste, or oil on the burn. This actually can trap the heat and cause the injury to be worse. Don't put butter on it. Don't do that. Next, don't pull off clothing that is stuck to burned skin. Ah, don't do that. And finally, if you have a second degree burn that starts to blister, don't pop the blisters. They are there to protect you against infection. If the blister breaks, you can clean it gently with water and then put some antibiotic ointment on it. Before we go, one of the last things I want to talk about when it comes to burns is inflammation. This is actually one of the most dangerous parts about burns. It's the inflammation that happens in your body because it doesn't happen just at the burn, it happens other places in your body. Remember, your skin is your body's largest organ. It's a huge part of the way that you interact with the world. And it's not separate from other body systems. What happens to your skin affects your other organs. So if you have a bad burn, that inflammation can affect your heart. It can affect your lungs. It can affect different parts of your body. It also makes you more susceptible to infection. That's why we take burns so seriously. Severe burns and that inflammation response can also affect what's called your renal system or your kidneys. It can then go on to affect your endocrine system, as we learned last week. That's what gives your body hormones. A lot of damage can come from just a burn. And that's why we want to make sure that we are doing the things that we can to protect our skin. There's a lot more to it, but for now, I'm Mimi Fotz, and this has been the burn episode of Hello from the Van.