Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Honey

Episode Date: August 5, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Justin and Dr. Sydnee do their sweetest, most requested episode ever: Let's have a bit 'o' honey. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saabones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books! One, two, one, two, three, four! We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bohn's M marital tour of misguided medicine. I am Mirko who's just a macaroid and I'm Sydney Macriol said I was I was one to ask you I was ever we're here folks place this today I remember and I was awake and and aware I saw a book about a beekeeping Yes, what's that about? Well beekeeping I think is the the process of keeping bees. Yes, I think you have them at your home, like in your yard, I would just sort of linguistically piece that together. I'm saying like,

why are your parents reading about beekeeping? Oh, okay. Well, that makes more sense. It's a question. Thanks. Well, my dad wants to get into beekeeping. He wants to get hives and not like hives like, you know, you just eat some shellfish. It's really allergic to those. No, like, like, get bee hives and have a bee, wouldn't it gonna be farm? A bee garden? Either way. A bee hostel. Yeah, he's concerned because you know, the bees are disappearing, which is a big problem. It's a big problem for our ecosystem. And he bred something online that said,

you need to do your part to provide more homes for bees to encourage more bee growth, increase the bee population. And so he wants to get some hives and have some bees. Okay. Which is a little scary for me. Yeah, I would worry about what you're just worried about like stinging. Yes, I'm a little worried about,

I'm a little scared of bees. Just a little scared of bees. I'm more worried about the clutter because you know your parents, like it's gonna be every day. Hey, we got on the jar, honey. We can't have this. Can't feed it to our baby.

It's poison babies. Yes, you can't give honey to others. She's almost a year. Oh, I'm getting her honey birthday cake. We were getting. We're getting close to honey time. But you know, while I am. It's always honey time with Michael Ray.

Well, while I am a little anxious about bees and the whole stinging thing, the honey is actually, that would actually be pretty cool, not just because honey, you know, is tasty, because it is, but honey is a great thing to use medicinally for real sometimes, in some cases. For real? For real. Why is it on our show?

Well, because so many people have been asking us to talk about it. Okay, that's so long. That's a perfect, that's a good degree, Susette. I casually mentioned Honey in, I don't know, an episode a long time ago. I'm sure somebody's going to know which one it is. And I said we should do a show on Honey sometime, because my perception of honey was that overall it's not as good for your health as people think it is and that's probably still a fair statement. I mean nothing is as good. Everybody kind of gets like a thing. People latch onto a thing

like this is the thing that will fix you. Like some people just tell you drink water all the time and you'll never get any diseases or whatever. And I think there are people who feel that way about honey and that's not true. But honey is actually fairly useful in And I think there are people who feel that way about honey. And that's not true. But honey is actually fairly useful in some cases. And there are some real medical applications for it. So it doesn't quite fit our criteria. But along with the masses, Mara, Stephanie, Amy, Kelsey, Madison, Jennifer, Matt,

and many other people have asked us to talk about it. So here you go. That sounds good. If I make a stink face by the way, while we're recording, I pour my smoothie into a mason jar that I just empty pickles out of, and it still has like a distinctive pickle smell. So like when I go in for like a smoothie gulp

and I'm getting like pickles, it's really heinous. That's really on you. It's on me no question about it. I thought I'd need a travel Smoothie container. I didn't realize I'd be here for a little bit longer So I don't I don't know why I did this to myself and what else do you choose for a travel a travel smoothie container But a mason jar nothing else. We always bake it off. This isn't relevant honey. I have a mason jar full of honey That's not true, but like let's pretend that that is true So I have some reason for the tangent.

So while I begin to tell you about honey, you can sit there and drink a mason jar full of honey. Yeah, I heard that it's great for me. I don't know. I'll cure all my problems. Great. Okay, I've already ruined everything. Okay, we've been using honey as medicine

since at least 2000 BC. So for a long time. 2000 BC? See? Is there gonna be a lot of that? I just want to know. No way to know. Okay, great.

