BY NATHANIEL ALTMAN

Some of the first honey hunters are believed to have lived in what is now eastern Spain, as evidenced by a 10,000-year-old Paleolithic cave painting from Bicorp.

The painting depicts two figures standing on a rope ladder as they climb the face of a cliff. The arm of the figure standing at the top is thrust inside a bee’s nest, while his other hand grasps a basket in the hope of collecting the honey. A swarm of bees hovers angrily around his head.

Ten thousand years later, we still depend on honeybees, but today the greater threat comes not from the swarm, but from drug-resistant bacteria.

On the morning of October 26, 2007, readers of the New York Post woke up to the screaming headline: “Superbug Strikes in City.” The story related how a twelve-year-old Brooklyn schoolboy, who was diagnosed with MRSA several weeks before, died in the hospital after antibiotics could not save him.

Several months prior to his death, a headline in the Manchester Evening News in England asked, “Could This Bee How We Defeat Superbugs?”

The article reported that honey can destroy drug-resistant bacteria such as MRSA. It added that manuka honey is used in New Zealand’s largest hospital to control MRSA and other bacterial infections.

Together, these contrasting headlines highlight a tragic fact: While hospitals in places like New Zealand and England use honey against drug-resistant infections, its therapeutic value remains largely ignored in the United States.

Why Isn’t Honey Used More Often?

In hospitals today, some physicians abroad use medical-grade honey for difficult wounds and drug-resistant infections. So why has therapeutic honey remained on the margins of mainstream care, especially in the United States?

One reason is economic. Honey is a natural substance that cannot easily be patented in its raw form, and it is relatively inexpensive compared with many branded wound products and pharmaceuticals. Large medical systems and commercial manufacturers often devote more resources to products with stronger profit potential.

Research funding also plays a role. Much of the money used to study new treatments comes from industries with commercial interests, while inexpensive natural therapies may attract less attention. As a result, some of the best honey research has come from countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

“In hospitals today, we are faced with germs resistant to almost all the current antibiotics. As a result, the medical use of honey is becoming attractive again for the treatment of wounds,” says Dr. Arne Simon of the University of Bonn. At least two dozen German hospitals are already routinely using honey to treat wounds.

Honey: A Broad-Spectrum Bacterial Killer

Over the past two decades, researchers from around the world have not only discovered how honey heals but also identified more than 250 strains of bacteria that honey can kill.

Perhaps most impressive is the finding that most raw honeys can effectively kill MRSA, the drug-resistant superbug that the CDC estimates caused nearly 120,000 bloodstream infections and nearly 20,000 deaths in the US in a single year. Hospital-acquired cases carry a mortality rate as high as 29 percent.¹

This bacterium thrives in hospital settings, where most people become infected. A patient with a hospital-acquired MRSA infection is about seven times more likely to die than a patient who is not infected.

Honey vs. MRSA

A 2007 study in the Journal of Wound Care, compiled by clinicians at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center of the University of Bonn, found that complete healing was achieved in seven consecutive patients whose wounds were infected or colonized with MRSA, wounds in which antiseptics and antibiotics had previously failed.

All patients were treated with Medihoney.

The researchers concluded, “These results should encourage others to use CE-certified antibacterial honey dressings in wounds infected or colonized with MRSA.”

How Honey Heals Wounds

A wound will heal on its own. But sometimes wounds become infected with bacteria and fail to heal properly. Bacteria feed on injured tissue, multiply within the wound, and cause further damage. The area may begin to smell, and pus can collect. This pus is made up largely of dead white blood cells, part of the body’s effort to destroy invading bacteria and repair the infection.

Honey helps wounds heal by attacking the bacteria that keep them infected and inflamed. Four main properties help explain honey’s ability to combat infection: osmosis, high acidity, hydrogen peroxide activity, and phytochemicals derived from both honeybees and the plants they visit.

The low water activity of honey might be expected to dry out a wound, but this is not the case. The osmotic power of honey draws out fluid from the plasma or lymph in the tissues underlying the wound. This activates the enzyme glucose oxidase, which enables honey to produce hydrogen peroxide, an important factor in inhibiting bacterial growth and promoting immune activity.

Hydrogen Peroxide: Low-Level Germ Control

The hydrogen peroxide produced by diluted honey is approximately 1,000 times weaker than the 3 percent solution sold in drugstores. Yet at this low concentration, hydrogen peroxide appears to act as a cellular messenger, stimulating wound healing without causing the tissue damage associated with stronger antiseptics.

