We're now going to look at allergic reactions.
Now, allergic reactions are things like where someone has a bee sting, and they get complications from it.
Also, the most common one now is allergies to food stuffs.
And this can be, a typical one would be peanuts, or any nuts things.
These are becoming extremely common now.
Back when I was in school, then yeah, there were people that had allergic reactions.
Maybe the odd person was allergic to bee stings, or something like that.
But the idea, back when I was at school, of someone being allergic to something as common as a peanut
wasn't really known. Nobody would have really believed it.
Now, in schools, they have to be really really careful with all the food.
They have to be careful what children can take into school.
Airplanes no longer serve nuts on.
And lots of other instances where peanuts and nut based products have been removed from general use.
Also products you buy in the shops, whether it be take away (take out) food,
or whether it be in a restaurant, or something in the supermarket, it often says on there, "may contain nuts."
Now the reason for this, is that this is a real, serious problem.
Very very difficult for children and adults who live with these allergies,
particularly the foodstuff allergies,
to continue and keep themselves safe,
because a minute trace of the nuts can cause them very very serious allergic reactions.
Now what generally happens is, if it's they've taken on food, it could be a microscopic trace of nuts,
this can cause extreme swelling in their necks.
They can get red, they can get blotchy.
Slowly the ability for them to breath is cut down as the windpipe and their airway is reduced.
Same would happen with a sting.
If someone's got stung on their finger, yes it should swell on their fingers.
Their throat shouldn't swell up.
So these are massive allergic reactions.
Now if this happened to somebody for the first time, it may be you are allergic to something,
maybe you've not been stung by a bee.
But the real problem with the allergy side, they seem to have come on in the last ten to fifteen years in a big way.
And some people say it's due with the fact that we're living much too clean now.
When I was a child, we used to go out on our bikes all the time.
We used to get covered in dirt.
We used to get exposed to quite a lot of bugs.
And this built up the natural immune system.
Some children now are a different way.
Computer games, how they communicate.
You know, I couldn't use a phone to phone my friends.
Now they've got internet, they've got mobile phones, they've got text messaging, all sorts of different methods.
Added to this, the homes.
My mom's house was never dirty, however, it wasn't sterile clean.
All the adverts on television are encouraging people to have clean homes.
We have solid floors rather than floor boards,
laminate floors rather than carpets which allow some movement of air through.
Double glazing.
Used to have open fires, now they're often been sealed up.
Probably one of the worst ones that are causing problems in this sealed environment is then central heating.
Central heating keeps the temperature keeps the temperature nice and the same all the time,
And this can be quite a breeding ground for germs and bacteria,
but also it's not really exposing children and people to the necessity to hit these bugs and build up a natural resistance.
And the thought really is, with all this side of people not building up the resistance,
they're now getting allergic to things which a few years ago were just common practice.
If you've got somebody who has these allergies, and they know about it, they'll probably carry things like epipens.
We're gonna look at those in a second.
These are adrenaline dose syringes, single dose syringes.
But generally, if this happened for the first time, and you haven't got any of these things, you need to have a look at the situation.
Back to the initial scene assessment.
Why is this person ill?
If they've just been stung by a bee, if maybe they've just eaten, or something like this, it could indicate,
especially if they've got a lot of redness around the face, and difficulty breathing, a lot of stress,
it may indicate that they have an adverse reaction to something.
Now as we've said already, if you've got somebody who is a known sufferer of any allergic reaction,
they may well carry an epipen.
The epipen itself is a single dose, automatic syringe.
Now you may, in your workplace, need to get special training with this.
If you have children, and they need to use this, the doctors and nurses will train you more.
It's just important that we tell you roughly how to use it.
Now under the rules and regulations for doing first aid, you're not allowed to give people tablets or medications,
and the fact of giving people injections like this is not something you would do.
But you can help them by getting the epipen for them.
This is just a training device that we're using here, the real units will come in a triangular yellow cardboard box,
and they have a yellow tube that comes in.
So you need to take the unit out of the box, and then you take it out of the tube.
All the units have very clear instructions on, so to start with,
he's gonna read the instructions to make sure you know what you're doing.
You remove the safety cap, the grey cap on the end.
And you grip the epipen in your hand.
And where we're doing is we're doing a rough line straight up the leg, straight across,
and it's going in the outer quarter.
So he'll then push that into his leg.
Leave it there for ten seconds.
So he needs to count up to ten,
and then when the ten is up, he's going to pull that straight out of his leg.
We're not going to be pulling at an angle.
If we pull it at an angle, it's going to cause a lot of pain, it's also going to cause more bleeding.
If blood comes out, so does the drug come out.
Once he's done that, he's going to take his hand and rub the area,
just to help circulate the drug within the muscle of the leg.
Once we've administered the epipen, we need to make sure it's kept and we can hand that over to the paramedics when they come.
Now you will start to feel better fairly quickly, but this is still an emergency situation where we need to get help from the paramedics.
Some people may carry two epipens.
Some trials have shown that if they have a serious reaction, one is not enough.
But they would know about this, and they may well ask you and sometimes they have another dose ten minutes later.
If we're doing this with an adult, in most cases they'll want to help.
They can't breath.
The fact we're putting this into their leg, although it hurts, is something they'd be quite happy to do themselves.