Tablets from Ancient Sumer talk about how you could mix like honey and water and some cedar oil and some river dust, which I'm assuming is like river rock dust, river, river. River. No, and you mix that with honey. Oh, okay. I was going to say you guys don't need a recipe for honey Just get get just get some. I think people knew where to get honey I didn't read about that like where where did where how did we first figure out like hey if you can get past the bees

This is delicious. This is delicious. Go get this But you mix all this stuff together and you can put it on wounds and it will help heal them. So we've thought about honey not just for its tastiness but for its medicinal qualities for really long time. The Ebers Papyrus mentions 147 different prescriptions so to speak medical concoctions that contain honey. That's also just like a good, like from a physics point of view, it's just a good bonding agent. It makes it look like a thing rather than just a bunch of crap that you started together. It gives it like some viscosity.

Yeah, it's exactly. Yeah, more like a syrup. It looks like more like a treatment. Okay, I got it. It looks more impressive. Well, if you wanted to use it for baldness, here's an example. You could mix honey with red ochre and some powdered alabaster. It's very fancy.

So I get that. And then just coat your head with it, I guess. I don't know. I don't know if you're supposed to take that internally. Well, I'm going to pretend you coat your head with it. Do that. That was the way for a lot of baldness treatments. That's true.

Yeal and dime. That's true. That's true. That's true. If you had a surgery and you survived it, which is a pretty big assumption when we're talking like Ebers Papyrus days, you could use honey as an inema afterwards for inflammation. That's really like contemplation. You're really pushing your luck at that point, right? You already survived that and you're like, how may be next up, something in my butt? I guess, I don't know. Just put some honey up there.

I'm just playing with, I'm apparently indestructible cause I survived an old-time surgery. So. I think if you manage to survive an old-timey surgery, just treat yourself and eat the honey. Yeah, yeah, don't put it in there. Put it up there. No, up higher, up, up, up there.

Yes, there you're mouth. A less popular papyrus called the Smith papyrus that we don't talk about nearly as much as the Ebers papyrus. They mentioned that to cure a wound, this is a prescription. First put some raw meat on it and wait a day and then put a mixture of honey and grease and lint on it and keep doing that and you should be fine in a few more days. Probably not. No, I wouldn't do that.

Honey and grease and lint on it. That's an insane combination to put on an open wound. That's crazy. You see, a lot of these recipes had honey with some kind of grease. So I almost wonder if it was just to like like loosen it You know loosen up a little bit so it wasn't so thick. It would be easier to I don't know That's just my theory. I don't know if there was like a medicinal property of the grease

Well got honey and grease on it, but it still doesn't look how about some land? Okay, Lint the oh you sure will try lint I'm assuming they don't mean like pocket lint like from your jeans. I'm assuming they don't mean dry or lint because those weren't invented yet That's true. That's a great good job, Justin. Thanks for that excellent point. Thanks. I come for it. I'm here for the insight honey is mentioned as something to sustain your life not sustain your life to make you live longer and to make you healthier and that it's good for your body and soul in both the Bible and the Quran. The Greeks also were fans of eating honey, not just again because of its sweet deliciousness, but because they thought it could make you live longer.

Hypocrite's and Aristotle both wrote about it and they also advised using it for wound healing. Plenty, of course, weighs in on honey. Got to get in there. He's got to. He's got to talk about it. He's got to talk about everything else, literally everything you can put in or on your body, so why not honey? And he advised. He had a section on like pills and actual medicine and he just discounted all of them, like

tonal, nope, not real, avril, come on, dispel that somewhere that somewhere else pina silla and pina no thank you don't want it Which would be really impressive if he predicted the invention of all these compounds He predicted them and then he instantly discounted them Just dismiss them out of hand Impressive and disappointing. Yeah, that's that's plenty for you in a nutshell So plenty advise that you use honey for pneumonia, for pleuricy and for snake bites. The Mayans advise using honey for cataracts.

Okay. Again, something I think you would topically apply, which sounds a little unpleasant. Just for the fly. You'd think that the default with honey would have just been to tell people to eat it because if nothing else, like nobody's gonna be mad at you afterwards.

