You are listening to Safety and Health in Hotel Housekeeping
Where we give bite-size health and safety tips for housekeepers. If you want to know more about ways to prevent injury. This is the place! And now your host: Daisy Kwok
Hello all, welcome to Safety and Health in Hotel Housekeeping.
For today, I am going to talk about SAFETY TIPS that people often make when they use a heating pad to relieve muscle tension. The application of heat therapy is one of the common physiotherapy treatments. But is there anything we might have missed out on? Let’s take a look
First, let’s review the function of heating pads.
It helps to improve our body blood circulation. They help to reduce muscle tightness. What it does is dilating the blood vessels surrounding the muscle tissue, this brings up the body metabolic rate, which means to get a faster rate of getting oxygen.
Since the heating pad is such simple and effective physiotherapy that most of us can do at home. I shared this technique with my patients a lot of time.
However, there are TWO common mistakes my patients often do
The first mistake, they put the heated pack directly on their body.
(1) A conventional heating pad from the microwave, should be wrapped with a cotton towel. This towel would be the insulating layer to conduct the heat between your skin and the pad.
(2) The Second mistake, they put themselves asleep because it feels so good.
Staying awake is important. so that you can tell if it’s too hot.
So you may wonder how hot it can reach up to?
The surface temperature of a hot pad can be up to around 32 - 40 degrees Celsius. In other words 90-105 F.
Therefore, what can be the worst-case scenario of using a heating pad?
The answer is having skin burn.
3 common reasons that can cause skin burn
1)Excessive heat
2)Excessive pressure
3)Excessive time
which means,
Number ONE
We have to be cautious of the watts setting of your microwave. Is it equivalent to the watts setting to the user manual?
NUMBER TWO
to avoid excessive pressure, we must never lie on top of a heated pack. A contact with compression is dangerous. This is especially important for people who have fragile skin when sensation issues because of diabetes.
Please only try to wrap the heating pad around your waist in a sitting position. Or get your body lying face down, with the pad putting over your lower back only.
NUMBER THREE
To avoid getting skin burn because of overtime heating treatment. Set a timer for 20 minutes.
20 minutes is a good time to achieve a good result.
You may wonder, how do we know if we have skin burn? Is there any warning sign? From my experience, if your skin appears in patchy red, or you start to feel itchy, it can be too hot already
Next, What to do if you do catch a skin burn?
Before you go see your doctor, you should try to run normal temperature tap water over the affected area, to cool the area, not using ice, not ice water too.
Although applying a hot pack looks simple. But there are still precaution and contraindication that we should know:
- People with skin sensory problems, e.g. dermatitis
- People who are too young or too old at home are not suggested to use a heating pad as well.
- People with circulation problems, such as heart disease, deep vein thrombosis, peripheral vascular disease.
- Lastly, people with the following condition should pay attention if they can use the heating treatment, pregnancy, scar tissue, tumor, metal implants,
Please talk to your doctor if you can use this form of treatment.
My bonus tip for you, do not apply any pain relief gel before having a heating pad cause some consist of capsaicin (CAP SAY SIN), which is an active ingredient of chili found for fixing joint pain. that you may feel irritating when having both.
That’s all for today and I wish you find the information useful.
See you in our next episode, bye-bye.
Outro Promo
I respect housekeepers, helping hotel housekeeping or cleaners are my main goal in creating Strainless Work and this podcast.
If you have questions on muscle and joint problems in cleaning up your home or workplace.
do drop me a note in my Facebook group “Painfree housekeeper”. More resources are waiting for you at our website that you can find in the bio.
Thank you for staying with us.
I am Daisy Kwok, host of this podcast
Safety and Health in Hotel Housekeeping
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Safety and Health in Hotel Housekeeping is the production of Strainless Work