Honey cures drug resistant baterial sores
Brandon Keim writes in Wired News: (here's the full article)
"When Jennifer Eddy first saw an ulcer on the left foot of her patient, an elderly diabetic man, it was pink and quarter-sized. Fourteen months later, drug-resistant bacteria had made it an unrecognizable black mess."
"Doctors tried everything they knew -- and failed. After five hospitalizations, four surgeries and regimens of antibiotics, the man had lost two toes. Doctors wanted to remove his entire foot."
...
"With standard techniques exhausted, Eddy turned to a treatment used by ancient Sumerian physicians, touted in the Talmud and praised by Hippocrates: honey. Eddy dressed the wounds in honey-soaked gauze. In just two weeks, her patient's ulcers started to heal. Pink flesh replaced black. A year later, he could walk again."
Pretty amazing that honey is better than antibiotics! This is fantastic news for many Alzheimers, bedridden and diabetic people who develop incurable and often fatal sores. I previously heard sugar was supposed to have similar antimicrobial attributes and I would think its the sugar in the honey that's the active agent...but then again it may be the pollen or whatever else is in honey. Great stuff from bees and flowers.
"When Jennifer Eddy first saw an ulcer on the left foot of her patient, an elderly diabetic man, it was pink and quarter-sized. Fourteen months later, drug-resistant bacteria had made it an unrecognizable black mess."
"Doctors tried everything they knew -- and failed. After five hospitalizations, four surgeries and regimens of antibiotics, the man had lost two toes. Doctors wanted to remove his entire foot."
...
"With standard techniques exhausted, Eddy turned to a treatment used by ancient Sumerian physicians, touted in the Talmud and praised by Hippocrates: honey. Eddy dressed the wounds in honey-soaked gauze. In just two weeks, her patient's ulcers started to heal. Pink flesh replaced black. A year later, he could walk again."
Pretty amazing that honey is better than antibiotics! This is fantastic news for many Alzheimers, bedridden and diabetic people who develop incurable and often fatal sores. I previously heard sugar was supposed to have similar antimicrobial attributes and I would think its the sugar in the honey that's the active agent...but then again it may be the pollen or whatever else is in honey. Great stuff from bees and flowers.
posted by Ki at
4:57 AM
4 Comments:
considering that diabetics are more likely to have trouble with wounds not healing because of the sugar in their blood, I think perhaps there is something else in honey which promotes the healing and reduces the infection. I'd love to know more about this.
Hi Kati, I don't think that high amounts of sugar in the blood translates to sugar everywhere else in the body i.e. sores or wounds...but, since I'm neither a scientist or a doctor I don't know if this is true. I'll try to dig up more info on this topic and post it later. I found the article interesting because my mom has Alzheimers and I know some of the patients die of bed sores or wounds. Thanks for your comment.
ki, I did a bit of research on honey when I'd tried some experiments using it for rooting rose cuttings. I came across this:
Honey
Six medical journal articles over the past three years have also described the antibiotic properties of honey. A physician at the medical college in Maharashtra, India, recently explored the use of honey-soaked gauze to treat burn patients. The 40 patients treated with honey healed in about half the time - and with half the scar tissue - compared with patients treated by other means. (Subrahmanyam M, Burns, Aug. 1994;20:331-3).
A team of researchers from the department of surgery, University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria, reported that unprocessed honey "inhibited most of the fungi and bacteria" causing surgical and wound infections. In a remarkable conclusion in the journal Infection (Jul.- Aug. 1992;20:227-9),Dr. S. E. Efem and his colleagues wrote, "Honey is thus an ideal topical wound dressing agent in surgical infections, burns and wound infections."
http://www.thenutritionreporter.com/bee_stuff.html
Pretty interesting stuff, as is the propolis.
Hi sewobsessed, whew hope I typed that right. Thanks for all the information. If honey is so good in healing I wonder why conventional medicine doesn't use it as the treatment of course. I guess the giant drug companies have a say in that. With all the talk about anitbiotic resistant bacteria you would think this was a no brainer.
I will try the honey treatment nest time on cuts that seem to be getting infected which is prob. soon as I'm alway chopping, digging, whacking something in the garden. Thanks again for writing.
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