Prepping – Honey

Honey is one of those items that many people have laying around the house, but not too many of them know its amazing properties. Used for sweetening, bug traps, wound repair, topical antibacterial, fighter of disease, and dozens of other things, honey is worth its weight in gold. From a prepping standpoint, honey is something I will always have in my “get home bag” because of its many uses.

I’d like to start with honey’s sweetening properties. Many people love the flavor of a bit of honey in some tea. It tastes great with peanut butter, or even alone on bread or crackers. You can use honey in the place of sugar in any recipe (though there are some rules to follow, and it isn’t a 1:1 trade off – Blue Flame Kitchen). Honey is popular when mixed with other herbs and spices, such as honey garlic spareribs, and honey and cinnamon french toast, or even honey mustard dressing. Use honey wherever you’d normally use sugar or other sweeteners. If you’re diabetic, there’s a few studies out that suggest using honey may allow you to use smaller amounts because it’s sweeter than sugar, and therefore you’d be reducing your glycemic index, but there’s nothing definitive at this point.

This weekend I was at the Fort at No. 4 again, and I ended up using honey to catch flies. For whatever reason, 18th century kitchens always seem to gather flies at this time of the year, and they’re a real nuisance. Unlike at home, when we’re playing in the 18th century, we can’t use electronic bug zappers or even fly tape, because neither existed in 1750. We have glass jars that you put honey or sugar water into, and the flies can get into them but not out. That works very well. One of the ladies suggested we coat a strip of linen with some honey and hang it out of the way near the flies, and hopefully they’d get stuck on it. It’s an interesting idea! I also had out a shallow bowl filled with honey water, with drops of modern dish washing liquid in it. The soap forms a coating on top of the water, and if flies go into it, they’re not able to get out. It all worked passably well, though the old fashioned method of attacking them with a wrung out wet dishcloth seemed to work best.

When we step into the realm of medicines, honey becomes much more interesting. Per Mayo and a hundred other places, honey is good for coughs and helps the body recover from colds. We’re not sure exactly how it works, though doctors assume it soothes coughs  by coating the throat. If you suffer from seasonal allergies, you can eat a dose of honey per day (usually a tablespoon, raw) that is local to you (within a five mile radius) and it will slowly help you get over your allergies through getting you to ingest micro-doses of your allergens. To use honey as medicine, you really need to do your research. While honey on its own isn’t likely to cause you any harm, using it internally for ailments is best done after a good study of available medications.

Honey can even “…offer antidepressant, anticonvulsant and anti-anxiety benefits. In some studies, honey has been shown to help prevent memory disorders.” (Mayo Clinic)

“Traditionally, honey is used in the treatment of eye diseases, bronchial asthma, throat infections, tuberculosis, thirst, hiccups, fatigue, dizziness, hepatitis, constipation, worm infestation, piles, eczema, healing of ulcers, and wounds and used as a nutritious supplement. The ingredients of honey have been reported to exert antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antiproliferative, anticancer, and antimetastatic effects. Many evidences suggest the use of honey in the control and treatment of wounds, diabetes mellitus, cancer, asthma, and also cardiovascular, neurological, and gastrointestinal diseases. Honey has a potential therapeutic role in the treatment of disease by phytochemical, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antioxidant properties.” — National Library of Medicine

The only time honey is not indicated is if someone has an allergy to it, or in infants under the age of 12 months. Giving honey to infants can actually cause a honey allergy to form, and an allergic reaction at that age can be incredibly damaging. Honey can also, in rare cases, contain live botulism bacteria. In adults, the tiny amounts don’t even register in our bodies, but for infants it can be dangerous. So wait for your kiddos to be older. Of course, you can still use it topically at that age; just cover it up with a bandaid so they don’t eat it!

And that brings me to wound care. This is where honey shines beyond all other medicines, in my opinion. First, a personal story.

Many years ago, I had a friend who managed to give himself a hernia. He had it fixed, and in doing so they cut a gaping hole in his lower abdomen, near the curve of his leg. I had been going with him to appointments, because I was helping take care of him while he wasn’t ambulatory. I asked the doctor when we would be able to start using honey. He pooh pooh’d me several times over six weeks. At the six week mark, he said that the wound was healed, though not well. I will tell you how “not well” it was: there was still a gaping hole! I could fit three fingers in that darn hole, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore and it wasn’t seeping. He basically said gee sorry, you’re going to live with this extra huge hole in you now. I asked if NOW I might use the honey. He glared at me, but explained (as if to a child) that putting sweetener on a wound that size wouldn’t help, and that honestly nothing was going to help because the wound had dried out. But sure, knock myself out.

