Less Known Uses of Honey

While many of us realize that there are many uses of honey in cooking or as a nutrient for sustaining life, honey does have various uses that may surprise you, and make you realize just how valuable honey really is for so much more! 

Honey as an antiseptic   

Due to such pure properties of honey, it could be put over a wound as an antiseptic if you were out camping or simply enjoy your usual outdoor activities. Pouring honey over a wound would prevent dirt and bacteria from getting in a wound until proper treatment is sought.

• The thick texture of honey provides a protective barrier to prevent the infection of wounds.
• Honey has properties that create a moist environment that allows skin cells to heal and regenerate across the surface of the wound, preventing deformity of the skin.
• Honey creates a clean healthy wound bed in which the regeneration of tissues can occur by causing scabs and dead cells to leave the surface of the wound.
• Honey stimulates the regrowth of tissue involved in the healing process. It stimulates the formation of new blood capillaries and the growth of fibroblasts that replace the connective tissue of the deeper layer of the skin and produce the collagen fibers that give strength to the repair. In addition, honey stimulates the growth of epithelial cells that form the new skin cover over a healed wound. Honey thus prevents scarring and keloid formation, and removes the need for skin grafting even with quite large wounds.
• Honey does not stick to the underlying wound tissues, so there is no tearing away of newly formed tissue, and no pain, when dressings are changed.
• Honey has an anti-inflammatory action, which reduces the swelling around a wound. This improves circulation and thus hastens the healing process. It also reduces pain. The amount of fluid exuding from wounds is also decreased by the anti-inflammatory action.
• The high sugar content of honey draws lymph out of a wound, which lifts dirt out of the wound bed.
• Honey prevents the odor that is commonly associated with serious wounds and skin ulcers, by clearing bacterial infection and more immediately, by providing sugar to any bacteria present. In this environment, lactic acid is produced instead of the smelly byproducts of the degradation of protein.
• Honey rapidly clears infection from wounds. It is fully effective even with antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Unlike antiseptics and antibiotics, there is no impairment of the healing process through adverse effects on wound tissues.