You just ate some honey. Like that didn't work, but no, it was good. Most of it, well, I think it's just because most ancient healers were actually bears. So they just walk around dipped in honey. I feel like you'll know that, yeah. Most ancient doctors, plenty bear, Aristotle bear, Evers bear,

St. Yogie bear, Yogie bear, bear, grills. There's some different bear. You got anything else? That's just gonna let you go. Okay.

Bear and stain, bears. Does that work? Yeah. Okay. In traditional Chinese medicine, honey is seen as a neutral food or it's like a balanced food so it's not just yen or yang so that makes it particularly good for you. It can also strengthen your spleen.

It can clear your skin. Give you rosy cheeks. Prevent dehydration. Prevent constipation. Reduce inflammation. Also, it's good for, and there's a really long list here that I'm about to get to. And a variety of infectious diseases. It's like everything.

Yeah, it is. Celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, anglos and spondylitis. There's a huge list of things that, in theory, it's good for. And I mentioned this now because you're gonna find this trend, as we talk more about honey, people have advocated honey as kind of a, dare I say, cure all. And there's one thing we know about cure all city. Cure all.

Cure nothing. So I would be really careful when you start reading about medicinal honey because you're going to find lists like this giant list that says things like it's great for meningococcal meningitis, which no, don't take honey if you have meningitis, go to the hospital now. And ask if they have honey there because they probably have better honey than you have at home and it's free there. So you just got to be careful about this stuff.

In Ayurvedic medicine, it's interesting. They also talk about the use of honey and they mention specifically that you get better honey from bees from India. There's lobbyists that are already gotten to them. They're like wild bees as opposed to, they kind of present as domesticated European bees. That sounds like something that was put across by farm reps.

F-A-R-M reps. Was that another one there? That was pretty good. I hated that I had to spell it, but it wasn't going to fly otherwise. No, because it also sounds like something that a farm rep would say. Yeah, but like that's why it's like the best joking you may have ever told. Farm reps. Okay. No, I'm sorry. You got it. It's told. Farm reps. Okay.

That's the line. I'm sorry, you got it. It's good. It's a very history. It's a very history. Sorry. They mention that there are different types. Bees that come from a farm.

Do they do? Farm reps. And your dad's house. Okay. See, I still don't know if that's like a bee farm. Is it a bee farm. Is it be farm? I'm just saying that like,

like if you have a bunch of bees, do you have a beef farm? Like, do you have a beef farm? I'm saying the cultivation would probably be a good, like, facet of your farming business. You shouldn't hinge your whole, like don't hit your whole wagon to bees if you're a farmer, that's crazy.

Nobody just says, I'm a bee farmer. My name is Stinky Joe and I'm a bee farmer and I just have bees. But like as a supplement to the rest of your farming, I would think that that would be fine. Maybe I don't know. Honey can be expensive. Maybe if you have like really great honey, you can make a whole living off your bee farm. Yeah, but like you don't want to put, first you got to weigh the margins, have you not watched Shark Tank?

You got to check the margins on this and make sure that's, you've got a market for it. Has anybody ever done a honey thing on Shark Tank? I'm offering you 25% of my B business. It does not extend to my Ruta Begas or my lettuce or any of the other growables that I have on the farm. It is just the bee business that I'm offering today. Why would I only want the bee business?

Why can't I have a piece of everything? I want 25% of everything. Well, it was my grandpa's, so I don't want, I got a column. Okay, should we stop doing this Shark we've got enough of the past. I think maybe. Anyway, we're talking about wild bees from India, which are better than domesticated, I don't know, uptight European bees, was the kind of the way that it was presented, but I felt like...

So, they're also different types of honey that they mentioned, so you want to be careful which type of honey you get because it can be used for a different kind of ailment. And it needs to be used cold, warm honey is dangerous for some reason. Because it will burn you? Well, I guess it was really awesome.

Yeah. No, I think that it has something to do with the properties of the honey. because the temperature thing, and we've never talked, we haven't talked a lot about aeruvating medicine, we've mentioned it before the other episodes. We've talked about it in the oil pooling episode. Yes, but we haven't.

