Monday, February 08, 2010

Indian Honey Used to Treat Wounds, Sore Throats, Acne

Medicinal Value of Indian Honey is on a Par with the World's Best
Jyoti Shelar, DNA, 2/8/2010

Mumbai: Indian honey has equal medicinal properties as the Manuka honey of New Zealand, believed to be of the best quality in the world.

Doctors from Nair Hospital tested the Indian honey on 226 patients and found that it had incredible healing properties. The findings were recently presented in the Second International Honey Conference in Malaysia.

Dr Sunita Deshpande of the hospital’s microbiology department and her six doctorate students tested nine types of Indian honeys. “We found all Indian honeys have almost equal properties as the New Zealand’s Manuka honey,” said Deshpande, who presented the research paper in the conference.

According to Deshpande, the antibacterial and anti-fungal properties of Jambhul honey were similar to those in Manuka honey. Therefore, they chose it to study its effect on patients. The study included patients with severe wounds including burns, cuts, diabetic foot, and those with sore throat and acne.

The wounds of patients were treated with dressing of sterilised Jambhul honey, sore throat patients were given small tubes filled with honey for intake and those with acne were asked to put the honey on the skin with medical gauze on it.

“Wounds of patients showed 90% healing within a week. Even deep injuries of those with diabetic foot healed within 15 days,” Deshpande said, adding that the patients experienced less pain and irritation as compared to the regular dressings.

Similarly, acne disappeared and there was no relapse recorded in 80% patients even after six months. Likewise, those with a sore throat experienced relief within a week, said Deshpande who has tested more than 15 types of Indian honeys in the past nine years…

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is good to see more honey being studied for potential wound use. I know this is also happening in other countries such as Malaysia and Australia too, as well as New Zealand's manuka honey.

Would be nice to see more details on just what Indian honeys were used, and how they were measured / assessed for their antibacterial level. Just as not all manuka honey is equal (and is no point comparing ordinary manuka honey with others for healing properties), it would be much more useful to know how to judge / measure other honey types.

Using honey on wounds is potentially very beneficial (as this Indian study shows) but care should be taken to use honey of a suitable medical grade.

Konika said...

Hi
I would like to meet the doctor or contact him for suggestions for my mother who has got gangrene in the toe and wound is not healing from 6 month
Please give me doctors contact on komusica@gmail.com
Thanks