deals with the deadly bacterial lung infection . Add a spoonful of honey to the antibacterial spray, which is more effective than adding 8 times the dose of powerful antibiotics.
Mycobacterium abscess is a non-tuberculous bacillus. Patients with chronic lung disease , such as , , and cystic fibrosis, are prone to infection with Mycobacterium abscess. This bacteria attacks lung tissue, which can cause lung scarring and thickening of tissue, and in severe cases, it can cause respiratory failure .
The most troublesome thing is that Mycobacterium abscess is a highly drug-resistant bacteria, and many antibiotics are powerless to it. treats mycobacterium abscess infection and cannot be cured in the short term. It requires long-term and large doses of powerful antibiotics. The use of antibiotics in large doses has forced patients to endure the side effects of antibiotics.
Biologists have found that adding honey to the antibiotics to treat mycobacterium abscess infection can exponentially reduce the amount of antibiotics, greatly reducing the side effects caused by patients taking antibiotics. Honey therapy has the hope of completely eradicating stubborn lung infections.
experimental paper on honey therapy against mycobacterium abscess was published in the September 2022 journal " Microbiology ".
Honey has stronger antibacterial effects than antibiotics, let’s start from the beginning.
honey + antibiotic
Biological team from the University of Aston, UK took samples and isolated mycobacterium abscess from secretions infected by cystic fibrosis patients.
The team mixed antibiotics amika star and manuka honey together, mixed them into a mixture of different ratios, and tested the sterilization effect of each ratio. team used the laboratory lung model to atomize the mixture and administer the drug with a nebulizer.
The best sterilization group of antibacterial drugs is a mixture of 2 micrograms of amikacin and honey per milliliter.
Usually, when treating infection in patients with cystic fibrosis, the dose of amikacin is 16 micrograms per milliliter, and the medication is continued for 12 months. New honey therapy reduces the dose of amikacin to 1/8 of the original dose.
Antibiotic Amikacin is the most important and one of the most toxic drugs for the treatment of Mycobacterium abscess. Long-term use of amikacin can bring serious side effects, including hearing loss, vomiting, diarrhea, urticaria and fatigue. Many of the patients are enduring the side effects of hearing loss. After adding honey to
, the dose of amikacin is greatly reduced, which can significantly reduce hearing damage related to drugs and improve the patient's quality of life.
Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease. After the lungs are infected with Mycobacterium abscess, the use of large doses of antibiotics can only control the disease and cannot completely eradicate the bacteria. honey therapy illuminates hope for curing cystic fibrosis disease.
Broad-spectrum antibacterial utility of honey
The medicinal history of honey as a broad-spectrum antibacterial agent can be traced back to more than 4,000 years ago. Sumerian is recorded on a stone slab and made into drugs and ointments with honey, which can treat pain and speed up wound healing.
The antibacterial ability of honey is the result of the synergy between multiple factors in honey ingredients .
honey has slightly acidic (pH value is .2~4.5), high sugar concentration, and high osmotic pressure. Its high concentration and high osmotic pressure characteristics can itself dehydrate bacteria and cannot survive. In addition, honey also contains a variety of antibacterial and bactericidal factors, including hydrogen peroxide , antioxidants, lysozyme , polyphenol , flavonoids, methylglyoxal , and bee peptides. In different honeys, the concentration composition of these compounds is different, which also leads to different antibacterial effects of honey.
Generally speaking, hydrogen peroxide in honey is the main force in sterilization. The honey antibacterial agent prepared by the research team this time uses Manuka honey. In this honey, the content of methylglyoxal is relatively high, and its antibacterial effect is stronger.
Manuka honey is honey made by bees picking pollen from Manuka tree flowers.
Honey made from different flower sources has different antibacterial abilities. Which flower's pollen makes honey that has the ability to cure diseases? This question needs to be asked by the experts who make honey - bees. Bees are professionals who are proficient in nectar, and they know the answer.
honey
pollen contains phytochemicals, such as flavonoids alcohol and phenolic acid , which can be used to defend against pests and facilitate plant growth. Bees can also gain power from the plant ingredients contained in pollen.
Biologists feed bees different types of pollen to observe the situation after bees take them.
. Resistant pesticide
Compared with bees fed sucrose water, bees fed with pairs of coumaric acid and quercetin pollen, they live longer and have stronger ability to resist insecticide .
. Reduce fungal infection
To the bees infected with fungi, feeding thyme flower pollen can reduce the number of fungal spores in its body by more than half.
, reduce parasite
contains caffeine , gallic acid , coumaric acid and kaempotol pollen, which can all improve the diversity and quantity of intestinal microorganisms of bees and enhance the ability of bees to resist parasites.
In fact, there is no need for biologists to choose. When the bee is sick, you will know which medicine to take.
Biologists provide bees with kinds of honey made from single flowers, namely: lime tree flower, thorn sophora , sunflower , and honeydew (honey made from syrup secreted by aphid ).
Healthy bee colonies have no obvious preference for types of honey, and they can eat whatever they want. But bees infected with parasites are different. bees infected with parasites, choose sunflower honey . The more severe the infection, the more you like sunflower honey.
Compared with honey that eats other nectars, after eating sunflower honey for 6 consecutive days, the number of parasites on bees has decreased a lot. To analyze honey ingredients, among the 14 honeys, sunflower honey has the highest antibiotic activity.
Wild bees collect pollen from flowers, make honey from flowers, and store them in honeycomb . Nectar from different flower species, like drugs with different attributes, can resist different types of bacteria and fungi.
Summary
History, honey has always been our medicine for treating pain.
With the invention of highly active antibiotics, honey's medicinal ability has been ignored. The current status of honey is just an optional food. However, honey's antibacterial ability has never subsided.
When humans encounter drug-resistant super bacteria and find that artificial antibiotics are not as effective as before, they turn around and find that bees can solve this problem that humans cannot do.
is still the same old saying, life has evolved for 3.6 billion years, and nature has always been ahead of us. Many questions that confuses us have long been answered in nature.
OK, let’s talk about the secrets of honey therapy first.
Follow France is Bacon to explain the secrets of nature to you. See you next time.
References:
, In vitro synergy between manuka honey and amikacin against Mycobacterium abscessus complex shows potential for nebulisation therapy
2, Honey: its medicinal property and antibacterial activity
3, Therapeutic Manuka Honey: No Longer So Alternative
4, Dietary supplementation with physical chemicals improves diversity and abundance of honey bee gut microbiota
5, Pathogen-associated self-medication behavior in the honeybee Apis melllifera
