Oh honey. I just love you. Whether slathered on my face to deep cleanse or mask it, or slathered in my hair to wash it, honey consistently does what no product can do on a regular basis: it deep cleans, treats acne, hydrates, softens and firms the skin. Also, since it is packed with proteins, amino acids, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, vitamins B5, B1, E, C , D and folic acid, honey nourishes the skin completely to build a strong surface immunity.

Honestly, I do not remember the exact time or place where honey entered my skin care regimen. With all the research I do on a daily basis, I am sure that honey was part of my daily reading. Knowing how much I love it with peanut butter and banana, and always using the yummiest foods on my skin, I can only presume that I decided to immediately try it in my signature facial treatments.

Reading so much about the anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties of honey, I decided that my first try-outs with it would be with my clients who had very moody/breakout skin. I started by tempering the regular acne cleansers with it, using it in hot water compresses and as a final facial mask for 15 minutes. Immediately after these signature treatments, I received fantastic feedback. My clients would rave about how soft their skin was. Then, in the days that followed, I began getting emails from clients. Their skin was less red, their pimples were healing and  their skin was super hydrated and supple. This was probably due to the fact that in all honeys, there is, to different levels, hydrogen peroxide which is produced from an enzyme that bees add to the nectar. No wonder their skin was healing. Honey is anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal! My clients immediately wanted to know where they could get honey to use at home and what kind of honey they should use. Before I knew it, I began to be known as the honey lady when it came to facials and I could not be more thrilled! After all, any foods that I could get even my hardest “product junkie” clients to use was a huge accomplishment. That’s one less mass produced product on their skin and in our water supply!

With this said and with so many different honeys available, how on earth does one know which honey to choose? Initially, a great rule of thumb is to always choose a local honey (with the exception of Manuka honey which we will discuss later) from the farmer’s market. Also, the darker the honey the better. There are more antioxidants in these richer honeys.

Honey as a Medicinal Agent

Using  honey as a wound dressing is nothing new to the people that lived in ancient times and this “medicine” continued to be used in present-day folk medicine. It is also used as a traditional therapy for infected leg ulcers in Ghana, and as a traditional therapy in Mali for the topical treatment of measles, and in the eyes of patients to prevent corneal scarring. It is also very common to read numerous articles in medical journals that report extensively on the numerous benefits resulting from using honey to dress wounds.

• Because of the viscosity of honey, it acts as a perfect barrier to protect wounds and prevent them from being further infected.
• Honey encourages a moist healing environment, allowing skin cells to regenerate across a healing wound flush with the surface of the wound which consequently prevents deformity of the skin.
• Honey allows for scabs and dead cells to come off of the wound’s surface to leave a clean and healthy wound bed in which healing of tissue can occur.
  
• Honey stimulates the formation of new blood capillaries and the growth of fibroblasts that replace the connective tissue of the deeper layer of the skin and produce the collagen fibers that give strength to the repair. In addition, honey stimulates the growth of epithelial cells that form the new skin cover over a healed wound (tell me this is not the most perfect skin food to prevent premature aging!). Honey thus prevents scarring and keloid formation, and removes the need for skin grafting even with quite large wounds.
  
• Honey has anti-inflammatory properties which allows for the reduction of swelling around a wound to improve circulation and speed up the healing process.
  
• Honey’s high sugar content draws lymph out of a wound, which lifts dirt out of the wound bed.

Manuka Honey – The Wonder Honey

Working in his Honey Research Unit at the University of Waikato, in the central North Island of New Zealand, biochemist professor Peter Molan has identified one particular type of honey with extraordinary healing qualities, manuka honey made from the flowers of the manuka bush which is native to New Zealand and this honey has anti-bacterial properties far beyond any other honey in the world.

Professor Nolan notes that though all honeys have, to different levels, hydrogen peroxide, manuka honey has something else apart from hydrogen peroxide that make it so unique and he believes nothing like it has been found anywhere else in the world. What that “something else” is has been hard for professor Nolan to pin down, even after more than twenty years of research, but he has given it a name: unique manuka factor, or UMF. Professor Nolan has also found a way to measure its antibacterial efficacy, by comparing UMF manuka honey with a standard antiseptic in its ability to fight bacteria. The results are astonishing, as manuka honey has a very broad spectrum of action, working on bacteria, fungi and protozoa. Basically, he has not found anything it doesn’t work on among infectious organisms. So much so that he says UMF manuka honey can even tackle antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria which pose a growing threat to hospitals around the world. ”Staphylococcus aureas is the most common wound-infecting species of bacteria, and that’s the most sensitive to honey that we’ve found. ”And that includes the antibiotic resistant strains – the MRSA – which is just as sensitive to honey as any other staphylococcus aureas.”

Clinical trials at the Waikato Hospital have shown that even out of the lab, UMF manuka honey has amazing healing properties. Nurse practitioner Julie Betts has successfully used this honey to help with healing after surgery, particularly for diabetic patients.

Finally…

As we can see honey is a pretty magnificent medicinal food. Not only will healthy skin look more vibrant, toned and supple but imbalanced skin will heal, regenerate and brighten. As well, honey benefits wounds, sores and lesions, as they will heal more readily and without significant pain. Trust me when I say that honey is your skin’s best friend, and once in a while slather a giant dollop of it in your hair while in the shower. Cleanse as you would with shampoo and rinse out (yes, it easily rinses out without any difficulty.) The result is baby soft hair with amazing volume. Have fun…