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Q. You’ve written about baking soda and vinegar to ease wasp stings. Until about 35 years ago I used this remedy. Then a friend suggested that I apply raw yellow onion as soon as possible. I take about a teaspoon of grated onion, put it on the sting and bandage it in place. It provides immediate relief and the swelling disappears quite soon.I always take a raw onion as part of my first aid kit on camping trips. If I don’t need it for a sting I can always use it in a stew.
A. You aren’t the only one to benefit from raw onion for stings. Another reader posted this story to our Web site: “I'm a pianist, and I react poorly to wasp stings. I get really worried and freak out when I get stung on the hand.
“Yesterday I was stung just below the thumbnail and within minutes my hand looked like a rubber glove that had been filled with air. I put it under cold water, found my Apis Mell (homeopathic for bites and stings) and also took ibuprofen.
“Then I looked online for help. At your site (www.peoplespharmacy.com) I saw people had success with onions, so I cut a slice of onion and taped it to my thumb.
“Within an hour the swelling started to go down. By dinner time, six hours later, my hand was almost completely normal. I could bend my thumb and the swelling was down.
“The onion takes time, but it WORKS. Last year when I got stung on the wrist, I didn't know about onion and my hand was almost useless for over a week.”
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Onion was also recommended for burn treatment in your 7/23/08 Palm Beach Post column. On the shop floor of the aerospace firm for which he works, my husband learned of using egg white for immediate application to a burn site. Ice for pain relief can be used over it if there is a moisture barrier between them. This treatment eliminates or reduces pain, blistering, and scarring.
My long departed father-in-law was raised in backwoods Arkansas where practically all remedies were natural. For wasp stings he chewed (just enough to moisten) a pinch of tobacco and placed it on the sting with a band aid. It too was amazingly fast acting
Onion was also recommended for burn treatment in your 7/23/08 Palm Beach Post column. On the shop floor of the aerospace firm for which he works, my husband learned of using egg white for immediate application to a burn site. Ice for pain relief can be used over it if there is a moisture barrier between them. This treatment eliminates or reduces pain, blistering, and scarring.
Putting a slice of onion on a sting has always been the treatment of choice for me since childhood. Once I was hiking with a group and one of the hikers was stung over 100 times over his body but particularly on his head. We were close to camp so I ran and sliced an onion and wrapped the slices onto his head and body with a roll of gauze and he never swelled or had any pain.
Trust me on this: Use wet tobacco for bee and wasp stings!!
Preferably, chew the tobacco slightly, just enough to get it wet, then apply over the sting and place a band-aid on top.
May sound a little gross but its better then the swollen foot you'll get with baking soda.
The best for burns--pain, blistering and scarring, is soy sauce (not light). The pain disappears immediately, no blistering. I am not sure if it will work with stings.