I don't think we've gotten into the whole, like the basis, like the foundation of it, but, and I don't understand it completely, but I think that temperature is an important facet. Like the temperatures are different things. People have different temperatures. That's part of their like, their persona and the medical conditions

that they may suffer and that kind of thing. Okay. So it can treat, in our Vedic medicine, diabetes, eye disease, if you're vomiting blood, UTIs, cough, hepatitis, asthma, TB, hemorrhoids, and leprosy. Oh.

Among other things. Currently, we still, there are still people who are, consider themselves like practitioners of honey medicine, it's called apathy therapy. And this is an older therapy, but it is still around today. And again, it depends on the type of honey. And I guess that's based on what flowers the bee has. Okay, it makes sense. Then to what fields the bees in.

Which seems like this gets really complicated to me, because I guess you would have to have your own bee farm, and you'd have to have all of the plants that the bees were going to visit there, and then know that they weren't going and like sneaking around with other kinds of plants. You know, if you were going to have like a unifloral honey, like if you knew that this honey was the product of your bees just visiting what, you know what I mean? How would you keep chow? I don't know, that seems like really hard to me. I don't know if you have to keep them inside,

like if you build like a big dome around your bees and the plants. I mean, you could ask them, but bees are notorious liars. They're not gonna tell you the truth. They're gonna tell you that this is just chestnut honey. Oh no, man, just chestnuts. Love them. But maybe there's some dandelion honey in there.

And that matters because if it's chestnut honey, it's good for your bladder. If it's dandelion honey, it's better for your GI tract. If it's clover honey, it's gonna be a sedative. And if it's buckwheat honey, it's gonna be an antioxidant. I don't know that any of that is really true. I don't know either. In a lot of the cases, there's not really any research.

And it's hard because even when we do studies on honey, when we've looked back at retrospectively, when we've done studies to see if it really helps with stuff, we don't always know what plant it was from. Even if we found that honey was good for this thing, what kind of honey was it? We're not really 100% sure. I don't know that all that lines up. If you really get into apathyoreb, you'll find that they don't just recommend honey. It's like all the B products. You get into the royal jelly that comes from the bees and the bee venom itself.

And that's when you get some really crazy claims in my opinion because you'll see that bee venom is advised for everything from shingles to multiple sclerosis to cancer. That's about where I like tap out on any sort of like alternative medicine like the moment you're like, and it's good for cancer, like, okay, we're done here. Like you don't, like, if you wanna say, like it'll help your hiccups,

or it'll help your insomnia, whatever, that's fine. Insomnia's more serious than that, but you go what I'm saying, like, no life threatening thing, like, and you wanna try some alternative medicines for it, I firmly believe there are alternative like ways of treating some of this stuff but like- Absolutely, there's so much we don't know about.

Like, oh and it's good for cancer, like I just stop it. You can't put that in the same list. You can't say that like- Right, exactly. Like for sore throats and cancer and also an upset tummy like the way you're going to back up. There was one in the middle, you slid in. When you throw in people who are suffering from things like MS and cancer, also an upset tummy, like you waited a minute back up, there was one in the middle, you slid in. When you throw in people who are suffering from things like MS and cancer, that's, I think that's not fair,

unless you've got research to back it up. And in these cases, we really don't. But I will say this, a lot of the claims currently, as far as what is honey good for, are one thing that we may actually have some evidence for. What is it? Well, Justin, I'm going to tell you all about that right after we visit the villain department. Let's go.

The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God before the mouth. During the break, I should warn everybody that we've added our third co-host to the show, Charlie Gayle McElroy. She is playing contentedly in the back of her play pin. She's promised to let mommy and daddy finish their show. But in case you hear any gurgling noises, it's not my tummy. It's the baby. Sorry. Sorry. So, Siddy, you're about to tell me the one thing that Honey actually does help with. So there's one thing that we have some decent evidence for, and that's wound healing. Before the invention of antibiotics, it was common practice to apply honey topically to a wound to help it heal.

