Injuring yourself by a cut or a burn can be painful. One of the things we sometimes seek after an injury is to be soothed to help soften the pain. Sure spreading some anti-biotic ointment and slapping a bandage on the wound might be a practical solution, but here’s a scientifically proven trick to make it even sweeter. Use honey instead of the anti-biotic ointment.
Honey has been recognized in its healing effectiveness for thousands of years. Yet only recently have we understood how honey works in its healing. Honey is a sweet food produced by honey bees from the nectar of flowers. Bees make honey for themselves to feed the colony in cold weather and during food shortages. What bee keepers have learned to do is to encourage bee colonies to produce more honey than is needed, so a portion of the honey can be harvested and eaten by us – or in this case, spread onto a bandage to cover a wound.
But first, I need to possibly disgust you a bit in explaining how bees make honey, because it’s in this process that honey gets it’s special healing ability. When the honey bee finds a flower, it drinks the nectar produced by the flower. Then the bee returns to the hive and regurgitates the nectar. Then the bees then work together to ingest and regurgitate the regurgitated nectar not just once, but several times until the partially digested nectar reaches the highest quality. Yum! It’s in this digestion process that the bees add an enzyme that, for their purposes, preserves the honey – but for our purposes helps in healing wounds. More on that in a moment.
Skin wounds heal best when kept moist by covering it with a bandage, however this moist environment is perfect breeding ground for microbes that cause infection. The University of Waikato in New Zealand has studied honey and has documented its ability to kill the seven most common bacteria that are know to infect wounds, including E-Coli, Staphylococcus and Salmonella. They found that the chemistry behind this is multi-fold. First, honey is a super saturated solution of sugars leaving very low water content. Bacteria needs water to grow and multiply. So honey by default is a poor breeding ground for bacteria. Second, honey is very acidic having a pH below the levels bacteria need to grow.
This is all fine, if the honey remains undiluted. If you add water to the honey, the water content naturally increases and the pH rises effectively eliminating its use as in wound healing. This is a problem as most wounds will naturally seep body fluids and this moisture will dilute the honey on the bandage. Well, here come the bees to save the day. Remember that enzyme that the bees put into the honey as they digested it? Well, as the water content in the honey rises, this enzyme becomes activated and creates a chemical reaction that produces hydrogen peroxide which then kills any bacteria that might grow in the diluted honey!
But that’s not all. Not only does honey kill microbes, it is also anti-inflammatory, helps promote the removal of dead skin cells as the wound heals, and has also been shown to help the growth of new blood capillaries. As an added bonus, using honey on a bandage allows for fewer changes to the wound dressing and doesn’t irritate the skin the way anti-bacterial ointments can.
According to Waikato, the amount of honey needed for a dressing depends on the amount of fluid the wound is likely to produce – the more fluid the more honey. They recommend about 1 ounce of honey per 4×4 inch bandage spread evenly across it. The bandage should be large enough to completely cover the wound and any surrounding inflammation. A second layer of either absorbent or waterproof dressing is needed to help keep the honey from oozing out. Using this method, Waikato states that several days can elapse before the dressing might need to be changed.
Now, depending on the severity of the injury, seek medical attention if the wound is severe enough or conditions don’t improve in a few days. Also, honey should never be eaten by infants and young children because their digestive tracts are not fully developed and serious complications can result.
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The town of Billet Falls has always been this way for as long as anyone can remember. It’s a town, not unlike many others. It’s full of people who are all busy doing the things they do in the places they do them. There’s the banker who works at the bank. The butcher who works at the market. The nurse who works at the hospital and of course the Mayor who works at City Hall all working to keep things running along smoothly and without disruption, because that’s the way it’s always been done. The people of Billet Falls liked living life that way and no one ever dared to try living life any differently.
Some like it hot, but new research bolsters the evidence that cancer cells do not – at least in the diet. It is well documented that people who eat a diet high in turmeric (the bright yellow spice found in most curry dishes from India) have a lower incidence of breast, prostate, lung and colon cancers. Research with mice back in 2005 identified curcumin, as the component in turmeric with the cancer fighting properties. It’s no wonder. Cancer is an inflammatory disease and curcumin is a powerful anti-inflammatory with anti-tumor, anti-oxidant and anti-arthritic properties.
There’s been so much fear circulating around these days, from the economy to terrorism to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that I’m feeling a bit overdosed with it. Now comes Halloween, one of those holidays that strikes fear into the hearts of most parents as their little one’s go out into the night taking candy from strangers! Well, let’s put this into perspective and see what there really is to fear this Halloween.
The current buzz in the media and around the water cooler is about the upcoming flu season, especially the H1N1 strain of influenza – or the “Swine Flu”. While the main focus of the discussion centers around getting immunized, there are some simple habits around good personal hygiene that are key to keeping the spread of virus in check.
A friend recently commented that she resumed her workout routine of running but found that every time she exercised, her nose began to run and she sneezed constantly for hours afterward. I explained that the problem might be that she was dehydrated. This created a paradox for her. Why would a body that was dehydrated eliminate more water? The answer lies in the body’s water management system.
I’ve always had good teeth. So much so that when I was about 16, my dentist told me that I’d never have to worry about flossing. Well, those words were like a license to kill! Since then, I’ve rarely flossed. Oh yeah, in my recent years there were the fleeting attempts of developing a new habit after visiting the hygienist who would scold me about not flossing, even while admitting that I had great teeth. Of course, I’d brush twice a day, but flossing for me never caught on. I’d hear my old dentist say “you’ll never need to floss” and I’d lull myself back into complacency. Over the years, what I’ve come to learn is that flossing is not about your teeth, but rather it’s about your gums. No matter how good your teeth are, if your gums are unhealthy say good-by to those great teeth.
It was one of those rare days earlier this week when I sat down to watch a bit of television. I was amazed at how pharmaceutical companies now dominate advertising for the evening news. After a few minutes, I came to accept this observation as the new cultural norm, much the same way in watching a football game you expect to see commercials for beer and trucks. But then I was blown away by a commercial for Latisse featuring Brooke Shields.
It sounds like classic disease mongering. Some experts believe that it is. That’s the case with the diagnosis and treatment for Osteopenia or pre-Osteoporosis.
