Calendula ointment, it really helps speed up wound healing.

[William Gaatjes]

Last week 2 guys tried to rob me and fortunately for me they did not succeed. I ran at them and after them to chase them off but i fell unfortunately. At full speed i hit the pavement and slided a meter or 2 forward over stone tiles with a very rough texture.
As a result i had a lot of abrasions on my legs, hands and face. From a colleague at work i got the advise to get some calendula ointment. So i got some from the brand VSM.

The ingredients are :

Petrolatum, aqua, lanolin, paraffinum liquidum, alcohol, Calendula officinalis extract, lanolin alcohol, polyglyceryl-2 dipolyhydroxystearate, cetearyl alcohol

The abrasions in my face were closed within 2 days. One abrasion was on my chin and every time i would open my mouth to eat, the crust on the abrasion would rupture and the bleeding would start again. So, i applied the Calendula ointment and the wound closed within 2 days. Take notice, it is not completely healed yet, the wound itself is not my normal skin color yet and a bit pink but it is closed and 2 deep cuts i had are gone too. The abrasions and cuts on my hands also closed in a two day period after applying the Calendula ointment. I applied the ointment on the crust and it become moist and it came loose from my skin. An almost closed wound was visible and i applied the ointment every 4 hours. My wounds are closing rapidly.

I never seen my wounds (cuts and abrasions) heal this fast. How does it do it ? Well, some people claim that it speeds up cell division and that is just plain nonsense.What it does in my opinion, is to keep the wound sterile and moist. Creating an ideal environment for your cells to divide and migrate.
As it turns out, crusts (scabs, eschars), slow down cell migration under the crust because it being a dried up environment. What this ointment does, is keep the wound moist and sterile while acting as an artificial crust.
I did some digging about wound healing and here is what i found :

http://www.quora.com/Does-removing-the-scabs-off-a-healing-wound-speed-the-healing-process

It seems plausible to me.
Open, dry wounds heal slower than occluded moist wounds. The migration of cells beneath a dry crust is slower than that over an occluded moist wound.

How? The fibrocytes in a wound are trying to lay down collagen and heal the wound by drawing it together and forming the tissue that turns into skin and healed scar. You want to encourage them to divide and grow. They can't do this if they dry out. It happens well only if they are moist but not too moist. They are like amoebas-- you want (and THEY want) existence of a gooey wound soup where they can crawl around and place themselves, but not so moist that the fluid becomes a seroma that is easily turned into pus. You don't want large collections of fluid far away from capillaries, as that provides a place for bacteria to grow, but too far from the white cells that kill them.

So, you ideally need a thin layer of tissue moisture in a wound, but no more. And you need oxygen, because some of these cells need it, but don't have enough if you cover them. And you want to kill anaerobic bacteria to make sure you don't get gangrene.

The plant extract used, is from Calendula officinalis. As far as i know it is a kind of grandmothers recipe but it actually seems to work.
I have been reading about it and it does seem to have interesting properties that may aid in wound healing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendula_officinalis
Also, the alcohol in the ointment will also help disinfecting the wound.
If you got some abrasions or cuts on your body, try calendula ointment. It may help.

 

[EliteRetard]

I can confirm, keeping the wound moist and sanitary are indeed the factors that improve healing time. None of these products boost your growth rate.

Besides using a cream, there are actually specialized bandages that provide this moist sanitary environment. Hospitals have been using these hydrocolloid bandages for a very long time, and you can actually buy them yourself. These bandages are better than a cream when/where you can use them, but in some cases (like on your face) you may not be able to. These bandages work best applied to a clean fresh wound before they scab/crust over.