Honey as a Dressing for Wounds, Burns, and Ulcers (Part 6).

The Old and young.
French doctors advise weak, emaciated children & older patients to take honey & cream or honey & butter instead of cod liver oil.Boiled mild mixed with equal quantity of water & seven percent honey is a fabulous energy packed food for children.

Honey as a Dressing for Wounds, Burns, and Ulcers: A Brief Review of Clinical Reports and Experimental Studies.

Risks and Adverse effects.

No adverse effects have been noted in any of the studies in which honey has been applied topically to experimental wounds on animals.

Burns.
Apply freely over burns. It cools, removes pain and aids fast healing without scarring. Apart from being a salve and antibiotic, bacteria cannot live in honey.

These studies have included histological examination of treated tissues. Honey has been used topically on wounds over thousands of years also without gaining any reputation for adverse effects. The many reports published in more recent times on its clinical usage on open wounds mention no more than a transient stinging sensation in some patients, other than in 2 cases where the pain persisted for 15 minutes and in 2 cases where the pain was such that the application of honey could not be tolerated.

Infertility.
Honey consumed with milk increases human sperm count to an astonishing degree. Since, basically Sexual Virility is concerned with three fundamental Organs in the male body, all these organs use Glucose and Fructose to obtain energy.Honey as already mentioned is the best source of the above required sugars.

There was reported a transient stinging sensation and redness of the eye soon after putting honey in the eye, but never enough to stop the treatment in the 102 cases in a trial of honey for ophthalmological use. Generally the topical application of honey on open wounds is reported to be soo thing, to relieve pain, be non-irritating, cause no pain on dressing, and give no secondary reactions.

Baldness.
Scrub the bald area with onions till red. Then apply honey.

Allergy to honey is rare, but there could be an allergic reaction to either the pollen or the bee proteins in honey. In reports of clinical studies where honey was applied to open wounds of a total of 125 patients it was stated that there were no allergic or adverse reactions.

Constipation.
For patients suffering from constipation as spoon of honey mildly heated with a small quantity of wheat husk added after it is cooled & administered to the patient, gives immediate relief.Otherwise take ½ teaspoon honey mixed with ½ - 1cup warm water 2-3 times a day.

However, an occurrence of a minor haemorrhage soon after application of honey has been mentioned in reference to an unrecorded case. Reference has been made to dehydration of tissues if too much honey is applied to a wound, but it has been stated that the hydration of the tissues is easily restored by saline packs. Because honey contains up to 40% glucose there is a theoretical risk of it adversely elevating the blood glucose level of diabetics when applied topically on a large open wound.

Paralysis.
The famous physician ibn Sina (Aviccina) writes that licking honey mixed with the extract of boiled rice Wij (Peench in Urdu) helps cure partial facial paralysis.

Honey sometimes contains spores of clostridia, which poses a small risk of wound botulism. However, in none of the many reports published on the clinical usage of honey on open wounds was the honey that was used sterilised, yet there are no reports of any type of infection resulting from the application of honey to wounds.

High Blood Pressure.
Take mixed 1 teaspoon honey, 1 teaspoon ginger juice and 1 teaspoon cumin powder 2x a day.

If spores germinated, any vegetative cells of clostridia, being obligate anaerobes, would be unlikely to survive in the presence of the hydrogen peroxide that is generated in diluted honey.

Anaemia.
Honey is the best blood enricher by raising corpuscle content. The darker the honey the more minerals it contains. Take 1 ripe banana with 1 tablespoon honey 1-2x a day.

But the use of honey as a wound dressing has been argued against, however, on the grounds that the risk of it possibly causing wound botulism is unacceptable. This objection can be overcome by the use of honey that has been treated by gamma-irradiation, which kills clostridial spores in honey without loss of any of the antibacterial activity.

The problem of attraction of flies and ants to honey dressings, not commonly noted, can be overcome by using effective secondary dressings so that the honey is prevented from leaking out or being exposed to insects.