Three weeks after that snarky appointment, my friend’s wound was closed. It wasn’t fully healed, but it had closed up until all that remained was a deeply puckered mark. Even that mostly went away. You can tell he’s been cut there, but not unless you look closely. All I did was pack that wound, the whole thing, with about a half cup of honey each night. Then I put a sealed bandage over it to keep it from dripping everywhere. I used manuka honey because we had it, and it’s a medical honey, but I could have used any honey quite honestly. At the time, I assumed manuka would be best, and so that’s what I used. Over a period of about three weeks, the wound just closed right up. There was a little seepage, and that was it.

At the final appointment, the surgeon spent most of it questioning me and taking notes. He was going to be using honey from now on during wound care. He’d never seen anything like it. And that’s the problem with today’s doctors. If it isn’t from Big Pharma, they tend to sniff derisively at it and ignore it. But it’s hard to look away from something THAT drastic. With “normal” medicine, that wound would never have healed closed.

So how does honey work on wounds? That’s a fun rabbit hole to go down. I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version, and you can dive down the research hole yourself later, if you want.

Basically, when you have a wound, your body starts tossing white blood cells to the spot to help fight off infection. When you spread honey (any non-pasteurized honey or 100% raw honey) over the wound, it reacts to the white blood cells. The honey and the white blood cells interact, and a microscopic film of very weak hydrogen peroxide is created across the entire honey-covered area. It’s so weak that it doesn’t cause any damage to healthy human skin, but it’s strong enough to repel bacteria. Also, honey keeps the wound moist, which enables it to heal faster and more efficiently. On top of that, the honey keeps all oxygen out, which also aids in healing and smothers any bacteria that might possibly get through. Basically, if bacteria gets into the honey (with the exception of botulism), it basically gives off all its water into the honey until it is completely desiccated and dies (National Library of Medicine).

Honey doesn’t have to be refrigerated or stored in any special way. I have a friend who’s a food archaeologist and she was one of the lucky (crazy!) people who ate the figs that were found in a jar of honey at Pompeii. Figs that were in honey for almost 2000 years, edible. You can preserve just about anything in honey.

Honey is good on small wounds, and will help you heal without a scar. But what about larger wounds? Well, my friend is testament to how well honey works on large open wounds. The process of healing is the same. When you pack a large wound with honey, it creates the perfect balance in your body to allow it to slowly begin to heal and close up, while warding off infection. Women who were treated with honey after having Cesarean sections did better than those receiving antibiotics. “On average, the healing time with MGH was 19.12 ± 7.760 days versus 24.54 ± 8.168 days in the control group. MGH is a potent alternative treatment to antibiotics and povidone-iodine because while the complication risk is similar, MGH has additional benefits. MGH promotes wound healing and does not bear the risk of resistance” (National Library of Medicine). The use of honey in obstetric wounds is well documented in third world countries. But it’s becoming a tool used in first world countries, as well. “According to the study results, honey treatments showed greater efficiency and provided benefits to the patients by accelerating wound healing and decreasing reported pain.” (MDPI)

If all that weren’t enough, honey is also resistant to all of the bacteria that is currently antibiotic resistant. As someone who’s had a mild bout of MRSA in the past, I can tell you that honey is definitely your friend. Topical and ingested antibiotics rarely touch MRSA these days, but honey stops it dead in its tracks. And while I haven’t seen it done, I believe there’s been a recent study where they used honey successfully on flesh eating bacteria. It’s also frequently used to help people who have major burns over their body, because it keeps them from getting infections.

As you can see, the use of honey is both ancient and contemporary. Because it isn’t dose oriented, like a pharmaceutical antibiotic or antibacterial product, it’s safe for even the amateur to use. In an emergency situation, packing a wound with honey will slow down and possibly stop bleeding, while retarding any infection that may be present. It’s easy to find; just look for bees. Medical grade honey (MGH) is best for very deep wounds (gunshots, punctures, animal gore wound, etc.) because it is guaranteed sterile. They use a process that “cleans” the honey without destroying any of the healthy beneficial parts of it.

As a note, never heat your honey up more than “warm room temperature.” For eating, that’s just fine, but if you plan on using the honey in a medical form at all, just don’t. Heat can cause the honey to stop functioning the way we want it to.

There you have it. The short (HAH) version of why honey’s such a miracle item and should be in your bag. We buy good quality regular honey that is raw, and then put it into little squeeze tubes for ease of use when we’re dealing with wounds. Most of the time, we’re just putting it onto booboos for the kids. Once in a while, it’s for something larger, and we keep a tub of it around for that.