My Mom's Heel has Healed

Time may heal all wounds, but zinc may help them faster.

Three years ago, my diabetic mother developed a sore on her heel. According to my father, who has been dressing the wound during those years, it was the size of a silver dollar (1.5" diameter) and all the way to the bone--about 3/4." Their doctors refused to treat it and sent them to the hospital instead. Over the years, doctors, nurses, aides and my father have been dressing it, treating it with medicinal honey, and cutting away crusty skin around it in a painful, weekly doctor's office procedure. In three years, the size of the wound went down to the size of a quarter (1") and 1/16" deep. It still required the aforementioned care.

Having had such good results with zinc healing my nose from septoplasy (I'd had nosebleeds for ten years after the surgery), I gave my mom a bottle of 100mg zinc tablets two weeks ago. She's been taking one every day. The results, according to my parents:

The wound is now the size of a nickel (.83" inches) and superficial with a hard coating on it. There's no dead skin to be trimmed. In other words, it's practically healed.

The wound healed quite a bit over the three years, though. Did the zinc tablets speed up the healing? I plotted wound volume over time. Of course, this is an approximation without exact measurements, relying on my father's memory, and with only a few data points over a long time. Nevertheless, I did it. Initial volume was about 1.35 cubic inches (my father said the wound had a slight taper on the inside, but was approximately cylinder shaped; volume two weeks ago was .05 cubic inches; and final volume was zero (with no depth, there's no volume).

Again, given the lack of data, this is iffy, but the sharp downward turn at the end of the graph indicating faster healing is encouraging.

I'd like to thank the people at Gnome, the free software desktop project. Without their Gnumeric spreadsheet software, I wouldn't have been able to create and post the graph at the top. What was Microsoft thinking when it developed Excel 2007, the Mickey Mouse version?

ETA: Last night when I visited my parents, I noticed that a three-year-old sore on my mom's ear was almost healed. (She fell asleep with a small speaker on her ear and it burned her.) I've seen this sore over the course of three years, and it didn't heal even a little bit. It's now nearly gone.

ETA, 9/10/10: My mom still has a nurse come by to tend her heel wound. (Without the nurse, she cannot have someone give her a shower, which she can't do by herself.) She told me last night that she'd stopped taking the zinc because one doctor or another told her to. "Why?" I asked. "Well, I don't know." As Michael Eades is fond of saying, Jesus wept.

Comments

Fermented bread and butter pickle recipe ft. L. Plantarum

After Dr. Davis said the other night that L. plantarum may reduce some of the effects of the herbicide glyphosate (which is everywhere), I'm re-running my recipe for fermented bread and butter pickles. Pickling cucumbers naturally have L. plantarum bacteria on them, and fermenting them with some brown sugar multiplies these bacteria. (Just don't use chlorinated water to wash them.) And if you're growing your own cucumbers, avoid spraying the fruits with Bacillus thuringiensis , or Bt (leaves and vines are OK). It's unclear what effect a big dose of Bt would have on humans. Another benefit of DIY pickles: no emulsifiers like polysorbate 80, which is a common ingredient in pickles. If you have GI problems, it could be from emulsifiers. These sweet-and-sour pickles are the tastiest I've ever made. There's just a little added sugar (some of which the bacteria will consume) and turmeric that gives the pickles their bright color. Special equipment Quar...

Collagen-filled Low Carb Burritos

Low-carb, grain-free Mexican food is hard to find, but it's easy to make your own at home. This recipe has an authentic ingredient: carne de lengua, or beef tongue. Don't be put off: beef tongue is tender, delicious, and full of collagen. Look for it directly from farmers in your area. To cook it, cut it in 1" to 1-1/2" slices and pressure cook for one hour. Enjoy the delicious broth as a bonus. Ingredients 1 slice cooked beef tongue, peeled and cut into small cubes 1 egg wrap (I use these from Egglife) 1/4 cup cooked black or pinto beans Chili pepper Oregano Garlic (powdered or minced) Cumin Guacamole (with no emulsifiers) Salsa Shredded cheddar cheese Sour cream or homemade cream cheese with no emulsifiers Put the egg wrap on a plate and put the beef and beans down the middle of it. Sprinkle with the herbs and spices. Wrap, turn over and microwave for 1-2 minutes. Spoon salsa over the burrito and sprinkle with cheese. Add guacamole and sour cream or homemade crea...

15% Off Starter Culture

Starter culture for the wonderful cream cheese I made is 15% off for the next two weeks (through June 18, 2025). The shop (BacillusBulgaricus.com) also offers rennet and starter for other cheeses, yogurt, kefir, kombucha, sour cream, fermented vegetables, and more. They ship to 118 countries across six continents. The coupon code is LORI_sekd3tkb at bacillusbulgaricus.com . Photo from Pexels .

Getting Over Palpitations

Note to new readers: please note I'm not a health care provider and have no medical training. If you have heart palpitations, I have no idea whether the following will work for you. Over the past several days, I've had a rough time with heart palpitations and feeling physically jittery. I was wondering if I was going to turn into one of those people who can't sit still. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would be a major lifestyle change. Kidding aside, something wasn't right and I really needed to get back to normal. I tried popping potassium pills like candy. I ate more. I doubled up on my iron dose. I went to yoga and even got on the treadmill at 6 AM yesterday. I tried the nuclear option of eating more carbs to stop peeing away minerals. Most of these things helped, but the problem kept coming back. A comment from Galina made me look up epinephrine, one of the drugs my surgeon used to anesthetize me Friday. First, the assistant at the surge...

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog