BBBenefits Articles

Only 1% Of Us Is Human – Dig Out The Honey and Kill Those Microbes!

Posted on 22. Jul, 2011 by Bruni in General News, Health Articles

I was watching a video on ABC Health (27^th June 2011) that gave some interesting information.  One that caught my attention is that only one percent of us are human – what?  It wasn’t saying that most people weren’t human, what it was saying is that only one percent of me (or you and anybody else) was human.  We have about 90 trillion cells which don’t belong to us. It is almost creepy when you think about it, and would certainly make for a good horror movie.

Is this another one of those myths… where 1 year margarine is better than butter and the following year, butter is better than margarine?  I listened more attentively.

Microbiology & Immunology, Professor David Relman, at Stanford University tells us that these microbial organisms are an extension of our self.  They protect us from some of the other nasty microbes that try to invade us. (Protecting their own territory if the truth were known.)

Most of these tiny critters are in our bowel, but they are also in our mouth and on our skin.  Without them we would be in a hell of a lot of trouble as they are also invaluable to us in helping to break down food etc.  Unfortunately, what has come to light is that we are killing them off through the use of antibiotics.

We have been hearing for a while now that antibiotics are not working like they used to.  What has become evident is that through the over-use of antibiotics, we are killing off our good microbes as well as the bad microbes. For people that rarely use antibiotics, Relman says that our good microbes recover quite well, but that’s not so with people who are sick where antibiotics are used quite frequently.

The program also mentioned that whilst there are various claims concerning the benefits to health by consuming probiotics, (bacteria potentially beneficial to the digestive system), the evidence is still too early to confirm that, so the jury is still out before making an evidence based decision on this.

But the good news is, (grandma and grandad were right) that honey is a natural antibiotic without any of the harmful side effects.

Manuka honey is now being used in hospitals to combat MRSA, staph infections, dermatitis, wounds and burns.  According to professor Peter Molan, former biochemist at the university of Waikato in New Zealand: “It works on bacteria, fungi, protozoa. We haven’t found anything it doesn’t work on among infectious organisms.”

However, some honeys are no more antibacterial than sugar.  UMF and MGO ratings have been introduced to determine the therapeutic potency of honey.  The higher the UMF or MGO rating, the higher its therapeutic properties.   Antibacterial properties of honey is tested and scored on a scale of 0 (no activity) through to 30 (extremely high activity).

The antibacterial properties of Manuka honey or the Western Australia Jarrah Honey are showing the merits of having the high activity properties, killing the bad guys whilst keeping the good guys safe.    But you have to make sure that the UMF and MGO ratings are high enough to be of value.

I have seen a rating of 5 on Manuka honey in the supermarket, but any rating of under 10 is believed to possess similar anti-bacterial qualities to normal table honey and is not recommended for therapeutic use.  Manuka or Jarrah honey that scores a UMF rating above 10 is believed to be useful for therapeutic use.  That is news worth passing on.

Tags: ABC Health, antibiotics, dermatitis, Jarrah Honey, Manuka honey, microbes, MRSA, probiotics, staph infections