For our ancient relatives, injuries were more than likely the biggest challenge to sustained health, followed by various types of infections. Heart disease, cancers and conditions resulting from lifestyle choices had far less effect on people whose life expectancy was far shorter than those of us living today.
Since those ancient times, when people hurt themselves or one another and were left with an open wound, there were always those who wanted to help the body in recovering. In many cases, help often came in the form of common ingredients such as herbs or some types of food products applied to the wound as well as cauterization of the wound.
With ingredients such as a parsley, butter and beer mixture, that seem more like a shrimp marinade, success was at best infrequent. Indeed, with a few exceptions learned over the millennia, many of these techniques were not highly successful and either slowed the rate of healing or directly contributed to infection.
Two important materials of a sweet nature that were discovered through our history and have shown a measurable success in wound treatment have been sugar and honey. Sugar has been used in various countries around the world for centuries. Honey was used by the ancient Egyptians explicitly for wound care and the Roman soldier's personal first aid kit always contained it. As is clearly the case, the ingredients are by no means new, but the resurgence in their use has only come from renewed interest in studying the successes of ancient medical techniques.
To identify the extent to which granulated sugar and high concentration sugar water aid in wound healing, research is currently ongoing at the University of Wolverhampton. To this point, the work has identified that a 25% sugar mixture is sufficient to prevent growth of bacteria. It is thought that the high concentration of sugar prevents the water from being available and useable by the bacteria in the wound for their survival and reproduction. Evidence from other sources also suggests that the sugar aids in the formation of scar tissue to close the wound.
As another investigation into the application of sugar in wound care, the limits of its use are also being examined. A case discussed in the Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation (NDT) journal describes a situation in which a patient treated with granulated sugar in a wound began to suffer kidney failure because of the absorption of the sugar directly into the blood stream. Normally, sugar is broken down in the intestines before entering the blood, but in this case, the form of the sugar absorbed was not one that the body could break down. Instead, the kidneys had to filter out this sugar, but could not do so effectively. This shows that further research is required to understand when sugar can be safely applied to wounds.
In the use of honey for wound treatment, more information is known and the body of scientific knowledge is fairly large. Like concentrated sugar water, honey prevents bacteria from growing because little water is available for the bacteria to use. Additionally, honey also has the ability to provide slow release of low levels of hydrogen peroxide into the wound. Hydrogen peroxide is used in many antiseptics applied to the skin. It is also a material that our own immune system creates to kill bacteria that have invaded our bodies.
In addition to these properties, some forms of honey also act to kill microbes through certain chemicals that get into the honey from the plants providing the nectar. Other aspects of these chemicals also appear to aid in healing by supplying nutrients to the healing processes. Lastly, honey also helps to extract dead tissue from the wound and maintain the moist environment required to promote healing. All in all, honey seems remarkably well suited to aiding in wound healing with ongoing research still working to understand the benefits.
While sugar and honey have been used for ages in wound care, the necessary scientific testing to determine when to use sugar in wounds or when to use honey is still underway. Different types of honey from different locations in the world are being analyzed for their medicinal properties and compared against one another to determine the most effective types, the best concentration to apply and even the best frequency for changing dressings.
Though such remedies are ancient, their use in medicine requires the development of appropriate levels of scientific knowledge and supervision by the medical community. Just like any medication or treatment, the effectiveness and safety of these materials needs to be understood before it should be used by each of us. In the same way that you shouldn't borrow some medications from someone with similar symptoms and "see how it goes" in taking them, neither should you buy some honey or sugar in the grocery store and start treating the nasty gash in your foot that you received while walking along the beach.
Related Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wound_care
http://www.springerlink.com/content/khx0kmbqtk1y5eu8/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauterization
http://books.google.com/books?id=ehdMrHF-aEwC&pg=PA106&lpg=PA106&dq=butter+in+wounds+-%22self+inflicted%22&source=bl&ots=be2uJktrJK&sig=kURzS9uRt6XVcQkxdeIHeND12Ok&hl=en&ei=bc-iSqrTK47WlAeR35X1CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#v=onepage&q=butter%20in%20wounds%20-%22self%20inflicted%22&f=false
http://www.o-wm.com/content/five-millennia-wound-care-products-%E2%80%94-what-new-a-literature-review
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2862372?dopt=Abstract
http://www.wlv.ac.uk/Default.aspx?page=20845
http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/20/11/2543
http://bio.waikato.ac.nz/honey/evidence.shtml
http://www.bcmj.org/sweet-success-honey-topical-wound-dressing
http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/10289/2030/1/Molan%20-%20Using%20honey%20in%20wound%20care.pdf
http://dermnetnz.org/treatments/honey.html
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