After penicillin in the 1940s, we got kind of cocky. We thought, well, we can do better than nature. We make things. Well, penicillin came from nature. But then we made other things. We thought we were better at it than nature. We make things. Well, a penicillin came from nature. But then we made other things. We thought we were better at it than honey. And so we started using antibiotics. But then we've started having problems with resistance to antibiotics, right? So, you know, we know we use antibiotics too much and the bacteria are learning our tricks and are getting wily. And so we're looking

for old ways to use again to heal wounds. And this is where honey kind of came back in fashion. There is a medical grade honey that is sold that you can buy. Like made specifically for that use? Yes, exactly. So it's made and it's cleaned and sterilized.

So there's nothing else in it. So it's not the honey you get from a bear. You wouldn't wanna use the honey you have in your cabinet for this kind of thing. The important question is, could I use the medicinal honey for all my biscuits? You could use just the honey, but there are a lot of preparations,

like ointments and gauzes infused with this that you probably don't want to eat. Okay, so, um, just to judge sort of what you think of me as a human, you're clarifying for me that I shouldn't eat gauze. That's what you wanted to make sure in my, in my ravenous appetite for honey that I didn't accidentally eat some gauze. Yeah, don't eat gauze infused with honey. Because I'm slimer from the Ghost Busters. I'll just...

Are you? No, not to my knowledge. So there have been many studies that have shown that wound healing is improved. It forms a barrier. These are some of the thoughts as to why it forms a barrier. It promotes drainage through osmotic forces with the honey, sucking water and fluids out of the wound. It's antiseptic, it prevents the dressing from sticking to a wound, it's anti-inflammatory,

it makes the wound smell better. Sure. The high sugar and the low pH can inhibit the growth of bacteria, so there's one specific honey called Manuka honey that is used in a lot of commercial products for this. Some other honey can make hydrogen peroxide, which of course can kill germs,

but that's not how Manuka honey works. There's metahoney, which is a commercial preparation that you can use on wood. Metahoney? Meti, like, Meti, Meti honey. Eczema, you can use it as a gauze. There actually is therapeutic honey at the hospital where I work.

Have you ever employed it yourself? You know, I haven't ordered it because there actually is therapeutic honey at the hospital where I work. Have you ever employed it yourself? You know, I haven't ordered it because generally like the wound care nurses recommend it, but yes, it is something that we can use on wounds and do. So and it's a little tricky, there are some studies that have said, well, it probably doesn't work any better than antibiotic weightment. So I don't know that I can say it's better than the little...

Yeah, but like considering it's honey, like as good, or maybe even like a little bit worse, than antibiotic, like that's pretty impressive. I think it is impressive, and especially when we're trying to be better stewards of antibiotic usage, you know, not just throw it at every open wound, you know, it's not infected why we're using antibiotics. If we can use honey, maybe that's a good thing.

And there's been a lot of studies to look into. It's effectiveness on things like MRSA, the big scary bugs that we're all afraid of, because it, you know, in theory, it should work just as well no matter what antibiotic resistance patterns the bacteria has. So is this something that's commercially available? Like, should you be getting like this instead of new sp foreign, for example? I wouldn't go that far because the evidence is inconsistent and because you don't just wanna use it on any old wound. It's like one thing I found in some of the literature

is that it's good for burns using honey on a burn, it's good. And then I found other people who said you don't wanna use it on a burn because it hurts if you put it on a burn. Oh. So I don't have. I wouldn't just use honey, Willie Nilly. I would probably want to ask, you know,

your doctor or a wound care specialist before I would just use honey. And like I said, it's suggested by people who will tell you to use honey, it's suggested now for everything, you know, gastritis and diabetes and alcohol intoxication. Right. One thing I found pretty consistently is that if you read that honey is good for diabetics

that they should eat that instead of sugar, I wouldn't believe that. Honey is still carbohydrates and it's still something that counts towards raising your blood glucose if you're not, if you have insulin resistance, if you have diabetes. So that's not like just to use much honey as you want and stay away from other sugars. I mean, you should still consider it like a sugar and be careful with it. So there's no truth to that. And you can really, like I found, this can go really into madness if you keep down this road. I found this one chart that there was a doctor

in Russia who made of his patients that he treated in the hospital for everything with honey. The most in any one group was about 60. So this is not a very big sample size. And it's one doctor, his patients, one hospital. So again, not a great like random study. But the conditions that he mentioned that he used, honey for were alopecia, inflammation of the vagina, prostititis, impotency, and then two of the other illnesses

were listed as geriatry and pediatrics. So just old and kid. Old and kid were two of the things listed and I don't know what honey or how or where or how much, but he had like numbers like who was successful and who wasn't. So I mean like you find that kind of and that's like a that's supposed to be like evidence that this works. There was another table that you find that kind of, and that's supposed to be evidence that this works. There was another table that claimed that Honey could prevent cancer, and then it had the physiological reason for how it prevented cancer, and it said, anti-cancerogenic effects.

