Honey and burns

[Aram]

I was finishing some maple syrup last night when it boiled over. Without thinking :doh: I grabbed the pot off the stove. The boiling over foam ended up all over my hands. Not as bad as a burning clump of sugar , but pretty close. :eek:
I put my hands in ice cold water right away. An hour later I couldn't take my hands out of water, I was in so much pain. I knew I was not going to get any sleep. My wife gave me two tylenol pills but they didn't seem to help. Then I found this article (http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/AlternativeMedicine/11229). As soon as I smeared the honey on my swelling, blistering fingers I felt the pain go away. Could it be the tylenol kicking in at the exact same time? Possibly. I wrapped my hands in clean gauze and went to sleep. I woke in the morning with still no pain, the honey seemed to have gotten absorbed (by my skin? gauze? both? either way, there was no stickiness on my hands) and the redness, blisters and swelling were hardly visible anymore.
I am still in disbelief.

[Gregory and Susan Fariss]

Don't be in disbelief, Aram! I spoke to a senior citizens group last year about the healthful benefits of honey. I had mentioned using honey in burn dressings and surgical dressings. A few days later I had a message on my answering machine from a woman who had been in the audience of that senior citizens group. She related that she had burned her hand while getting a baking sheet out of the oven the evening before. Remembering what she had heard about using honey for wound dressings, she applied honey to the burns. She said that the next morning the burns were gone and she had no pain. I believe that your experience is real and has been repeated numerous times by others.
Susan

[Hobie]

What a great testimonial! I had excellent results with a leaf cut off my aloe plant when spashed by boiling applesauce, but that was before my beekeeping days. Will remember honey in the future.

[bee crazy]

Aram, believe it man. I severely burned my self just last night. I made a pyrax dish in the oven I pulled out and placed on the stove top. Talking to someone a few seconds later I not thinking tried to pick up that disk to put on the trivet with my bare fingers. Instant sizzle and burned skin smell. I instantly grabed the honey jar and slathered on the honey on both hands. In 20 minuits all was fine and I did not even get a blister.

I cook down maple syrup too. I ran 26 taps and got between 5 and 6 gals. of syrup. We cook ours down a little farther than 66 brix more like 67 to 70 brix. But is oh- oh good.
Good luck to ya,
Steve

[Aram]

Thanks all. Great to know it's not all in my head.
Great story Susan. Was the woman elderly? Trauma and healing is a whole other challenge when dealing with the elderly.
Hobie, we have an aloe plant just for that. It helps when the children get a burn boo-boo. I tried the aloe too but, on this occasion, it brought no relief. I had to keep my fingers under cold water, I just couldn't take the pain. I also wander if the quality of the honey had anything to do with it? This was fresh honey, just harvested, crushed and strained through nylon. Never heated and as fresh out of the comb as it ever comes. Lots of ???
Steve, you did good. I got 5 gals out of 40 taps :scratch:. My friend who does it commercially says he gets about a gallon per tap. But he uses vacuum pumps and all the other gadgets. Somehow I never get close to that. Still, it's such a great thing to do with my children while we wait for spring to arrive. :) :
Sapsucker (http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d60/Oarceas/farm/Sapsucker.jpg)

[Gregory and Susan Fariss]

Great story Susan. Was the woman elderly? Trauma and healing is a whole other challenge when dealing with the elderly.

Yes, she was elderly. And yes, a bigger challenge dealing with healing and the elderly.
Susan

[John Smith]

I’m not considered elderly, yet, but at 67yrs, I was caught up in the romance of snorkeling in the Coral Sea off Vanuatu. The coral was exquisite, but the fish and life forms of all types were totally captivating.

I have Irish type skin, don’t use sunscreens and was not thinking straight either, so half of me (I was face down in the water) got totally cooked by the tropical sun. As a passenger on a cruise ship, I hadn’t been back in my cabin for long when I begin to realize that I was quite a suitable candidate for the ships hospital.

I usually carry a squeeze pack or two of honey with me when I am out and about thus, so honey was not far away and this was not the first time I had used it on sunburn, but certainly the first time I had been so severely burned over so much of my body for a very long time, as I usually cover up pretty carefully. I was also aware that the aging procress does not simply 'arrive' when one turns any certain age. It is entirely incremental, one hour, one day, one year at a time, so I was in 'hot water' so to speak.

I know from years of experience that sunburn is much more suitably avoided than rectified. And I learned that in my youth, so you know how silly I felt to have been caught out in my mature years.

I got into the shower and lathered myself with honey. Just as good no one had a camera handy! I remained in the shower just letting it soak in for maybe twenty minutes, give or take. It seemed like forever to be just standing in the shower! But anyway, I eventually showered and was clean again.

I continued to treat the skin with Aloe Vera jell followed by propolis cream.

I slept well that night, had no pain, and although in subsequent days I lost a layer of fine, dry, scaly skin, never did any blisters appear nor was there any itching or further pain. You might say I was exfoliated painlessly, and had a wonderful experience with my fellows the fish as well.

Some years previous to this I found myself on an exotic beach with no preparation at all and was starting to worry about the sun exposure, when I remembered that I had bought a small pack of honey off the shelf in a truck stop earlier. It was Burleson’s Honey, from Texas, and declared as clover. Well, OK, I think to myself, no one is caring about me on this crowded beach, as there were far too many young and beautiful bodies to watch, so I popped out the honey and lathered it on (complete with the inevitable sand) and continued on enjoying the beach, ………………. and the magnificent views.

When time came to depart, I simply hopped back into the surf to rinse off the honey and the rest of my day continued to be exotic, not destroyed by the disability of sunburn.

The cure was easy, cheap, natural and most of all very effective.

A good book to read if your library has it is, “Honey, Mud and Maggots, and Other Medical Marvels.” (Root-Bernstein) One chapter deals specifically with burns and is a hardnosed scientific look at how honey does this little miracle. The book is worth buying too if you like to be self healing.

Cheers,

John

[notaclue]

Our club just finished a beginners beekeeping course. One of the students was there with his mother and relayed to me a story of how he burned his hand one time and received a Brown Recluse bite another. His mother slathered his burn and he said it stopped burning right away and left no mark when it healed. The bite had become, as they do, nasty. He came to her and asked for some antibiotic creme. When she saw the bite she immediately started treating with honey on a dressing, replacing the dressing every few hours. He said a lot nasty stuff came out but it healed quickly. He was quick to point out that it was raw honey from an older beek who had passed on. They were all set to start their own hives. I had a couple others, in the class, come up and tell me the same thing.
My wife also uses honey on all scraps and what not. She's quick to get it out and our kids now come with a jar of honey and a band-aide or dressing.

So I doubt if it's coincidence. But this is, I guess, considered retorical input.

All I know is it works...

[AltamontBee]

Wow! I have heard and read about honey being good for burns, but that is pretty amazing! I'll have to remember that for future use!

Jennifer

[sherriVT]

I got a bad burn this week while making pancakes and used a salve I got from a local apiary. It has honey and propolis in it, among other good things... probably a little magic in there too :)
I just found it on their site, if anyone is interested...

http://www.honeygardens.com/salve.htm

Sherri