Mighty Thumb Warrior
What follows is A timeline of Vaughn's Thumb Comeback and why Simple Salve worked so well:
Vaughn, the “Mighty Thumb Warrior”, who severely cut his left thumb and completely severed his right thumb in a metal press assembly line, has some more salvelujah to share with the world!
WARNING: If you're a squeamish simple salver, go ahead and bail out now to our store, or just don't click on the link below! There's some dope science we go over here, you won't want to miss it.
In Vaughn’s original post, we shared some incredible images of both of his thumbs’ shocking initial injuries and the dramatic progress they made with less than a month's use of simple salve..
The castor oil and beeswax in Simple Salve have some truly mesmerizing and relevant properties that began working on Vaughn's thumbs immediately by addressing three primary concerns:
Infection
Microvascular injury
Rebuilding connective tissues and nerves.
Thus, Vaughn was fortunately able to avoid necrosis of the wounds and serious vascular complications. Necrosis as a result of accumulation of oxidized byproducts due to vascular injury as well as infection by normal or pathogenic microbes that live on the skin . The severed microvasculature in the thumb renders capillary veins disabled, unable to effectively remove waste, causing toxic buildup and requiring immediate resolution to avoid necrotic crises (1). So it’s crucial that both infection risk and microvascular injury be addressed immediately.
The fatty acid nature of Castor oil makes it effective at rebuilding capillary and vascular networks, assisting the body in proliferating and differentiating cells. The structure of Ricinoleic Acid (RA) in castor oil allows it to work easily with the polarity of cell membranes and mediate the need for increasing growth factors. (2). RA has a “bipolar molecular structure that promotes the formation of esters, amides and polymers” in wound healing. (3)
The severed areas of Vaughn's thumb were immediately vulnerable to serious infection - but the high concentration of Beeswax in Simple Salve addressed this danger. Beeswax is a well known anti-microbial, anti-fungal and anti-viral agent, inhibiting the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Candida albicans and fungi like Malessezia, species that can be found on the skin and can certainly cause infection in an open wound. (4)
Castor oil also has anti-microbial properties against microbes like Bacillus subtilis and potentially infectious species like Enterococcus faecalis (5). And it’s been theorized that castor oil's application to the skin activates T-cell lymphocyte formation indirectly through the receptors it binds. T-cells are the powerhouse antibody-creating fighters that prevent local infection (6).
Read enough and need some salve? Click here.
With infection risk actively controlled, castor oil also addressed the urgent need to redirect capillary networks to get oxygen and nutrients in, and toxic waste out of the area. Studies performed on wound healing show Ricinoleic Acid (RA) in castor oil significantly promoting processes therein:
In a study comparing Ricinoleic acid in castor oil to capsaicin, RA demonstrated capsaicin-like anti-inflammatory effects - it reduced histamine-induced swelling, indicating potential for healing nerves in skin (7).
RA binds to prostanoid receptors EP3 and EP4, causing involuntary muscle contractions (8) and these contractions increase lymph flow in the area, pushing in nutrients, oxygen and proteins to actively build new vessels while expelling any oxidized byproducts of the damaged tissue and the rapidly growing new tissue.
But Simple salve didn't stop working at the initial injury, it continued to blow Vaughn's mind as it worked on his thumbs everyday until they looked like this:
Left thumb
right thumb