Honey for Healing
I’ve always considered honey more of a medicine than a food, considering that eating small amounts of raw, local honey can help build immunities to pollen allergies. And now honey – specifically New Zealand Manuka honey – has been shown to have another medical purpose: dressing wounds.
Manuka honey (Leptospermum scoparium) has incredible antibacterial properties – even against antibiotic resistant strains. It can be eaten by the spoonful (truly your "spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down") or applied to cuts and scrapes for healing. But in a hospital setting, you can’t run around slathering patients with honey. That’s where Derma Sciences comes in.
Derma Sciences has created MediHoney, an FDA approved wound dressing, perfectly appropriate for home or hospital care. MediHoney can be used for burns, leg ulcers, and traumatic and surgical wounds of all varieties. This product is a safe and natural way to prevent infections and promote healing.
The Earth Mama in me is excited, because MediHoney is yet another example of science and medicine catching up to what Mother Nature has known all along. Now let’s hope the bees will stick around…
Image: AlainB
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5 Comments
August 29th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Manuka Honey is an amazing natural resource that is excellent for treating infected wounds. By osmosis, Manuka Honey has the ability to draw moisture out of bacterial cells, making it impossible to survive. This is something that antibiotics cannot do.
HoneymarkProducts.com
August 29th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Thanks Sarah for the great post! I hadn’t heard about this – it’s very cool. I’ve always believed nature holds the key to all that ails us.
August 31st, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Just to add a couple of points. Derma Sciences have a deal to supply Medihoney – which is a brand of manuka honey products – in the USA, which have received the FDA approval. In other parts of the world, eg in Europe, there are the Apinate Dressings – http://www.newzealandhoneyshop.....ssing.html
It should also be pointed out that not all manuka honey is equal. Mother nature being as it is – means there is natural variation in potency levels of the honey. Unfortunately in Europe and Asia there has become quite a problem of people misselling ordinary manuka honey.
The UMF® trademark is the New Zealand honey industry quality mark to label those batches of manuka honey which have been tested and found to have sufficient levels of the antibacterial properties. Look for the UMF® mark on the actual jars, not just in the advertising.
Here are some examples of UMF products (UK market – but also has links to some of the university research):
http://www.newzealandhoneyshop.....honey.html
August 31st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Thanks NZ Honey Shop, for making it clear that the UMF seal is important in picking the best Manuka honey.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:39 am
It’s a special type of honey that contains very powerful healing properties. People buy Manuka Honey to treat a variety of different health conditions, such as acne, eczema, arthritis, wound care, ringworm
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