Bacterial Fighting Capacity of Manuka Honey

The Science Daily article How Manuka Honey Helps Fight Infection reveals details about the bacterial fighting capacity of manuka honey. The capacity is linked to the destruction of key bacterial proteins but interestingly that is not attributable soley to sugars found in the manuka honey. It was discovered that a protein of the feared bacterial strain MRSA, identified as Fabl, which is needed for fatty acid biosynthesis, is eliminated by the honey. This is significant because MRSA has proven to be resistent to many antibiotics and honey might be a safe and affordable alternative.

Health Benefits of Raw Honey

Health Benefits of Really Raw Honey is the title of an article that details what the title indicates- some very tangible health benefits of raw honey. Honey's nutritional and healing values are perhaps better known than some others such as its use for stomach and digestive disorders. Mentioned specifically are beneficial effects on gastric and intestinal ulcers as well as laxative effects.

Also cited is the use of raw honey to treat allergies. A daily teaspoon of raw honey may be all that is required.

Nutritional and Energy Enhancements from Honey

A fact sheet from the National Honey Board titled Honey's Nutrition and Health Facts contains some nuggests about honey's nutritional advantages. Although the main ingredients of honey are water and carbohydrates there are also a large number of vitamins and minerals included. They are calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, niacin, riboflavin and pantothenic acid.

Honey is also a source of anti-oxidents which comes as news to some. The anti-oxidents come in the form of varieties of flavonoids and phenolic acids. Usually darker honey has higher anti-oxident content

Carboydrate content is divided about equally between fructose and glucose and yields 17 grams of carbohydrates per tablespoon. Honey has been used by athletes since antiquity.

Honey- A Natural Cough Medicine

A Yahoo news story touts honey as a cough medicine that is especially good for children. A teaspoon may be all that is needed to provide a safe and effective antidote to coughing. In fact some cough medicines may not be safe for children. Yet even honey is not recommended for children under the age of one due to a rare possiblity of botulism.

Tupelo Honey

Holley Bishop wrote an eloquent book about bees and honey titled Robbing the Bees. The nature of honey is a function of the type of flowers attended by the gathering honey bees.

A highly valued form of honey is tupelo honey. Tupelo buds grow on tupelo trees. Tupelo trees grow in Alabama and Georgia but are found in the greatest numbers in the panhandle section of Florida. Tupelo honey is light in color, unique in flavor and does not crystallize like other forms of honey.1



Reference:

1. Robbing the Bees by Holley Bishop; Published by Free Press; a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.; Copyright 2005.

Energy from Honey

The webpage HONEY'S NUTRITION AND HEALTH FACTS contains nutritional information about honey including its carbohydrate content. According to the source honey has a carbohydrate content of 82.4 percent. More meaningful to most though is the caloric measure per tablespoon which is said to be 64 calories. A tablespoon of honey can appreciably sweeten a much larger portion of food.

Most significant are the energy enhancing effects of honey. The linked page refers to a University of Memphis Exercise and Sports Nutrition Laboratory study which cited honey's effectiveness as an energy source when consumed shortly before exercising. The reason may be the one mentioned by Dr. Richard Kreider. According to Kreider when compared to other carbohydrate sources honey seems to have relatively mild effects on blood sugar.

Nutritional Components of Honey

Honey's Nutritional Profile details components of honey relevant to human nutrition. Included is a listing of vitamins and minerals. Also present in honey are flavenoids and phenolic acids which enhance the body's antioxident arsenal.

Honey Used to Enhance Beauty

Honey has a number of uses apart from its food value. It has medicinal properties when used as an antiseptic and it can also serve as a skin moisturizer. The Magic of Honey, a post at the blog RealAge, discusses the advantages of honey.

The blog entry notes that the sugar content and thick constituency of honey make it an ideal salve for wounds. The healing power of honey was previously noted in this blog.

As The Magic of Honey blog entry states:

"Honey is a terrific moisturizer for the face and body, too. "Honey is a natural humectant, meaning it draws 'free water' from interior tissues to the surface layers of the skin," says Wechsler. That subtle fluid shift creates a plumping effect that temporarily improves the appearance of wrinkles--handy before a morning presentation or a big night out."

There is also a formula provided for skin treatment which consists of two tablespoons of honey and two teaspoons of whole milk prepared and applied as indicated.

