Honey as an Antibiotic

To those who are not familiar with this, it may come to a surprise as to how this is possible? Is this really true? Well technically speaking, this is a very common thing in fields of science in chemistry and I would lay down why this is possible through this post today. Shall we get started?

_{Honey is known to have antibiotic properties. image source}

Honey has been documented as one of the earliest medicines in civilization, It has been found in Egyptian papyrus dating between 2200-2600 BC. It is widely known as a folk medicine even here in the Philippines. Since the olden times it has been renowned for its wound healing and infection prevention properties. I mentioned last time that it was even used by Roman soldiers to heal their wounds in the absence of direct medical management

At around 1940, the time where clinical testing started, the popularity of honey has started to decline. With the advent of antibiotic therapy, its clinical application has been neglected by community and the lay men. Antibiotics come with side effects while the use of honey has shown none.

How does honey exert its antibiotic effect?

_{image source}

To understanding how this is possible, I would want to break down my lecture into parts again, to be able to fully understand the whole process. Please bear with me as I would love to really talk about this from time to time. For this discussion, we will focus on Osmolarity and move on to other mechanisms of action later on.

Osmolarity

This is defined as the measure of solute concentration usually expressed as Osm/L or osmoles per liter. To make the long story short, osmolarity is the amount of solutes present in a solvent and measures the ability of the mixture to move fluid or solutes in and out a semipermeable membrane through osmotic pressure.

_{The division of the pool acts as a gate to move water out of one side with higher concentration. image source}

Still confused? Let's think about it this way. Think of two swimming pools separated by a gate. Let us say that one side of the pool has more people than the other. We are in a state of disequilibrium or a position where balance is not achieved. To attain a state of balance, water needs to be moved out of the less crowded pool into the crowded side to equalize the concentration of people and water.

_{Water moves across a semipermeable membrane in high osmolarity. image source}

Osmolarity measures the number of people inside the pool (concentration of solutes) and the degree of possibly to move water (solvent) in between the gate (semipermeable membrane). That's my best explanation of the how osmolarity works. And with that being said, honey is a substance with high osmolarity.

How Osmolarity affects bacteria

Bacteria are types of cells which are harmful to the body. The cell walls or outer covering of bacterium are semi-permeable as is every cell in the body (with a few exceptions). When cells are exposed in a solution with high osmolarity, the cell wall which acts as a gate across two sections allows movement of particles through it.

_{Honey makes it possible to move water from the bacteria. image source}

Are we doing good so far? Basically high osmolarity solutions makes it possible to move contents in and out of the cell. Now imagine the bacteria as the side of the pool without much people, and honey solution as the crowded side of the pool. When this situation occurs, water moves from the bacteria and into the honey solution. Imagine all the fluids getting out of the bacteria. The process of moving the water out of the bacterium cell wall and dehydration of the bacteria is called cell lysis.

image source

Because honey has a high osmolarity, water from the bacteria moves into the honey, dehydrating the bacteria, thereby killing it.

If you want to know more about Honey, please click the link below :

Honey: The Liquid Gold | Historical Context Series : Part 1

How Honeybees Make Honey: A brief discussion on how liquid gold is formed