Five Reasons Why Honey Heals

Honey is good, natural "medicine" for everyone - inside and out. So take it daily or rub it on and treat your body well and bee healthy...

Honey’s ‘healing powers’ can be summarised into 5 main ingredients or activities of the components of honey

Scientific American, 2012, March 21

Hydrogen peroxide – Honey contains an enzyme called glucose oxidase which breaks down glucose sugars and generates hydrogen peroxide, a kind of bleach, when there is free water available. In case you missed the antimicrobial component it was friggin BLEACH IN YOUR HONEY. I can feel you wondering why bees would bleach their own food supply and it turns out that is very simple. Any available water can cause the honey to spoil so the presence of glucose oxidase in the honey is an inbuilt anti-spoiling mechanism, pretty smart huh?

photos of honey-healed wound in 3 weeks 

Sugar – The hydrogen peroxide control mechanism is a back up as very little free water exists in honey. The lack of free water is due to the vast amount of sugar dissolved into honey which gives it a low water activity. This essentially means that honey is more likely to take up water from its surroundings than have water removed from it and if you are a micro-organism it makes it very difficult to survive.

Methylglyoxal or MGO – This compound is an incredibly interesting and powerful antibacterial compound but, it is only found in certain natural honeys (Manuka honey from New Zealand) although it can be made in artificial greenhouses as well. This is the stuff that is making honey a potentially very useful topical salve (with the possibility of other forms of treatment being considered) in medical honey treatments such as MediHoney.

Bee Defensin 1 – Bee Defensin is an antimicrobial peptide (AMP) that for a long time was thought to be exclusively found in the Royal Jelly (The food worker bees make for potential Queen larve). But fairly recent discoveries have found it in the honey, but more on AMPs in a second.

Acidity – Finally, honey is fairly acidic and remains so even when diluted holding a pH of approximately 3.5. Nothing that likes eating you particularly likes living in acid so this property is very important.

No single property is more important than the others and the multifactorial nature of honey’s activities is probably the key to its amazing antimicrobial nature. Having said this, Bee Defensin 1 and other identified AMPs in honey such as Apidaecin may have much more involved roles that are only recently being uncovered...

Interestingly,apidaecins seem to also have the ability to alter the host immune system bymodifying chemotaxis (movement of cells in the immune system), apoptosis(induced cell death), cytokine/chemokine production (the production ofsignalling chemicals which direct the immune response), antigen presentationand the Th1/Th2 balance (whether you fight the nasty with B cells or T cells).

In mostcases the ability of apidaecins (and their homologues) to modulate the immunesystem has been done in the the organism the AMP was originally recovered frombut some recent work sugests the potential for insect apidaecin to have acrossover effect on a mammalian system. While apidaecin is insect derived itappears to be sufficiently similar in shape to human AMPs that it can interactwith and modify the activity of our immune system. When macrophages inparticular were incubated with apidaecin they started pumping out chemokinesand cytokines that promote increased antimicrobial activity in these cells...

While onlypreliminary, it seems honey and its various components might have more secretsto unveil which will further develop our understanding of the anti-microbialnature of this environmental product and at the same time its pro-immuneresponses elicited when we use it.

Polyphenols Needed for Honey Antibacterial Effect

Why does honey heal wounds? Its antibacterial activity is due to its ability to produce Hydrogen Peroxide and now this Canadian study identifies the cause. Thanks to honeybees collecting nectar from flowers, these important polyphenols remain in honey, eliminating the notion that artificial honey is just as good...

Unraveling a Mechanism of Honey Antibacterial Action: Polyphenol/H2O2-Induced Oxidative Effect on Bacterial Cell Growth and on DNA Degradation

FoodChemistry, 24 January 2012

Several compounds with antibacterial activities were identified in honey. However, a mechanism by which they lead to bacterial growth inhibition and bacterial death remains still unknown.

We recently found that honeys possess DNA degrading activity mediated by honey hydrogen peroxide and an unknown honey component(s). Here we provide evidence that active honeys (MIC90 of 6.25% to 12.5% v/v) possessed significantly higher levels of phenolics (p<0.02) of higher radical scavenging activities (p<0.005) than honeys of average activity.

Removal of H2O2 by catalase eliminated bacteriostatic activities caused by both phenolics and H2O2 suggesting that the growth inhibition resulted from the coupling chemistry between these compounds. Both phenolics and H2O2 were involved in DNA degradation by honeys. Treatment of plasmid DNA with H2O2 alone did not affect the DNA integrity but H2O2 removal from honey by catalase prevented DNA degradation. Polyphenols extracted from honeys degraded plasmid DNA in the presence of H2O2 and Cu (II) in the Fenton-type reaction. The extent of DNA degradation was inversely related to the polyphenol concentration in this system as well as in honeys. At low content, honey polyphenols exerted pro-oxidant activity damaging to DNA.

In conclusion, honey phenolics with pro-oxidant activities were necessary intermediates that conferred oxidative action of H2O2. Phenolic/H2O2-induced oxidative stress constituted the mechanism of honey bacteriostatic and DNA damaging activities.

Highlights: 

► A coupling chemistry between polyphenols and H2O2 was the mechanism underlying DNA degradation by honey. 
► Honey polyphenols emerged as active intermediates that were necessary to confer oxidative action of hydrogen peroxide. 
► The antioxidant/prooxidant properties of honey polyphenols play a critical role in bacterial DNA degradation. 

Potent Antibacterial Components of Honey Reviewed

Honeybees continue to perplex medical researchers with something as pure and natural as honey... 

Antibacterial Components of Honey

IUBMB Life, 2011 Nov 17

The antibacterial activity of honey has been known since the 19th century. Recently, the potent activity of honey against antibiotic-resistant bacteria has further increased the interest for application of honey, but incomplete knowledge of the antibacterial activity is a major obstacle for clinical applicability.

The high sugar concentration, hydrogen peroxide, and the low pH are well-known antibacterial factors in honey and more recently, methylglyoxal and the antimicrobial peptide bee defensin-1 were identified as important antibacterial compounds in honey.

The antibacterial activity of honey is highly complex due to the involvement of multiple compounds and due to the large variation in the concentrations of these compounds among honeys. The current review will elaborate on the antibacterial compounds in honey.

We discuss the activity of the individual compounds, their contribution to the complex antibacterial activity of honey, a novel approach to identify additional honey antibacterial compounds, and the implications of the novel developments for standardization of honey for medical applications...