Did you ever try raw honey to heal wounds?

Raw unfiltered honey has antibacterial, fungal, and viral properties. I’ve never tried it, but it should work. I’ve got lots of honey. I’ll keep it in mind.

I’ve never tried it, but I have heard of doing it. To prevent scarring I prefer to just keep the wound moist with vaseline or an antibacterial ointment. I’m reluctant to put sweet things on my body, especially during the summer time.

I have heard of raw honey, because of the properties listed above by @snowberry. I have more often seen aloe vera gel. according to this article on “WebMD”,

Aloe seems to be able to speed wound healing by improving blood circulation through the area and preventing cell death around a wound.

It also appears that aloe gel has properties that are harmful to certain types of bacteria and fungi.

We tried special honey bandages in our vein clinic because we do a lot of wound care with patients who suffer from venous stasis ulcers. We stopped using them because they weren’t effective. I also believe there was a study published that said they weren’t effective. There are better tools for healing wounds (we actually graft baby foreskins over wounds in some cases).

@gorillapaws I was completely unprepared to read about uses for baby foreskins in a question about honey. Unfortunately, I can now picture a bizarre circumcision campaign. Did your special honey bandages use raw honey? I would imagine medical applications would insist on using filtered and pasteurized honey. Interesting.

@gorillapaws Yes, raw, unfiltered, organic honey is the what you needed. If your bandages weren’t all of those, I’m not surprised it didn’t work. It’s because this type of honey actually contains antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral properties, as well as nutrients for the healing skin.

@snowberry I’m not sure what the specific product was, only that it was a honey-based product we bought from a medical supply company. Venous stasis ulcers are notoriously difficult to treat. They result from circulation issues in the veins of the leg (often in people who have had DVTs called post thrombotic syndrome). Basically the “dirty blood” cannot return to the heart to be filtered and oxygenated. So you have cell waste and deoxygenated blood lingering in the tissue for extended periods of time. Wounds don’t heal (and get worse) under these circumstances. Apparently honey is insufficient to treat these types of ulcers while there are other products that do work well. Honey may work well in other applications however. I have know knowledge of it beyond our failed attempts.

I just read some studies and certain types if wound care it has been shown that honey is not a good choice for treatment, healing time was slower than traditional medical treatment. Other sorts of wounds it seemed adequate, but probably anything would have been adequate who knows. Some of the studies were not well designed so it wouldn’t be the final word in the matter, but still seemed worth considering.

Honey does allow bacterias and molds that multiply via spores to grow, which is why honey should not be given to infants to eat for fear if botulism poisoning and some other pathogens.

@JLeslie Again, they’re talking about the commercial honey that’s been cooked to death and filtered until everything of value is taken out of it. Raw, unfiltered (meaning it’s just been strained to remove bee parts), and organic honey does not grow mold or bacteria or harbor viruses. That’s because the propolis is still in the honey. It’s what the bees use to embalm an intruder to the hive. They don’t have the ability to remove an intruder once they’ve stung it to death, so they embalm it with propolis. Proprolis is antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral. It doesn’t help that mainstream US people don’t know about it, so it’s looked at with suspicion, but the truth is it’s been used for 1000’s of years. The Egyptions even used propolis to preserve their mummies.

Here’s a link to describe it a bit further. http://thenaturalshopper.com/resources/propolis/benefits-propolis.html

@snowberry I don’t know about propolis, what I do know is raw honey can contain botulism spores and other spores. It might not matter in the case of topical treatment, but it can when ingested. Honey is a natural antibacterial for bacteria that multiplies by division.

@JLeslie As does about everything you eat. A lot of it is having a decent immune system. A lot of kids will pick up gum off of the sidewalk and pop it into their mouths (mine did until I finally broke them of it). I’d say that’s a great source for all sorts of nasties. Thankfully they didn’t get sick from it, but you get the idea.

Personally I wouldn’t hesitate to feed Raw, unfiltered, organic honey to my little one, especially if they’re breast fed. It’s all in the details. But lots of others would be horrified at the thought because of the FDA and their agenda (that’s a whole other discussion).

Well, I have no argument that the FDA and big business have some agendas. If you google I think you will find a lot of info on honey and botulism. I would link a bunch but I don’t know which whole foods, natural, health site you will believe.

The risk is low, but I wouldn’t give it to my infant personally. If you would give it to yours, go ahead.

I just looked up botulism and it is anaerobic, so deep puncture wounds could theoretically be a problem similar to tetanus I guess out in the dirt.

I read that some suspect some SIDS cases might actually be botulism, but I don’t know a lot if info in that theory. I guess nowadays they would know if a baby died from that.

