Scar Treatment – What Works Best for You?

Scars are areas of fibrous tissue (fibrosis) that replace normal skin after injury. A scar results from the biological process of wound repair in the skin and other tissues of the body. Thus, scarring is a natural part of the healing process. With the exception of very minor lesions, every wound (e.g. after accident, disease, or surgery) results in some degree of scarring. An exception to this is animals with regeneration, which do not form scars and the tissue, will grow back exactly as before.[i]

So, if you are reading this, we suspect that you are not an animal and might have interest in the treatment of scars. It’s a shame that as registered practitioners we should not really use ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos for advertising as they could be misleading and/or deceptive[ii]. But, for the treatment of scars, it would be really helpful to see how much a certain treatment could affect the appearance of a scar.

According to Google, there is a quite a large range of natural treatment available. Some of them are:

• Rosehip Seed Oil
• Indian Gooseberry
• Lemon Juice
• Tea Tree Oil
• Honey
• Vitamin C (both in a cream and also ingest)
• Green Tea
• Garlic
• Olive Oil
• Coconut Oil
• Vitamin E
• Aloe Vera
• Shea Butter

There are probably lots of other remedies that might be applicable as well. Importantly, you want to choose something that suits your skin type, the type of scar(s) and the area where the scar(s) appear.

Obviously, some of the Chinese herbs are being used in a particular combination to treat scars. We have got a formula that we compound into a paraffin free cream base that includes the following herbal ingredients:

Da Huang, Mang Xiao, Wei Ling Xiang, San Qi, Wu Mei, Xia Ku Cao and Vitamin E

This formula aims at moving blood, dispelling blood stasis and stopping pain and hence is applicable for scars that come from trauma and/or surgery and are fresh, swollen, elevated and possibly discoloured.

In practice, we have seen it working effectively, it applied 3 times daily. A significant reduction of both, swelling and discoloration was observed. Some practitioners have used the scar cream – Ban He Gao to treat pain (e.g. neck or lower pain) successfully.