Medihoney

Medihoney is the first FDA approved, pre-packaged method of utilizing the medicinal properties of honey. And it's rapidly compiling an impressive record of success, demonstrating the feasibility of honey as medicine.

Are You a Skeptic?

Are you a bit skeptical about the concept of medical honey? If you are, it’s certainly understandable. Because at first glance, the concept of using honey as a medicine might seem a bit strange. Honey is a food item, and that’s primarily how we think of it.

But for essentially all of human history, honey has been regarded by many as a healing agent as well as a food item. In recent years, though, with the prevalence of wonder drugs and medical breakthroughs, the concept of medicinal honey has taken a back seat.

That’s in the process of changing.

What Is It?

Medihoney is made primarily from Manuka honey, which is known for its particularly strong antibiotic and healing properties.

The Manuka honey is used to create a sterile, natural dressing for wounds, both as a topical gel and as pre-packaged dressings. The pre-packaged dressings are available both in non-adhesive and adhesive forms.

The manufacturer, Derma Sciences, received approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 2007.

How Effective Is It?

Medihoney has proven to be amazingly effective -- and not only as an alternative to more traditional treatments. Many times over, the Manuka honey-based dressing has proven to be more effective than standard wound treatments.

Here are just a few of the trials and reports that have been compiled to date:

• In a controlled trial in which Derma Sciences honey-based dressings were compared with conventional wound treatment, the patients treated with the honey-based dressings healed 40 days earlier than the control group.
• In a case study of 11 non-healing venous leg ulcers, Medihoney trounced traditional treatments. All 11 ulcers had been treated with a variety of conventional methods including antibiotic therapy, silver antimicrobial dressings, multi-layered compression, and hyperbaric oxygen. All had failed to heal. After treating with the honey-based dressings, 6 of the wounds were healed within 4 weeks, and all were completely healed within 6 weeks.
• At Long Island Jewish Hospital in New York, a patient suffering from a rare non-healing fungal infection was in danger of requiring a leg amputation. None of the conventional treatments tried had been effective, but within a short time of treatment with Medihoney, the wound responded and began to heal, and the leg was saved.



• In a 2008 controlled clinical trial, the honey-based dressing was found to be far more effective at eradicating the deadly MRSA bacteria than a front-line treatment. After 4 weeks of treatment, MRSA had been eradicated in 70% of the wounds treated with honey-based dressings, compared to only 16% of the wounds treated with a commonly used wound care gel.

Though the medical benefits of honey have been known for thousands of years, the acceptance of medicinal honey by modern medicine is only beginning to happen. But judging by the results thus far, it appears to be only a matter of time before the medicinal properties of honey are recognized, accepted and widely utilized by health care professionals around the world.

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