For thousands of years, since Cleopatra and before, honey has been talked about as an ‘elixir’ of miraculous proportions.
It’s been said to settle coughs, aide digestion, treat burns, make skin glow and even help fight infections.
Well guess what? It really does!
A new product, called Medihoney, is said to kill resistant bacteria better than antibiotics.
Made from an absorbent material based on seaweed, and saturated with a variety of honey known as manuka, or Leptospermum, honey, the product is currently being used in hospitals, doctors’ offices and other medical settings in both North and South America. Similar products have been popular in Australia, New Zealand and Europe for more than 10 years.
The honey is produced by bees that have collected nectar from manuka and jelly bushes, which grow in Australia and New Zealand.
According to the New Jersey-based Derma Sciences, which manufactures Medihoney, it is “the first honey-based product cleared for use by Health Canada and also the first cleared for use by the FDA. These unique dressings contain Active Leptospermum Honey, indigenous to New Zealand (Manuka) and Australia (Jellybush). The dressings can be used in all phases of wound healing and could be considered a key dressing in any wound bed preparation protocol. These qualities can help to take much of the guesswork out of wound management.”
Manuka Honey Kills Resistant Superbug Bacteria that Antibiotics Can’t
Biochemist Peter Molan, who has researched natural antibiotics including honey for 25 years, has stated that manuka honey is effective at killing even the most antibiotic resistant bacteria even when it has been diluted to a tenth of its original concentration.
“There’s more evidence, clinical evidence, by far for honey in wound treatment than for any of the pharmaceutical products,” Molan has said. He recommends it in particular for people with weak immune systems.
“It’s been used on wounds where nothing else will work,”.
The honey-based dressings are effective at absorbing fluids and killing germs for up to a week, making them ideal in settings where it is difficult to change dressings regularly. They also reduce inflammation and foul wound odors better than traditional, pharmaceutical-based dressings.
Emergency physician Craig Lambrecht stated that he began using a manuka-honey based dressing to treat children with severe burns at a military clinic in Iraq last winter. The honey dressings soon became more popular with Iraqi families than conventional dressings because they were more natural and easier to use. In addition, Lambrecht found that the children treated with honey healed faster and experienced fewer complications than children treated with conventional dressings.
“I would use the Medihoney on burns on my children, as the first choice, without question,” Lambrecht has said.
For more infor, read here:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/48330.php
Also in the news:
Honey Better Than Cough Medicine For Soothing Kids’ Cough Symptoms
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Honey has a long history of use as a treatment for upper respiratory symptoms, and research suggests that it also contains antioxidant and antifungal properties.
According to a new study conducted by researchers at the Penn State College of Medicine and published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
“Honey provided the greatest relief of symptoms compared with the other treatments,” lead researcher Ian Paul said.
Researchers studied 105 children between the ages of two and 18 who were having trouble sleeping due to cough. The participants were given either a small dose of buckwheat honey, honey-flavored dextromethorphan or no treatment at all a half-hour before bed.
Dextromethorphan is the primary cough-suppressant in most over-the-counter cough and cold medications.
Children who were given the honey had less frequent and severe nighttime coughing than either the children given dextromethorphan or those given no treatment at all. Honey appeared to induce a brief period of hyperactivity in the children, but even so both children and parents slept better after children were given honey compared with dextromethorphan or no treatment.
“The World Health Organization has cited honey as a potential therapy,” Paul said.
In contrast, the FDA recently advised against the use of over-the-counter cough and cold medications in children under the age of six, saying that such medications may cause dangerous side effects and have not been proven effective in that age group.
“With honey, parents now have a safe and effective alternative to use for children over age one who have cough and cold symptoms,” Paul said.
Paul warned that children under the age of one should not be given honey, as it may induce infant botulism in rare cases. He also noted that the experiment used dark honey, and it is not known if different varieties of honey would have the same effect.
HERE, a link to the Penn State press release:
