First thing, seek professional medical help for any burns or wounds that might be serious, are getting worse, or not healing fast enough. Here’s why:
- Burns can be more serious than they seem. Burns that don’t hurt so much can be the most damaging.
- If you have an infected or very dirty wound, you may need surgery, debridement by a medical professional, and/or antibiotics. It is best not to wait and honey can’t replace this.
- Stitches may also be needed. If they are needed, the wound needs to be closed soon after injury, because of infection risk. It’s important to have this done within hours and definitely within the same day.
- A puncture wound, such as a bite from a cat’s long incisors or from stepping on a nail, maybe more serious than it seems. You may need to have further treatment — antibiotics, a tetanus shot, debridement, or removal of foreign material that you can’t see.
- It’s important that a wound is fully cleaned. If there is foreign material lodged in the wound, it’s important to seek help in cleaning this wound.
- Wounds can also be more serious if you are diabetic or immunocompromised.
- And do not forget your tetanus shot if you are not up-to-date. Check if you’ve had a vaccine in the last 5 years if you have a dirty or serious wound.
Keep wounds clean. Talk to a medical professional about how best to do this. It’s also important that wounds do not dry out. Bandages can help keep them moist, without drying too much, and a health professional can help with this. It’s also important to seek help with wounds, such as burns, that can stiffen and which may need help to keep tissue from contracting and becoming too tight as they heal.
It’s important also to use precautions when handling wounds. You do not want to introduce bacteria or other germs into a wound, such as from your hands or even from gloves or bandages. You also do not want a wound to infect you. Use universal precautions when handling any open wounds, blood, or other body fluids from someone else to avoid any risk that you could be infected with any sort of infectious pathogen. This means using gloves when handling any sort of body fluid or open wound.
Wounds may need antibiotics. If the wound develops pus, new discharge, an abscess, new redness or pain around the wound edges, is slow to heal, or any other important signs or symptoms, you may need further treatment of the wound. This may mean debridement by a medical professional or antibiotics or other treatments.
Even if you seek care in a hospital, you may still be treated with honey. Many health facilities around the world do use honey as part of their wound care. You can talk to your healthcare professional about this.
All of this said simple wounds can now be treated with medical honey bandages, sold over the counter in many pharmacies and stores in the US and elsewhere. The honey may be already on the bandages or a gel containing medical-grade honey can be applied directly to the wound.