Can there really be a type of honey that can treat infections better than antibiotics? Honey has been used until WWII , as an antibacterial to treat wounds.
Then the discovery of penicillin and other 20th century antibiotic drugs shoved honey to the wayside. Its valuable natural healing attributes were deemed inconsequential by conventional medical practitioners, just as so many other traditional and homeopathic remedies were.
It seems this long-standing snub may finally be resolved. During the last decade, medical establishments have begun to seriously investigate the possible clinical benefits of a certain kind of honey called active manuka honey. It is made by bees in New Zealand from the manuka flowering bush called Leptospermum scoparium.
Professor Peter Molan — a researcher at the University of Waikato in New Zealand — has spearheaded the efforts to determine manuka’s healing properties, which in some instances go beyond those of traditional antibiotics.
Professor Molan is the head of a research team known as the Waikato Honey Research Unit. Founded in 1995, the Unit grew out of the University’s already unparalleled study of the composition of honey and its antimicrobial activity. All honey has some bacteria-fighting capability due to its high concentrations of glucose, fructose, acid, and the hydrogen peroxide that is slowly released by the glucose oxidase enzyme.
In an interview with BBC News, Molan explained, “In manuka honey, and its close relative which grows in Australia called jellybush, there’s something else besides the hydrogen peroxide.” Molan and his team call that “something else”
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