Treat wounds with honey and vinegar

 Because antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise, some researchers are studying the antimicrobial properties of historic remedies. One remedy, a mixture of honey and vinegar, seems to work well for treating infected wounds. It’s called oxymel and was prescribed by Hippocrates (460 BCE-375 BCE), among others.

Oxymel could be particularly valuable for treating chronic wound infections, such as those commonly experienced by people with diabetes or burn trauma. Bacterial infections can be difficult to treat, particularly when they’re protected within a biofilm—a complex system of bacteria that can attach tightly to surfaces such as flesh in a wound infection.

Honey stresses bacteria and fights infections with its high sugar content and acidity. Vinegar’s active component, acetic acid, is a natural antiseptic that breaks down bacterial DNA and proteins. In conducting their research, researchers focused on the common wound pathogens Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. They found that neither honey nor vinegar by itself was particularly effective. But together, the honey/vinegar combination (oxymel) killed up to 1,000 times more bacteria than vinegar alone and up to 100,000 times more than honey alone.

Unfortunately, the study report, which was published in the journal Microbiology, doesn’t include a recipe. Apparently, they need to do more research to figure out the best dose combinations. The researchers did use a “medical grade” honey, called Manuka honey, which is available on Amazon. They also indicated that pomegranate vinegar is one candidate for further study. (I had no idea there was such a thing.)

I suppose, if you have a wound that’s not healing, you could experiment with Manuka honey and pomegranate vinegar, although it sounds pretty messy.

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When it’s too late for a doctor’s help

I’m a fan of Caitlin Doughty. She’s a mortician, based in L.A. and author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (about working in a crematorium) and From Here to Eternity (about how other nations and cultures deal with death). She’s a funny lady and good writer and an advocate for funeral industry reform. Here are a few things I’ve learned from her.

In America, death has been a big business since the turn of the twentieth century. America’s funeral industry has become more expensive, more corporate, and more bureaucratic than any other funeral industry on Earth. (American funerals cost $8,000 to $10,000 not including the burial plot and cemetery costs.) What’s more, our funeral system is notorious for passing laws and regulations to interfere with diverse death practices and enforcing assimilation toward Americanized norms. After Hurricane Katrina, a group of Benedictine monks in southern Louisiana began selling low-cost, handmade cypress caskets. The state’s Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors drummed up a cease-and-desist order, claiming that only funeral homes licensed by their board could sell “funeral merchandise.” (Eventually, a federal judge sided with the monks.)

Many Muslims would like to be able to open funeral homes in the U.S. Islamic custom is to wash and purify the body immediately after death before burying it as quickly as possible, ideally before nightfall. They reject embalming, recoiling at the idea of cutting into the body and injecting it with chemicals and preservatives. Yet many states have draconian regulations requiring funeral homes to offer embalming and for all funeral directors to be trained as embalmers, even though the embalming process itself is never required.

An executive of Service Corporation International, the country’s largest funeral and cemetery company, admitted that “the industry was really built around selling a casket.” As more of us are choosing cremations, the industry must find a new way to survive financially by selling not a “funeral service” but a gathering in a “multisensory experience room.”

The problem with cremation is that the process uses the same amount of energy required for a 500-mile car trip; roughly the same amount of energy as a single person uses in an entire month. What’s more, it releases 400 Kgs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere plus a host of other pollutants and carcinogens, the worst of which is mercury from dental fillings.

Alternatives to cremation are available in a few places (very few). Here are three I know about:

Composting: The Urban Death Project, available in Seattle.

Burial directly into the ground: Joshua Tree Memorial Park, California.

Open air pyre: Crestone End of Life Project, Colorado.

My husband and I are opting for composting, but it’s not yet legal in California. Maybe if we live long enough….

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Fascia: attention must be paid

Fascia is the tough, flexible tissue that surrounds and connects muscles, bones, and organs. (Picture raw chicken.) Your body has two kinds: dense and loose. Dense fascia holds muscles, organs, blood vessels, and nerve fibers in place. It also helps your muscles contract and stretch and stabilizes your joints. Loose fascia is more slippery. It allows your muscles, joints and organs to slide and glide against one another.

Problems with fascia can range from annoying to serious. One in ten people have experienced plantar fasciitis in their feet (count me in). It’s an inflammation of the fascia that connects your heels to your toes. The most serious fascia problem is necrotizing fasciitis, an infection that spreads along the fascial plane and can cause deep tissue destruction, sometimes requiring limb amputation.

In the past, doctors thought fascia was just packaging for more important body parts. Now we know that fascia is key to flexibility and range of motion. Because fascia is alive with nerve endings, it can also be a source of pain. The longer it is damaged or inflamed, the more sensitive it becomes.

If you’re sedentary for a long time, fascia can shorten, become overly rigid and congeal into place, forming adhesions that limit mobility. In fact, inactivity can cause fascia to reshape itself. Fascia that is too short, stiff, or sticky in one part of the body can lead to pain and dysfunction elsewhere. And, as you might imagine, it stiffens with age.

If you’ve got pain, it can be tricky to determine whether it’s coming from your fascia or from muscles and joints. As a rule, muscle and joint problems tend to feel worse the more you move, while fascia pain lessens with movement.

Like everything else, it seems, the most effective way to keep your fascia sturdy and elastic is to stay active. Experts say that the best activities are those that involve bouncing, such as dancing, jumping jacks, tennis, skipping. (I know—there’s no way ….) They also suggest dynamic stretching, such as twists, squats, or lunges. Happily, swimming is also good. Some lay people swear by other techniques, such as Rolfing, yin yoga, and myofascial release. While experts question the long-term effectiveness of such treatments, at least they don’t require jumping.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Screening for prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is currently the most diagnosed cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) among U.S. men. Most cancers are localized, meaning that they don’t metastasize and most grow slowly or not at all. No worries about those. Only about seven percent of patients have a disease that does spread—the cancer to worry about.

Screening for prostate cancer was approved by the FDA in 1986 and became widespread in the late 1980s and in the 1990s.Yet the approval occurred in the absence of evidence that early detection of prostate cancer leads to improved patient outcomes. Studies have shown a modest reduction in prostate cancer mortality with PSA (prostate-specific antigen) testing: Screening 1000 men may prevent deaths from prostate cancer in 1.3 men in the 13 years after initial screening.  The problem with screening is that it finds prostate cancer in some men who would never have had symptoms from their cancer in their lifetime. Treatment can cause complications without yielding benefit.

The point of screening is to find cancers that may be at high risk for spreading if not treated. The thing is, about three out of four men with a raised PSA level will not have cancer. A high reading can be caused by medications, urine infections, certain sports, and ejaculation. False positive readings, which are common in older men, can lead to unnecessary tests, such as biopsy of the prostate, and can cause men to worry about their health. Biopsies can be painful and result in infection and blood in the semen. (Men who are 70 or older should not be routinely screened. Men between 55 and 69 should make their own decisions about screening.)

Patients whose tests reveal localized cancer have two options: 1) Treat the cancer with radiation therapy or radical prostatectomy, or 2) “active surveillance,” which may include periodic biopsies, MRIs, and PSA tests. Research has shown that prostate cancer mortality is low, regardless of the treatment. Nevertheless, the patient and his doctor must weigh the trade-offs between the benefits and harms of treatments. Harms include urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction, and bowel dysfunction. Considerations about what to do include the patient’s wishes, remaining life expectancy, and the risk of progression to metastasis and death.

I’m glad I’ll never have to think about this—for myself, anyway.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.