Medicinal Benefits of Honey

Sometimes humanity forgets old friends in the process of making new ones. We witness this at times in the field of medicine where tried and true remedies are abandoned for more high tech alternatives. An article entitled 'Honey Helps Problem Wounds' follows. It appears in italics. My comments are in standard form.


A household remedy millennia old is being reinstated: honey helps the treatment of some wounds better than the most modern antibiotics. For several years now medical experts from the University of Bonn have been clocking up largely positive experience with what is known as medihoney. Even chronic wounds infected with multi-resistant bacteria often healed within a few weeks. In conjunction with colleagues from Düsseldorf, Homburg and Berlin they now want to test the experience gained in a large-scale study, as objective data on the curative properties of honey are thin on the ground. The fact that honey can help wounds to heal is something that was known to the Ancient Egyptians several thousand years ago. And in the last two world wars poultices with honey were used to assist the healing process in soldiers' wounds. However, the rise of the new antibiotics replaced this household remedy. "In hospitals today we are faced with germs which are resistant to almost all the current anti-biotics," Dr. Arne Simon explains. "As a result, the medical use of honey is becoming attractive again for the treatment of wounds."

Dr. Simon works on the cancer ward of the Bonn University Children's Clinic. As far as the treatment of wounds is concerned, his young patients form part of a high-risk group: the medication used to treat cancer known as cytostatics not only slows down the reproduction of malignant cells, but also impairs the healing process of wounds. "Normally a skin injury heals in a week, with our children it often takes a month or more," he says. Moreover, children with leukaemia have a weakened immune system. If a germ enters their bloodstream via a wound, the result may be a fatal case of blood poisoning.

For several years now Bonn paediatricians have been pioneering the use in Germany of medihoney in treating wounds. Medihoney bears the CE seal for medical products; its quality is regularly tested. The success is astonishing: "Dead tissue is rejected faster, and the wounds heals more rapidly," Kai Sofka, wound specialist at the University Children's Clinic, emphasises. "What is more, changing dressings is less painful, since the poultices are easier to remove without damaging the newly formed layers of skin." Some wounds often smell unpleasant -- an enormous strain on the patient. Yet honey helps here too by reducing the smell. "Even wounds which consistently refused to heal for years can, in our experience, be brought under control with medihoney -- and this frequently happens within a few weeks," Kai Sofka says.

In the meantime two dozen hospitals in Germany are using honey in their treatment of wounds. Despite all the success there have hitherto been very few reliable clinical studies of its effectiveness. In conjunction with colleagues from Düsseldorf, Homburg and Berlin, the Bonn medical staff now want to remedy this. With the Woundpecker Data Bank, which they have developed themselves, they will be recording and evalu-ating over 100 courses of disease over the next few months. The next step planned is comparative studies with other therapeutic methods such as the very expensive cationic silver dressings. "These too are an effective anti-bacterial method," says Dr. Arne Simon. "However, it is not yet clear whether the silver released from some dressings may lead to side-effects among children."

Effective bacteria killer
It has already been proved that medihoney even puts paid to multi-resistant germs such as MRSA. In this respect medihoney is neck and neck in the race to beat the antibiotic mupirocin, currently the local MRSA antibiotic of choice. This is shown by a study recently published by researchers in Australia. In one point medihoney was even superior to its rival: the bacteria did not develop any resistance to the natural product during the course of treatment.

It is also known today why honey has an antiseptic effect: when producing honey, bees add an enzyme called glucose-oxidase. This enzyme ensures that small amounts of hydrogen peroxide, an effective antiseptic, are constantly being formed from the sugar in the honey. The advantage over the hydrogen peroxide from the chemist's is that small concentrations are sufficient to kill the germs, as it is constantly being produced. As a rule much larger quantities of hydrogen peroxide would have to be used, as hydrogen peroxide loses its potency over time. However, in large concentrations it not only damages the bacteria, but also the skin cells.

Furthermore, medihoney consists of two different types of honey: one which forms a comparatively large amount of hydrogen peroxide, and another known as "lepto-spermum honey". Leptospermum is a species of tree which occurs in New Zealand and Australia. Honey from these trees has a particularly strong anti-bacterial effect, even in a 10% dilution. "It is not yet known exactly why this is," Dr. Arne Simon says. "Probably it is a mix of phenol-type substances which come from the plant and make life particularly difficult for the bacteria in the wound."


Good news. An inexpensive and readily available remedy. After reading the article a member of my family applied honey to a wound that was taking a long time to heal and was rewarded with the hoped for results.