Daryl and I have this long-standing joke about over-eager friends attempting to help a victim of jellyfish stings by peeing on him.
Which is why I laughed so hard when I stumbled upon this article.
My sympathies to those who have gotten the old folk's remedy...
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" At best, urinating on a jellyfish sting will do nothing. Experiments indicate that in some jellyfish species, urine actually sets off the remaining stinging cells, making the sting even worse.
The urine cure and other folk remedies miss the mark, anyway. The point of rinsing the wounded area is not to alleviate the pain. The venom’s already in you. Urinating on it will not help any more than it does to urinate on your thumb after you hit it with a hammer.
The point of the rinse is to get rid of any remaining tentacles or other jellyfish tissue that might still harbor stinging cells, or nematocysts, which could still fire and make the sting worse. (These cells, which are all over jellyfish, contain a tiny poison dart that shoots out at a touch or because of a chemical reaction; thousands of them typically fire simultaneously.) For the aforementioned reason, urine is a terrible candidate for the job.
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. Arigato .
Which is why I laughed so hard when I stumbled upon this article.
My sympathies to those who have gotten the old folk's remedy...
---
" At best, urinating on a jellyfish sting will do nothing. Experiments indicate that in some jellyfish species, urine actually sets off the remaining stinging cells, making the sting even worse.
The urine cure and other folk remedies miss the mark, anyway. The point of rinsing the wounded area is not to alleviate the pain. The venom’s already in you. Urinating on it will not help any more than it does to urinate on your thumb after you hit it with a hammer.
The point of the rinse is to get rid of any remaining tentacles or other jellyfish tissue that might still harbor stinging cells, or nematocysts, which could still fire and make the sting worse. (These cells, which are all over jellyfish, contain a tiny poison dart that shoots out at a touch or because of a chemical reaction; thousands of them typically fire simultaneously.) For the aforementioned reason, urine is a terrible candidate for the job.
---
. Arigato .
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