The Basics of Honey as an Antibiotic

Antibiotic is one of those words that has a scary ring to it. When we hear the word antibiotic, we often shrink away from the subject, believing that antibiotics are extremely complicated substances that require excessive research and knowledge to understand. When we think antibiotics, we imagine man-made medicines in packaged bottles and pills that come from laboratories and factories. All in all, we know that antibiotics are effective at managing disease and dangerous if consumed at too high or little levels; but the rest, well, we kind of just don’t talk about. This view that antibiotics are things that we cannot understand needs to stop because we can understand them and should for the sake of everyone’s health.

An antibiotic is simply a substance that kills, resists, or slows down the growth of bacteria. Bacteria are single celled organisms that exist pretty much everywhere in the world. We all have bacteria in our bodies and most of it is harmless or beneficial including the bacteria, gut flora, which lives in our colons. Some bacteria, however, is dangerous to humans and can cause infectious diseases like Cholera. We create antibiotics in order to prevent the spread of these harmful types of bacterium. Currently, our technology has allowed us to create many synthetic antibiotics and we are using them more than we ever have in the past. Synthetic antibiotics are good in a sense that they are very effective in managing disease, but terrifying due to the fact that they can cause the formation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and lead to an even more harmful disease. While we know that this can occur, we still continue to excessively use them on ourselves, and our food sources.

There are bacteria that we should use synthetic antibiotics to fight like extreme diseases such as Syphilis, but there are also bacteria that we can fight using much more natural practices like in the case of a skin or wound infection. Honey, believe it or not, is a completely natural, effective, and safe antibiotic. Like I said before, an antibiotic is simply something that kills bacterium; and this is exactly what honey does. Honey, thanks to the relationship between flowers and bees, is mainly composed of sugar. As a result, honey is a highly concentrated substance made up of about 80% sugar and 20% water (Buchmann, 208). Most bacterium, on the other hand, are made up of single cells mainly composed of water. So, when honey is put on a cut containing lots of infectious bacteria, it often kills the bacteria through a process called osmosis. Osmosis occurs when two mediums (ie. two different cells) with differing concentrations come in contact. As a rule of nature, osmotic pressure causes the flow of a solvent to move through a semi-permeable membrane into a highly concentrated solution in order to even out the differing concentrations. In the case of honey and bacteria, this means that the water within the bacteria cells actually moves through the cell walls in order to dilute the highly concentrated honey. Without water, the bacterium shrivel up and die.  It is in this way that honey is a very effective antibiotic.

Many scientists have realized the benefits as honey as an antibiotic and researches have begun to use honey in medical products such as bandages and antiseptics. Why use a synthetic and expensive chemicals when you can simply use honey? So, next time you get a cut try reaching for that little honey filled bear on your counter instead of the Neosporin. Might sound odd, but I think you will be pleasantly surprised!

In case my description of osmosis was a little unclear, here is a diagram to help you out:

Cited Sources:

Buchmann, Stephen L., and Banning Repplier. Letters from the Hive: an Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind. New York: Bantam, 2005. Print