U.S. Surgeon Uses Honey, Polarized Light to Save Limbs

How Sweet it is to Use Honey to Heal Wounds
By Tracy Farnham, The News Herald (USA), 6/21/2008

…Dr. Frank Steele is reviving the use of honey, along with polarized light therapy, for wound care and, in some cases, an alternative solution to amputation.

Steele is a general surgeon who is now medical director of the Comprehensive Wound Healing Center at Valdese Hospital and at Blue Ridge HealthCare's new Affinity Face and Body Center.

Steele said as a youngster he recalled seeing a short movie about an African Safari where a villager used honey to treat a child's sore leg.

"I never thought that almost six decades later I would be doing the same thing," he said.

Returning from recent trips to San Diego and Toronto, Steele has presented his latest work titled "Healing problem wounds using a combination of polarized light and honey."

With this successful treatment, amputations of several limbs have been prevented…

In 2002 Steele was treating a colleague with one amputated leg and suffering from diabetes, bad kidneys and a bad heart.

"Losing that other foot meant a lot to him. Without it he would become dependent," Steele said.

He began polarized light treatment, which healed a spot, but after five months the extreme inflammation and MRSA created complications, and a hole emerged in one toe. "Conventional treatment was to take off his leg." Steele said.

Antibiotics go where there's blood supply and with dead tissue, no antibiotic could get there, he added. Since honey isn't dependent on the blood supply to get there, it eventually produced results.

The colleague said he had nothing to lose and asked Steele to put honey in the hole.

"We applied honey every day for two and a half months. He was getting better almost immediately and kept his leg," Steele said…

Steele's results have been from locally-produced, raw, non-pasteurized honey…