Health Watch: Honey as an Aid to Healing

Dr. Pradnya Kulkarni, UPI Asia, 11/6/2007

…Honey has been advocated as a medicine since antiquity. It is said to have antibacterial properties, and in the past half century many researchers have experimented with honey dressings to treat wounds when conventional therapy has failed.

Spencer E. Efem of the University Teaching Hospital in Calabar, Nigeria, published a series of papers on the antibacterial and wound-healing properties of honey. He applied unprocessed honey to chronic non-healing wounds several times daily, after cleaning them with normal saline. He noted that wounds healed rapidly and became free of bacteria. This was demonstrated with the help of a laboratory test, called bacterial culture, which helps to determine what type of infective bacteria are present. Wounds that were positive for a variety of bacteria before became sterile after a week of honey dressings and went on to heal rapidly and completely…