When honey comes into contact with wound moisture or body fluids, an enzyme known as glucose oxidase, introduced by the bee during honey production, slowly releases hydrogen peroxide, often in amounts sufficient to suppress bacteria. This is one reason honey has been shown to kill more than 250 clinical strains of bacteria, including “superbugs” like Pseudomonas aeruginosa and MRSA.

Full-strength honey contains negligible levels of hydrogen peroxide because natural compounds in honey cause it to break down almost immediately. Glucose oxidase becomes active primarily when honey is diluted by wound fluids or moisture.

When it comes to clearing infections, honey supplies low levels of hydrogen peroxide continuously over time rather than delivering a large amount all at once. In essence, it becomes a powerful “low-release” antiseptic, antibacterial without damaging tissue.

Because heat and light can degrade glucose oxidase, raw therapeutic honey should be stored in a cool place, out of direct sunlight, and not heated above 100°F (38°C).

But hydrogen peroxide is not honey’s only weapon. Some honeys contain phytochemicals, plant-derived compounds with strong antibacterial activity of their own.

Manuka: A Fourth Line of Defense

A pivotal discovery came in 1988, when Dr. Peter Molan of the University of Waikato in New Zealand found that honey made from the flowers of New Zealand’s manuka trees (Leptospermum scoparium) is especially effective at killing bacteria and does not rely on hydrogen peroxide to do so.

While other honeys have antibacterial properties, the antibacterial component found in Leptospermum plants is unique. He named it the Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) and developed a standardized test to measure antibacterial strength independently of hydrogen peroxide activity.

Dr. Molan concluded that manuka honey may offer advantages over many other honeys in treating infected wounds, and subsequent research has supported that view. In laboratory tests, both hydrogen peroxide and UMF-rated manuka honey were shown to inhibit the growth of Staphylococcus aureus during an eight-hour incubation period. But manuka honey has been found to work twice as fast as other honey varieties.

Medical-Grade Manuka

Some manuka honey is classified as “medical grade,” processed under sterile conditions and used as the raw material for government-approved wound dressings in hospitals worldwide. For patients whose infections have resisted every conventional treatment, it has sometimes made the difference between healing and amputation.

A randomized controlled trial was carried out by leg ulcer specialists at Aintree University Hospitals in Liverpool, England. A sample of 105 patients were treated with either standardized antibacterial honey (Medihoney) or conventional wound dressings between September 2004 and May 2007.

The median healing time in the group treated with honey was 100 days compared to 140 days for the group receiving traditional therapy. The physicians also found that the healing rate at twelve weeks was 46.2 percent in the honey group and 34.0 percent in the conventional group.

While the clinicians felt that further research is needed, they wrote, “These results support the proposition that there are clinical benefits from using honey in wound care.”

Taken together, these cases and clinical trials show that honey, especially medical-grade manuka, is a sophisticated natural medicine, not merely a kitchen sweetener or folk remedy. From simple household burns to chronic, antibiotic-resistant wounds, it has already helped patients who had run out of conventional options.

Yet quality and sourcing remain crucial. Only raw, properly handled, and thoroughly tested honeys can deliver the antibacterial and antioxidant benefits documented here.

As researchers continue to study wound healing, antibiotic resistance, and immune health, honey remains a compelling example of how traditional remedies can intersect with modern science.

What was once gathered from wild cliffs and valued by ancient cultures is now being examined in laboratories and hospitals around the world. In an age searching for new answers to stubborn health challenges, this timeless gift from the hive may still have much to teach us about how the body heals.

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Nathaniel Altman is the author of The Honey Prescription, Healing Springs, and The New Oxygen Prescription, as well as many books on diet, alternative healing, metaphysics, and relationships. He has appeared on more than 150 podcasts, radio, and television programs, and his articles have appeared in major venues. He lives in Brooklyn.

Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from The Honey Prescription by Nathaniel Altman Copyright © 2010 Healing Arts Press. Printed with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International. www.InnerTraditions.com

REFERENCE

Kourtis AP, Hatfield K, Baggs J, et al. “Vital Signs: Epidemiology and Recent Trends in Methicillin-Resistant and in Methicillin-Susceptible Staphylococcus aureus Bloodstream Infections—United States.” MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019;68(9):214–219. doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm6809e1