Bacterial infections of the skin are notoriously hard to treat. They can lead to fatal complications. As more and more strains of bacteria become more and more resistant to more and more antibiotics, doctors turn to honey as an alternative that works.
You would not think that a simple blister could kill someone.However, for tens of thousands of diabetics, tiny cuts and scratches that become infected can lead to the loss of feet and legs, days or weeks in the hospital, and sometimes death from septic shock.
Recently, a friend of mine who is diabetic had his own experience with a diabetic foot infection. His car had broken down, so he started walking everywhere. He developed a blister on the bottom of his big toe. He knew that he had to keep it clean and dry, so he washed the blister several times a day, changed his socks several times a day, and kept on the lookout for signs of infection. He did not, however, change his shoes. He wore the same shoes all the time.
The shoes harbored a bacterium, laboratory tests would later reveal, known as Morganella. It took three weeks, but the bacteria that had entered the blister when it popped began to tunnel under his skin. They spread from his big toe up to his knee. One evening he noticed an odd tingling sensation on the back of his leg, and the next morning his entire leg was red and swollen. He had a fever. His heart was pounding even though he was sick in bed. When he finally got the emergency room, a day later, he was judged to be near death. The doctors put him on an IV drip of a potent antibiotic called Zosen, and packed the now-gaping wound on his big toe with medicinal honey. The improvement was almost miraculous.
What Is Medicinal Honey?
The use of honey for treating skin infections is nothing new. Ancient Egyptians packed mummies with honey to prevent decay. Doctors and folk healers for centuries have applied honey to the skin to treat acne, cellulitis, folliculitis, and infected wounds.
"Medicinal" honey is simply honey that has been found to have unusual antibacterial potency that can be collected in large quantities and that gets the same results every time.
In the Western world, medicinal honey is usually a variety called manuka. This honey is collected from the hives of bees in New Zealand that feed exclusively on the flowers of a single plant, a bushy tree related to the tea tree, Leptospermum scoparium. The infection-fighting power of manuka honey is probably connected to its unusually high concentration of a chemical called methylglyoxal. All honey contains some methylglyoxal, but manuka honey contains two to three times more. It is possible that this chemical, plus the ability of honey to "smother" bacteria that require oxygen, explain most of the power of medicinal honey to accelerate healing in skin infections.
Do We Really Know Medicinal Honey Works?
Medicinal honey does not have the infection-fighting power of, say, an intravenous drip with vancomycin. It's never the only treatment that should be used in fighting even a simple skin infection. Nonetheless, scientists have a good idea of exactly how honey, any kind of honey, helps to heal the skin.
What You Can Tell Skeptics About Medicinal Honey
Medical researchers have a good idea of how medicinal honey helps to heal the skin. One of the healing characteristics of honey, it turns out, is that it is sugary.
Most of us have heard some version of the facts regarding how sugar is terrible for us. In large amounts in the diet, this is true. When applied to the skin in the form of honey, however, sugar draws fluid out of the lymph system. White blood cells "hitch a ride" to the site of the infection. As long as the wound is not so weepy that the honey begins to be diluted, Sugar also draws water out of bacterial cells. They become dehydrated, and do not multiply as rapidly. This gives the immune system more time to fight the infection.
Why couldn't you just apply table sugar to a wound? Actually, you could, not necessarily with bad results. However, sugar has the added advantage of being a complex mixture of carbohydrates and proteins with higher osmolarity, that is, that is harder to dilute.
Wound care studies have found that sugar applied to a wound becomes so diluted it is no longer effective after just four hours, while honey only has to be applied every four days.
How potent is medicinal honey? Manufacturers of medicinal honeys favor products like manuka, which bees make from a single kind of flower, because they produce reliable effects. Most medicinal honeys are standardized to produce an antibacterial effect equivalent to a 12 to 16 percent solution of phenol. Unlike phenol, honey does not have the potential to kill healthy tissue.
Various studies have found that medicinal honey kills Staphylococcus aureus, various strains of Streptococcus, various strains of Enterococcus, E. coli, Klebsiella, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, along with a large number of species of bacteria that do not require oxygen. It does not make any difference whether or not an organism is antibiotic-resistant.
There are no bacteria that are "honey-resistant." Sometimes when an antibiotic will not work, honey will. Honey will also kill many established wound infections. Bacteria form a tough layer known as a biofilm, essentially "rooting" themselves in the wound. Honey can break up biofilms and speed the healing of a chronic infection.
This same property makes honey useful in the debridement of fresh wounds. Debridement is a process of stripping away damaged tissue with a scalpel to expose bacteria to oxygen. It can be quite painful. Honey, however, stimulates the sloughing off of dead tissue without the need for a knife. It also fights inflammation and stimulates the growth of new blood vessels that carry white blood cells, oxygen, and nutrients to heal the skin.
Does only manuka honey work? The makers of products using manuka honey would like you to think so, but there is actually value in other kinds of honey. The distinct characteristic of manuka honey is that its methyglyoxal breaks down in a way that keeps releasing hydrogen peroxide longer than methylglyoxal from other kinds of honey, Manuka is in fact a superior medicinal honey for some applications, but kanuka honey (collected in New Zealand from bees that depend on kanuka trees) is better for treating inflammation, and Brazilian honey is more potent against certain kinds of infections. However, other kinds of honey are also useful in wound care. Just be sure the honey itself is not contaminated. Use honey specifically prepared for application to the skin, certified to be bacteria-free, and use it externally, not internally. You can eat honey that is much less expensive than the medicinal brands. Save medicinal honey for your skin.
Sources & Links
- Majno G. The Healing Hand. Man and Wound in the Ancient World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press
- 1975. - See more at: www.woundsresearch.com/article/honey-biologic-wound-dressing#sthash.nWeR2Wrz.dpuf.
- Molan P, Rhodes T. Honey: A Biologic Wound Dressing. Wounds 2015
- 27(6):141-151.
- Photo courtesy of BotheredByBees via Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/botheredbybees/245215850
- Photo courtesy of Siona Karen via Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/sionakaren/3870732249