So you have to be really careful, even if something is presented. I mean, these were presented as graphs and tables and charts, and as a study, it was referenced it had citations at the end. If you weren't a critical thinker, you would just look at this and go, okay, great, honey, curious cancer. But that's not true. Now I did find a lot of recommendations for honey massage,

which sounds great to me. Is that the thing? That wasn't for the show, there was just a hint to me, like I should give you a honey massage. Just give me a honey massage. Got it. And I think that that Like, I should give you a honey massage. Just give me a honey massage. Got it. And I think that that's, I found some other evidence.

There's a little bit of evidence for like honey for a cough, honey for acid reflux, honey. As part of like, if your kid gets diarrhea and they need an oral rehydration solution, like something to, you know, give them their electrolyte and stuff back, using honey instead of other sugars. And they're not under one.

Got it. That's fine. Sure, try this stuff. That's fine. Sure. Try this stuff. There's some studies that say, maybe it's a little better than cough medicine, maybe it's a little better than other reflux medicines. Why not?

It's honey. Give it a shot. I can't hurt. And it's probably safer than a lot of the, over-the-counter cough medicines for kids anyway. Do you think you need, like, to get the most natural stuff, like, obviously, like, unless you're, like, medicinal honey, do you need to probably get, like, the most unprocessed stuff available? I would imagine you're by like medicinal honey. Do you need to probably get like the

most unprocessed stuff available? I would imagine like raw honey. Well, I don't know. I don't know that that's necessarily better. I haven't found any evidence to that. The only thing that's been studied as like a specific type of honey from a specific region, which I believe it's in New Zealand, is Manuka honey. Pass that. I really don't know that I have good evidence to tell you that one honey is better than another honey. I'm sure that they are. I'm sure that there is variation, but I wouldn't know which one to tell you is better.

A lot of this stuff, like I said, it, we don't have evidence that it necessarily works better. It just doesn't appear to hurt and there've been some small studies that suggest maybe, like maybe you're better off doing doing just some sort of honey than cough medicine. So you're saying that when I had pizza hut honey surrogid drizzle on my pretzel crust pizza

this weekend, that was like a medical treatment that I was applying? No, because the vehicle that delivered the honey was, you know, pizza. Medicinal pizza. No, that's easy. Serapietate pizza. No. prescribed pizza, pizza prescription.

I would like to make one point and we've said it a couple times, but just to reiterate, because we've talked about honey now for things like diarrhea and cough and reflux, things that babies get. But, Justin, do you give honey to babies? Nope. No. You see, dad 101. Don't give honey to babies under one.

They can get botulism. The spores can live in dust and stuff that gets in the honey, and their immune systems can't handle it. And so they can get botulism from honey. Adults don't, but babies can. So do not give your baby honey. That is a true thing.

Don't, don't do it. It's not worth the risk. Thanks to the taxpayers for letting us use their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to maximumfund.org, the podcast network of which we are a proud member. There's a lot of great shows there. I'm going to recommend the flop house because I think I've recommended it before probably, but I've been listening to it like obsessively. So, it's a great podcast about bad movies. It's been going on for like seven years. So,

check it totally out. I think that's it. Are we done? Oh, our email address is sobonesatmaximumfund.org. If you want to... If you want to suggest a topic... A lot of people suggested honey, that's part of why it is happening today. I hope you're all happy. So email us and tell us more topic. Take that. Take that.

And that's going to do it for us until next Wednesday. I am Justin Macarole. I'm just sitting Macaron. As always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artist-owned Listener-supported