Home remedies · Skin, wounds & stings
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
After every hand wash and before every wet job, apply a fat-rich ointment — thickly in the evening, with cotton gloves over it for the night. For wet work, gloves with cotton underneath, and not longer than twenty minutes at a stretch. Instead of soap, a re-fatting wash lotion, and lukewarm instead of hot.
The skin barrier is a wall of cells with fat between them — ceramides, cholesterol, free fatty acids. Soap and hot water dissolve exactly that fat; that is their purpose. Without the mortar, water evaporates outward and irritants come inward: the skin tightens, cracks and inflames. A fat-rich ointment lays a layer over it and slows the evaporation; urea additionally binds water in the horny layer and makes it more supple. That is why greasing does more here than washing less does harm.
Urea burns on cracked skin — there the plain fatty ointment first, urea only once the cracks have closed. Disinfectants dry less than soap and are the gentler choice on clean hands. It does not replace treatment: hand eczema that weeps, spreads or keeps coming back in the same place has a cause — wet work, a contact substance, an allergy — and that is not found with ointment.
Weeping or purulent areas, deep cracks that bleed, spreading beyond the hands, blisters on the sides of the fingers, or an eczema that appears with a particular substance at work.
See a doctor: wounds that gape, bleed heavily or are deep, bite wounds, burns larger than your own palm or with blisters on the face and joints. Likewise redness spreading quickly, especially with fever. And any mole that changes.