Kill the Burn, Honey! Kill the Burn.

by Liberty on February 18th, 2008

So you’re cooking, right? You grab the lid off the pot so fast that it flings itself mercilessly against the inside of your wrist, sending you careening over to the kitchen sink as your dinner burns on the stove. What do you do next?

A) Run the wound under cool water.
B) Call the pizza joint and say to hell with home-cooking forever.
C) Curse so loudly your children gaze at you in horror, then scrunch up their little faces and run out of the room.
D) Schlack the burn with a bit of honey.

While your natural instincts might steer you toward B and C, what you really need to do is take a deep breath, then proceed with A, then D.

D, you say? Yes, D. Because out of all the wacky home remedies out there to treat burns, honey has been shown to be a pretty darn effective one. In fact, honey possesses both anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, so it should head off infection and relieve burn-inflicted swelling. Keeping this in mind, after rinsing the wound with cool water, spread a dab of honey over the burn and cover it with a no-stick sterile gauze pad.

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve sung the praises of honey, mind you. The stuff sure as heck is good for more than just sweetening up oatmeal or a peanut butter sandwich. In fact, since honey is not as widely used to treat wounds and infections as other over-the-counter pharmaceutical choices, it has yet to become resistant to the same super-bacterias that are outsmarting those OTC choices. Ah, the gift of nature.

Have you used honey on your wounds? Will you now that you’ve read this? I can’t wait (er, sort of) for one of my nearly-famous dinner-making burns to test out this trick. Fingers crossed!