Re: What happened to your lips during the leave it alone method?

Hi there fcuk,

The fact that healthy lip skin is scientifically documented as healing within weeks not months, even with very severe wounds, means everything. It is not my opinion, or some kind of anecdote based on the experience of people I know, it is medically documented phenomenon. The scar your brother had from the initial wound is not in any way equivalent to a chronic wound and it is entirely different from EC. That woman with a dog bite was just one study to back up my claim that severe wounds to the mouth heal within weeks. I can cite numerous studies which show this.

See for, example, this study "Oral electrical burns in children-early treatment and appliance fabrication" which states
"The process of wound healing usually is completed
four to six weeks after the electrical burn. "

http://www.aapd.org/assets/1/25/LeCompte-04-04.pdf


Electrical burns to the mouth are third degree, necroticising wounds which effect the underlying muscle and tissues . It effects all layers of skin, not just the upper layers of skin. The injury documented in the research paper happened to a small child, who I doubt was being particularly careful with his severe mouth wound while it was healing. In fact, I bet he was drooling and moving his mouth around throughout the entire healing process. Yet, it healed within six weeks.

The worse case of EC I have seen is equivalent to a second degree (superficial partial thickness skin) injury at worse. Thus if the skin was healthy, it should heal without picking in two to three weeks max.

So what fcuk is proposing, is that EC is some kind of chronic wound (I understand chronic wound here to mean an injury to the skin that happened at one point in time, likely far in the past, that somehow stubbornly refuses to heal)?

Chronic wounds do not happen to healthy skin. Usually, chronic wounds are a result of very deep skin injury like venous leg ulcer, although it can happen to more superficial wounds but far less frequently. Even then, superficial chronic wounds last for a comparatively short length of time. EC can last for thirty years.

The reason for chronic wound in those of relatively good health is either some kind of skin infection (viral, bacterial, fungal), repeated trauma to the area or lack of blood supply (the latter can result in skin necrosis, so I highly doubt this is it).

So what are the possibilities in relation to EC?

Either someone with EC is repeatedly traumatising the EC area (however, note that I said in my previous post if you are not traumatising the EC AT ALL and the EC persists during the leave alone method, then self-injury is not the cause. If you are repeatedly traumatising the area on the leave alone method, then self-injury very well may be the cause in your case but you are not properly doing the leave alone method).

So, in terms of the chronic wound hypothesis, that leaves the possibility that someone with EC caught an infection after skin picking and that lead to it's chronic nature.


Scientifically, it is very doubtful that anyone in good health who suffered from a superficial skin wound that subsequently was complicated by secondary infection (bacterial or fungal or even viral) would take years, let alone 30 years to heal. Even MRSA infection can heal in 10 days. So I think the probability that someone has EC as a result of infection for 30 years is close to 0
and no Dr is going to take this seriously as aetiology, with good reason.

The key point here is if EC is indeed a chronic wound due to infection (which in itself is highly doubtful) then something, beyond skin picking is the cause of the EC.

Did your EC seem to heal a bit at any point and then get worse again?
How can it then be a chronic wound (from an injury, far in the past)?


What I propose , although, this is just my hypothesis, is that EC is a form of chronic irritation or, if we want to put it another way *re-wounding*, of the lip skin due to chronic dehydration of the labial mucosa (the inner lips). The lack of integrity of the skin may also result in some form of chronic infection (note the infection is present because the skin is continuously injured due to dehydration of tissues - caused by hyposalivation - so the infection is not the root cause of the EC, as is the case with "chronic wounds" hypothesis outlined above).


So actually fcuk's statement "Daniel said he only [applied aquaphor] all the time to his inner border part of the lip for it to heal cause it gets iritated " corresponds exactly to what I am saying.

However, saliva gel like biotene is much better than aquaphor for the inner lip area (the mucosa) because it is a mucous membrane and the saliva gel is specifically formulated to be used on mucous membranes, whereas the aquaphor isn't. As I said, think of this as constant moisture method for the inner lips.

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