REMEDIES: Honey Remedy Could Save Limbs (HEALTH, DIABETES)

[Guest guest]

Honey Remedy Could Save Limbs

By Brandon Keim

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, including group A streptococcus --

the infamous flesh-eating bug -- and methicillin-resistant

Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which in its most severe forms also

destroys flesh. These have become alarmingly more common in recent

years, with MRSA alone now 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. 1

 

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.

 

Correction, Wed Oct 11 18:01:00 EDT 2006

1 This story was updated to clarify that there are a range of MRSA

symptoms, of which the most severe is necroticizing fasciitis.

 

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/medtech/1,71925-0.html

[Guest guest]

When you use honey, it's needs to be raw organic honey. The regular honey in

the super market may have bacteria or additives. The use of garlic as well will

also kill the harmful bacteria and viruses in and on the body. Never heat honey

or garlic, you will loose the healing properties. For colds, flu, sore throats,

I use a jelly jar and fill with crushed, pealed cloves of garlic and then cover

the contents with raw honey. Put on the lid , let it stand in a cool place for 4

days, shake the jar twice a day. Take as needed, you can strain out the garlic

cloves and discard. I like to eat them. Give this a try, it can't hurt and you

might feel better for it.

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Fascinating! Does it have to be unpasteurized?

I have read ordinary white (yuck) refined sugar

can work too.

 

Ien in the Kootenays

http://profiles./free_green_living