I doubt there’s anyone who hasn’t had a
paper-cut or a scraped knee from falling on the playground. When you
learned to shave, you most likely cut yourself half a dozen times to
perfect the technique. There are knives, scissors, and hundreds of other things in our everyday lives that can easily cause injury to the skin. But we are obviously not all walking around
with open wounds from every cut we’ve ever had and if someone was, we’d recommend they seek medical
attention.
When the skin is cut, the body will immediately try to stop the bleeding. The arterioles contract and the
blood starts to clots as soon as it comes in contact with collagen.
Then, secretion from blood platelets cause the wound to become inflamed
whether it’s actually infected or not. This is your body’s way of
preparing for battle. If any bad bacteria comes in and tries to
attack, it’ll be ready for it.
Two proteins, fibrin and fibronectin
create a plug commonly called a scab that has a criss-cross structure (think a weaved basket). It’s job is to act as nature’s
band-aid; keeping out dirt and germs while the wound heals.
Underneath the scab, the
platelets are still at work. They secret proteins and cytokines that
expedite the growth of new cells.
All of this is something that you may
have learned in biology in high school. Maybe even in science class
before that. Not that many of us remembered any of it beyond the exam. If you
did, go for you because while I understood the basic principle of wound healing, I didn’t remember any details. But, “How does a wound heal?” isn’t this week’s question.
The question, inspired by a friend of mine who was watching a scab shrink on his hand, is : “Why
does a scab shrink?” Well, the answer is fairly simply. It starts to shrink
immediately and as the wound heals, water from the
clot is being pushed out causing the scab to shrink and
eventually it will fall off. Scabs can be itchy and people are tempted to scratch and pick at them. But this will only increase your chances of infection so do you best to resist the urge. Why do scabs itch? Well the answer is that they don’t. It’s the skin healing underneath the scab that itches.
Now to finish things up, if the wound is deep enough, scabbing may not be enough and you may need to get stitches so use your best judgement and seek medical attention if needed. All wounds are subject to scarring and almost every wound does scar to some degree accept on very minor cuts. The cause of this is fairly simple. When you are wounded, fibrous tissue is generated to replace normal skin tissue that was lost. It’s this tissue that causes scars. So, in general, the worse a wound, the more fibrous tissue and the more likely it is to have a noticeable scar. There are things you can do to minimize appearance of scars. For example, using antibiotic creams on wounds before they heal can help prevent scarring (only do this on minor wounds that don’t require stitches or as instructed by your doctor). If you do develop a scar, there are a variety of creams that may help and it’s best to use these as soon as possible after the wound heals for the best results.
So, we all try and avoid being wounded. It’s just basic instinct. But if you are just remember your body knows what to do…