Using Honey for Healing

  • Stores in Alandejani's hometown of Ottawa have had an increase in sales of manuka honey after the study was reported (Photo by Karen Kelly)

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 90,000 Americans are diagnosed with an antibiotic-resistant infection each year. Doctors and patients are desperate to find an alternative treatment for these infections. Karen Kelly reports on the possibility of a new approach using a common household ingredient:

Transcript

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 90,000 Americans are diagnosed with an antibiotic-resistant infection each year. Doctors and patients are desperate to find an alternative treatment for these infections. Karen Kelly reports on the possibility of a new approach using a common household ingredient:

(sound of teapot and pouring)

A lot of us like to pour a cup of tea with honey when we’re feeling achy and stuffed up.

But researcher Talal Alandejani wondered if honey might be good for more than just soothing a sore throat.

He’s an ear, nose and throat doctor at the University of Ottawa in Canada.
He knew honey had been used on the skin for centuries to kill bacteria in wounds.
And he wondered if there might be a way to use it with his patients.

He treats people with chronic sinus infections that are resistant to antibiotics.

“I thought, what if I could use it in the sinus where we use antibiotics, but we still can’t get rid of the infection. It’s a natural product, it has less side effects and it’s less expensive.”

So, Alandejani chose four different types of honey:
clover and buckwheat honeys, which are common in North America,
Manuka honey, which is grown in New Zealand and sold mostly in health food stores,
and sidr honey from Yemen, which is hard for Americans to find.

He then grew bacteria in petri dishes.
Some were free-floating – the kind killed by antibiotics.
The others are called biofilms – they have a coating that resists medications, and they’re the cause of chronic sinus infections and other diseases.

Alandejani squirted the bacteria with antibiotics in one dish, and honey in the other.

The manuka and sidr honey -along with the medications – killed the free-floating bacteria.
The biofilms, though, were a different story.
The antibiotics didn’t kill them, but the honey did.

In fact, the two foreign honeys killed about 90% of the pseudomonas and 60 to 70% of MRSA bacteria. Both can cause deadly infections.

Alandejani presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Oto-laryn-gology, Head and Neck Surgery.

And he was swamped with questions from doctors and sinus patients eager to try it.

“Even the patients in our clinics want us to treat them right now, before even doing the trials or the animal studies. And they’re willing to take the harm of it, if there is any, because their disease is not treated until now.”

Alandejani says the challenge is that the honey has to come in contact with the bacteria – so it would have to be diluted and injected into the sinuses.

Dr. Murray Grossan is an ear, nose, and throat doctor in Santa Monica.
He says the treatment looks promising.

“They do use honey for stomach problems, stomach ulcers and so on, so it probably would be pretty safe to put into the sinus. But unfortunately, we have to go through all sorts of protocol there.”


In the meantime, stores in Alandejani’s hometown of Ottawa have had an increase in sales of manuka honey after the study was reported.

It’s not cheap – manuka honey can cost as much as $50 a jar.

Alandejani says he used the regular manuka honey, nothing especially strong.
And he can’t vouch for it’s effectiveness if you just eat it.

But he’s now trying it on sinuses in animal studies.

And soon, his patients with chronic sinusitus will have their chance to try it as well.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Hard Times for Honeybees

  • (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA)

Beekeepers are continuing to lose their honeybees. About a third of many beekeepers’ colonies have been dying mysteriously each year for the past several years. Rebecca Williams reports researchers think they’re getting closer to an answer:

Transcript

Beekeepers are continuing to lose their honeybees. About a third of many beekeepers’ colonies have been dying mysteriously each year for the past several years. Rebecca Williams reports researchers think they’re getting closer to an answer:

Honeybees have had some bad luck.

Researchers think there are a couple of things hurting the bees all at once.

They think bees’ immune systems are being weakened.

Maybe because of pesticides. And maybe because bees aren’t getting the variety of food sources they need.

Bees normally collect pollen and nectar from many different plants. But when they’re used on farms, they’re just visiting one kind of plant.

And then on top of that, bees appear to be getting hit by a virus.

Maryann Frazier is a honeybee expert at Penn State University.

She says, until researchers can figure out exactly what’s going on, she expects beekeepers to keep losing a lot of their bees.

“I think what we’re at risk of, more so than the bees dying out, is the beekeepers giving up and not continuing to truck their bees all over the country.”

Beekeepers use honeybees to pollinate about a third of our food supply.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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