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Old 10-12-2006, 09:42   #1
Cincinnatus
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Article Promoting Honey as Antibiotic

I saw this article promoting honey's antibacterial characteristics on another board. It sounds interesting, and I've heard anecdotal evidence of honey's use as an antibiotic, anyone have add'l thoughts or experience?

Honey Remedy Could Save Limbs

http://www.wired.com/news/technology...?tw=wn_index_3

By Brandon Keim
01:00 AM Oct, 11, 2006

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.

"He preferred death to amputation, and everybody agreed he was going to die if he didn't get an amputation," said Eddy, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

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.

"I've used honey in a dozen cases since then," said Eddy. "I've yet to have one that didn't improve."

Eddy is one of many doctors to recently rediscover honey as medicine. Abandoned with the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s and subsequently disregarded as folk quackery, a growing set of clinical literature and dozens of glowing anecdotes now recommend it.

Most tantalizingly, honey seems capable of combating the growing scourge of drug-resistant wound infections, especially methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, the infamous flesh-eating strain. These have become alarmingly more common in recent years, with MRSA alone responsible for half of all skin infections treated in U.S. emergency rooms.
So-called superbugs cause thousands of deaths and disfigurements every year, and public health officials are alarmed.

Though the practice is uncommon in the United States, honey is successfully used elsewhere on wounds and burns that are unresponsive to other treatments. Some of the most promising results come from Germany's Bonn University Children's Hospital, where doctors have used honey to treat wounds in 50 children whose normal healing processes were weakened by chemotherapy.

The children, said pediatric oncologist Arne Simon, fared consistently better than those with the usual applications of iodine, antibiotics and silver-coated dressings. The only adverse effects were pain in 2 percent of the children and one incidence of eczema. These risks, he said, compare favorably to iodine's possible thyroid effects and the unknowns of silver -- and honey is also cheaper.

"We're dealing with chronic wounds, and every intervention which heals a chronic wound is cost effective, because most of those patients have medical histories of months or years," he said.

While Eddy bought honey at a supermarket, Simon used Medihoney, one of several varieties made from species of Leptospermum flowers found in New Zealand and Australia.

Honey, formed when bees swallow, digest and regurgitate nectar, contains approximately 600 compounds, depending on the type of flower and bee. Leptospermum honeys are renowned for their efficacy and dominate the commercial market, though scientists aren't totally sure why they work.

"All honey is antibacterial, because the bees add an enzyme that makes hydrogen peroxide," said Peter Molan, director of the Honey Research Unit at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. "But we still haven't managed to identify the active components. All we know is (the honey) works on an extremely broad spectrum."

Attempts in the lab to induce a bacterial resistance to honey have failed, Molan and Simon said. Honey's complex attack, they said, might make adaptation impossible.

Two dozen German hospitals are experimenting with medical honeys, which are also used in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. In the United States, however, honey as an antibiotic is nearly unknown. American doctors remain skeptical because studies on honey come from abroad and some are imperfectly designed, Molan said.

In a review published this year, Molan collected positive results from more than 20 studies involving 2,000 people. Supported by extensive animal research, he said, the evidence should sway the medical community -- especially when faced by drug-resistant bacteria.

"In some, antibiotics won't work at all," he said. "People are dying from these infections."

Commercial medical honeys are available online in the United States, and one company has applied for Food and Drug Administration approval. In the meantime, more complete clinical research is imminent. The German hospitals are documenting their cases in a database built by Simon's team in Bonn, while Eddy is conducting the first double-blind study.

"The more we keep giving antibiotics, the more we breed these superbugs. Wounds end up being repositories for them," Eddy said. "By eradicating them, honey could do a great job for society and to improve public health."
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Old 10-12-2006, 09:57   #2
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Issue with honey as an antibiotic, antihistamine, and prophylactic control for hayfever/allergies - it has to be local honey, and do not use it with kids under 3yo. A wy to kick up honey's useful properties is to mix 1 tbsp honey with 3 tbsp vinegar and add hot water to make 8oz of the mixture - the acid and tannins in the vinegar react with whatever bee juice and pollen to increase the efficacy as a preventative. Don't ask me the pharmacology behind it - it's jungle medicine, but it works.
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Old 10-12-2006, 10:02   #3
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Interesting. The use against the "flesh eating bacteria" was what really caught my interest. That and the lead in story of the guy whose ulcers were not responding to other remedies and antibiotics, but responded well to the honey.

