Baking Soda for Splinters: How to Use Baking Soda to Remove Annoying Splinters Family Health

Few people realize that the difficulty in extracting a splinter is all based on the body’s physical response to an irritant entering the skin’s surface. When a splinter enters into the skin, the body’s immediate reaction is to become inflamed and try to push the foreign object out naturally. Ironically, this natural response can trap the splinter in the swelled skin and make it difficult to extract.

When trying to remove a splinter from the skin, many people attempt the extraction with tweezers, only to find that the inflammation has already trapped the foreign substance in the skin. Once the initial attempt to simply remove the splinter fails, the need to utilize tools such as needles, pins, or even scalpels can seem imminent. However, using unsterilized tools to enter the skin’s surface to retrieve a splinter can introduce countless bacteria into the body and cause infection. Once this occurs, the site of the splinter becomes far more irritated and inflamed … possibly leading to a major assault on the immune system.

Making a soak that is comprised of 1 part baking soda and 4 parts water (for example, 1 cup of water and 1/4 cup of baking soda) results in a simple solution that can be made and used to soak the afflicted area that holds the splinter, reducing the inflammation, and naturally assisting the body in pushing the splinter out of the skin. This soak can also help safeguard the affected area from infection by bacteria and microbes that entered the open wound’s surface. Naturally and effectively, this is the safest approach to removing splinters without damaging the skin or the body’s immune systems or processes.

Excerpted from "Baking Soda for Health" by Britt Brandon Copyright © 2018 Adams Media, a division of Simon and Schuster. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

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