Sometimes honey is better than antibiotics


A household remedy millennia old is being reinstated: honey helps the treatment of some wounds better than the most modern antibiotics.


A household remedy millennia old is being reinstated: honey helps the treatment of some wounds better than the most modern antibiotics. For several years now medical experts from the University of Bonn have been clocking up largely positive experience with what is known as medihoney. Even chronic wounds infected with multi-resistant bacteria often healed within a few weeks.

For several years now Bonn paediatricians have been pioneering the use in Germany of medihoney in treating wounds. Medihoney bears the CE seal for medical products; its quality is regularly tested. The success is astonishing: “Dead tissue is rejected faster, and the wounds heals more rapidly,” Kai Sofka, wound specialist at the University Children’s Clinic, emphasises. “What is more, changing dressings is less painful, since the poultices are easier to remove without damaging the newly formed layers of skin.” Some wounds often smell unpleasant — an enormous strain on the patient. Yet honey helps here too by reducing the smell. “Even wounds which consistently refused to heal for years can, in our experience, be brought under control with medihoney — and this frequently happens within a few weeks,” Kai Sofka says.

It has already been proved that medihoney even puts paid to multi-resistant germs such as MRSA. In this respect medihoney is neck and neck in the race to beat the antibiotic mupirocin, currently the local MRSA antibiotic of choice. This is shown by a study recently published by researchers in Australia. In one point medihoney was even superior to its rival: the bacteria did not develop any resistance to the natural product during the course of treatment.

Apparently, there are two processes at work here: an enzyme called glucose-oxidase and utilizing honey which has special anti-bacterial properties — from trees in New Zealand and Australia.

Posted: Thu - July 27, 2006 at 09:35 AM