Dad gets ulcers on his legs (poor circulation) and I have to treat them. So far, they've responded well to antibiotic ointment and the Tegaderm bandages, but it's nice to have some other arrows in the quiver.

Last edited by Cincinnatus; 10-12-2006 at 11:16.
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Old 10-12-2006, 10:30   #4
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Bacteria can not live in the environment provided by such a high concentration of carbohydrate. We've used raw sugar in wounds and have had it work. When you change the amount of particles per unit of fluid above what will allow the growth of bacteria, you create unfavorable conditions for bacteria to grow in....
their favorite food is iron, old blood hence why we try to rinse, debride, wash old blood out of contaminated wounds.
Also, like in a diabetic, the higher the glucose level the worse the cellular function, same holds true for bacteria.
We use maggots here to debride wounds, no surprise that hyperglycemic local therapy has found its way into the media.

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Old 10-12-2006, 13:12   #5
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Granulated sugar mixed with providone-iodine has been on the modern wound care menu for decades.
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Old 10-12-2006, 14:19   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Razor
Granulated sugar mixed with providone-iodine has been on the modern wound care menu for decades.
Yep, and if Big Pharma doesn't quit concentrating on weenie stiffeners and anti-obesity drugs we're going to see a lot more of it...not that there's anything wrong with weenie stiffeners.
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Old 10-12-2006, 19:26   #7
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Grew up using honey on horses and other large critters, the reasoning I remember hearing was they will lick it off if they can reach it or a herd mate will do it for them and their saliva promotes healing; and the sweet in the honey will reduce scarring.

Glad to know there is truth to that folk remedy.

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Old 10-12-2006, 22:37   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LibraryLady

Glad to know there is truth to that folk remedy.

LL

Actually I was taught that the saliva thing with animals had nothing to do with the actual saliva but from the licking removing debri. Maybe someone can provide the actual data behind that.
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Old 10-14-2006, 10:32   #9
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While Eddy bought honey at a supermarket, Simon used Medihoney, one of several varieties made from species of Leptospermum flowers found in New Zealand and Australia.
....
Commercial medical honeys are available online in the United States, and one company has applied for Food and Drug Administration approval.
What's the difference between "supermarket" honey and "commercial medical" honey?

Does anyone know what the shelf life is for honey? (Thinking of the Be Prepared thread...or should that say: bee prepared?)
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Old 10-14-2006, 10:36   #10
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Originally Posted by lrd
Does anyone know what the shelf life is for honey? (Thinking of the Be Prepared thread...or should that say: bee prepared?)
Properly packaged honey will store safely virtually indefinitely.

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Old 10-14-2006, 10:42   #11
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Originally Posted by jasonglh
Actually I was taught that the saliva thing with animals had nothing to do with the actual saliva but from the licking removing debri. Maybe someone can provide the actual data behind that.
Let me clarify my comment. The reasoning behind the folk remedy may not have been sound, but the actual usage of honey does produce positive results.

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Old 10-14-2006, 11:18   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Reaper
Properly packaged honey will store safely virtually indefinitely.

TR
Thanks, TR.


I remember being told not to feed honey to my kids until they were at least a year old to prevent infant botulism. I can find warnings against feeding honey to kids under 12 months, but none against using it as a topical dressing.

Does anyone know if there would be any danger in using honey as a topical dressing on infants?
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Old 04-02-2007, 08:11   #13
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Getting to this thread a little late, but I've been browsing.

Honey contains spores of clostridium botulinum, which is the bacteria that causes botulism. The reason that you can't have babies around honey is that the babies do not have the necessary defenses (stomach acid, proteinases) in their digestive tract to destroy the spores. The spores, once ingested, get into that warm wet environment and give rise to vegetative bacteria, which produce the toxin which causes paralysis. Adults don't get botulism from honey because our defenses are adequate to destroy the spores.

I took care of a baby once with infantile botulism that hadn't been fed any honey. The family members harvested and canned honey, and after thorough investigation we concluded that contamination from the honey process had gotten on the family's clothes or skin, and the child had ingested it. The potential for accidental ingestion is one reason that honey should not be used for wound healing on babies.

The risk of wound botulism is there, not just in children but potentially in adults as well, if regular honey is used. Wounds may not have adequate immune defenses to prevent growth of c. botulinum and resulting toxin production. The idea behind medical grade honey is that it has been sterilized to destroy the spores.


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