A spoonful of sugar helps heal wounds – but not in the way you might think. There’s no eating sweet stuff here – just sprinkle it on cuts or bedsores, per a traditional African remedy that’s being tested in English hospitals.
Hospital nurse Moses Murandu, 43, grew up in Zimbabwe watching his father put crushed sugar cane on villagers’ wounds. He was surprised when he arrived in England’s Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham to find the cure wasn’t administered there.
So Murandu conducted a six-month study involving 21 patients at the hospital whose gashes haven’t responded to conventional medicine. It showed that rubbing sugar into bed sores, leg ulcers, or amputations can kill the bacteria that’s getting in the way of healing – and causing pain. How it works: Sugar sucks up the wound’s water, thus starving the bacteria, which need water to live.
“Doctors here tend to forget the traditional medicines that have been working for thousands of years,” Murandu told the UK’s Daily Mail about the technique, passed down from his great-grandfather.
The Birmingham hospital bosses were so delighted with Murandu’s results that he received a £25,000 ($40,715) grant to sprinkle sugar on up to 100 more patients.
“While salt is painful, sugar is not and it reduces the pain drastically. Sugar is also much cheaper than expensive medicines and it has proven to be just as effective,” Murandu told The Mail. The treatment could save England’s National Health Service billions of dollars.
A sweet deal for everyone.
Photo courtesy kaibara87 via Flickr.