Hiking injuries are so common, but while many of them are minor inconveniences, it is still best to take the proper precautions to ensure that these annoyances don’t turn into something worse.
Here are some precautions you should take to protect yourself:
Bring a cap and some sunscreen
Seriously, sunburns are much more common than you think, and it’s easy to forget just how much exposed you are to the sun when you’ve been focused on the beauty of your environment during your nature walks.
Do your skin a favor and apply some sunscreen on your exposed body parts at the very least before you begin your hike. At the very least, it won’t be as bad even if you forget to wear your cap or hat.
Carry around lots of water
This should be fairly obvious: Dehydration is real and very much dangerous.
While a human body can survive 3 days at most without water, it takes far less than that for dehydration to start taking effect, and it can be as little as 6 hours!
Once you start experiencing dehydration, your body will definitely let you know: If you being ultra-thirsty doesn’t tell you that something wrong, then the feelings of being ill, such as having headaches, lethargy, and an increased chance of getting cramps all over your body will.
With that said, make sure to pack lots of water, be it bottled or from a container, and even some extra just in case.
Wear long clothing
Cuts and bruises are an especially common injury while out and about. If you want to reduce your chances of acquiring these, then you certainly want to be wearing a lot of long clothing.
That way, instead of scratching you up, the forest scratches up your clothes instead, protecting your skin!
It’s definitely going to feel much hotter though, but it’ll be well worth it. As mentioned above, just make sure you pack a lot of water!
Wear good hiking boots/bring hiking poles
If you want to protect your ankles from sprains, then having good boots and/or bringing hiking poles are good ways to go about it.
It’s important to have proper stability while hiking, especially when you know you will be walking on uneven ground.
And of course, watch where you’re going and take proper care of where you step. Having good quality boots can only get you so far. It’s still up to you to walk properly.
Don’t touch unidentifiable plants or insects
It takes at least a couple of hours for people to realize that they’ve brushed or touched poison ivy, when parts of their body start getting a nasty and itchy rash, at which point, it’s too late. While not fatal, they can certainly make the coming days very uncomfortable.
You don’t need to know all the plants you can touch, just make sure you know the ones that you should stay away from. Poison ivy, for instance, might seemingly disguise itself pretty well, but one of its biggest telling features is the fact that its stem will always have three leaves, which is a great help in identifying them.
This applies to insects you cannot identify as well. Colorful fuzzy caterpillars they may be, but most of them have lots of spiky exteriors injected with poison that, while not enough to kill you, will certainly lead to many itchy days if you touch them without thinking.
Long story short, don’t touch things in the forest that you don’t know.
Pack extra clothes
An extra change of clothes will do more than just make you feel clean and fresh when you feel like changing your attire – They may actually save your life.
Hypothermia is one of the leading causes of death for many hikers. It happens when a person’s body temperature drops too cold outside, making their body temperature inside also cold, which spells big trouble for a lot of organs like the heart and lungs.
While it seems like something that would only be limited specifically to cold weather and temperatures, it can still happen if a person gets wet from the rain or falls into a river with their clothes. If they insist on wearing the same clothes throughout the day, their chance of contracting hypothermia increases, especially as the day passes and the temperature starts dropping.
The best way to cure hypothermia is to prevent it from happening in the first place, which is why having spare clothes is so important.
Use and bring insect repellant
There are many insects in the wild that are quite nice to look at and may even make you curious of them. However, there are some that you are probably sick of seeing already.
Mosquitoes and ticks, especially, are annoying buggers that are out for blood (literally). Worse, they can be quite common in certain areas in hiking paths as well, especially ones that aren’t properly kept, allowing the population to fester.
These insects may give you a stingy and itchy bite, but what is in that bite might be far worse. Mosquitos, for instance, are the primary transporters of deadly diseases like Dengue and Malaria.
The best way to cure those diseases is to prevent them in the first place, and the best way to do that is to make yourself as unappealing as possible. Using insect repellant and bringing some along for the ride will help you achieve just that, and you can use it in tandem with your long clothes to give your skin a big barrier that most of these bloodsuckers will find hard to penetrate.
Always have a first aid kit with essentials for when things go wrong
Physical injuries are something you should always prepare for, and even with all these precautions in mind, injuries are still very likely to happen and should be expected, which is why you should always have a first aid kit prepared.
Now, what is in the first aid kit may vary, but it should always be finely tuned according to the destination and place of where you’ll be hiking.
Having bandages and antibiotic ointment, for example, will greatly help against common hiking injuries like scratches, scrapes, and wounds.