—@JLeslie I believe the majority of SIDS deaths are due to toxins out-gassing fom the contents of the baby mattress. Put up a crib bumper all around, and the gas (which is heavier than air) stays right there where the baby’s breathing. It builds up in their bodies until they stop breathing.

There are 3 basic ways to deal with this: Either buy a non-air-permeable mattress cover, don’t put up crib bumpers, or only buy a mattress filled with non-toxic material. This information has been around for a while— http://www.healthychild.com/has-the-cause-of-crib-death-sids-been-found/

@JLeslie The reason I’ve always heard for not feeding infants honey has more to do with the antibiotic properties. If the infants metabolism is completely free of pathogens, the immune system will not develop properly.

@yetanotheruser No, it has to do with botulism poisoning. On the rare occasion the honey has botulism spores an infant can die from a much smaller amount. An adult is able to tolerate some spores, of course a lot of botulism is deadly to adults also.

I assume pasteurized honey is not heated enough to kill botulism so it is a concern for all honey.

Here is one link from a site that is seemingly whole food oriented.

There is tons of information and studies.

Here is a summary of some studies, but the validity if the results are questionable.

We use sugar in veterinary medicine.

Yes, Honey does have healing properties but don’t let the flies find you or you will have maggots in your wound. lol

It is important to keep the wound well covered, suitably sized Primapore dressings are ideal I find. Use a generous amount of honey, applied to the dressing not to the wound directly and change the dressing daily if the wound is exuding any substance, if not, the dressing can remain unchanged for a couple of days. I have been using Manuka honey for years and years and have always found it remarkably effective at wound healing.

A woman I have met on several occasions was at my place one day and telling me about a recent experience she had gone through. She had been bitten by a white tail spider just above her breast. After several days the affected skin became necrotic and she ended up in hospital. The hospital tried every avenue open to them, antibiotics proved completely ineffective. A doctor came and told her that they could do nothing more for her. Her sister came and brought with her some commercially produced wound dressings impregnated with Manuka honey, the treatment began to work immediately and soon she was able to return home, completely healed.

@Syz very interesting, thanks for the information, those are some serious wounds.

I should add that the UMF rating of the honey is very important, not all honeys are the same, it depends upon the variety of plant it was sourced from. In NZ honey sourced from the Manuka (leptospermum scoparium) fits the requirements, the honey made from it has UMF ratings that range from little or none to high, it is the high UMF rating that is ideal for wound healing.

On Venus ulceration
Venous ulceration is managed with wound debridement, as needed, barrier creams to protect adjacent skin, and wound dressings tailored to the environment of the wound (eg, absorbent dressings for weeping wounds). (See ‘Ulcer care’ above.)
•Topical antibiotics, debriding enzymes, growth factors, and honey are not effective in the management of venous ulceration. (See ‘Topical agents’ above.)

On thermal wounds
Silver sulfadiazine (SSD) is commonly used for prophylaxis against infection but is generally not used for superficial burns. Treatment with SSD may slow wound healing and increases the frequency of dressing changes, resulting in increased pain. Modern membrane-like dressings may be superior to SSD, while honey, an ancient wound remedy, also appears to be an effective treatment [15–17]. Topical antibiotics are discussed in greater detail separately. (See “Local treatment of burns: Topical antimicrobial agents and dressings”, section on ‘Topical antimicrobial agents’.)

On sore throats
Other interventions — Other interventions include sipping warm beverages (eg, honey or lemon tea, chicken soup) or cold beverages, or eating cold or frozen desserts (eg, ice cream, popsicles) [37,38]. Honey should be avoided in children younger than one year of age because of the possible contamination of the honey with Clostridium botulinum spores, potentially leading to infantile botulism (see “Botulism”, section on ‘Infant botulism’). For children with enlarged tonsils and difficulty swallowing solid foods, a soft diet may be more palatable [31].

Source: Up To Date

@osoraro The main cornerstone for treatment of venous stasis ulcers is ablation of any superficial varicosities that may be producing venous reflux in the area (diagnosed by a venous duplex scan). This is combined with compression based therapies such as unna boot wrappings.

@gorillapaws Yes, thanks. I know. But the OP was asking about honey, so I went to Uptodate and cut and pasted a bit about honey.

@osoraro Sorry, I didn’t intend for my comment to come across as rude. In the quoted reference, there wasn’t any mention of these techniques. You’d probably be surprised how much MDs not involved in vein treatment don’t know about venous disease. We regularly do educational talks for Healthcare professionals and many never learned much of the material we cover. The field is rapidly advancing and there’s a lot to keep up with, especially with so much going on in other specialties.

@gorillapaws No offense taken. I didn’t want to cut and paste the whole UTD article as it was very long. I was just posting the relevant portion regarding honey.