Home remedies · Skin, wounds & stings
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
If honey, then only medical wound honey from the pharmacy: thinly on the cleaned wound or on the dressing, a bandage over it, changed every one to two days. Small, clean everyday wounds do not need it — cleaning, keeping it moist and covering it is enough.
Three substances, three routes. First the sugar itself: at high concentration it pulls water out of cells, bacteria included — which is why honey does not spoil. Second hydrogen peroxide: an enzyme in honey forms it slowly and in small amounts when honey meets wound fluid. Third, in manuka honey, methylglyoxal, which works independently of that enzyme. Medical wound honey is additionally irradiated and standardised — with honey from the jar neither the amount of these substances nor the germs in it are known.
The reason for the pharmacy is not a formality: natural honey can carry spores, and in an open wound that is a different chapter from in tea. For the same reason honey is out in the first year of life, inside and out. It does not replace wound care: a wound that gapes, is deep, bleeds heavily or came from a dirty object gets treated, not spread.
A wound that gapes or is deeper than the skin, bleeding that does not stop after ten minutes of pressure, a foreign body in it, a bite, a rusty or dirty object, spreading redness, warmth, pus, or a red streak leading away from it — and if tetanus cover is unclear.
See a doctor: wounds that gape, bleed heavily or are deep, bite wounds, burns larger than your own palm or with blisters on the face and joints. Likewise redness spreading quickly, especially with fever. And any mole that changes.