Q. I have an old chemical burn on my shin that re-opened. The wound cultured positive for MRSA, so I took antibiotics for a month. Despite that, the wound continued to get worse and nothing seemed to help. I tried several prescription wound gels like Silvadene and Bactroban to no avail.
I found your article about sugar for wounds and have been using it for several days. The wound is healing nicely now. Thank you.
A. According to orthopedic surgeon Richard Knutson, MD, a mixture of three parts confectioners’ sugar to one part cooking oil can be used to make a dressing that speeds wound healing. He has treated about 7,000 patients over three decades with good results.
More details and an interview with Dr. Knutson can be found at PeoplesPharmacy.com. He first published his research on this approach to healing in November, 1981, in the Southern Medical Journal. He has continued to refine the treatment since then, and it is simple enough to use at home.
One reader has commented: “This is well known to me, and works great. My ex-wife who is a physician and now works here in the USA had been using the technique for years. She initially learned about it during her residency in Argentina (around 1981-82). She had to care for many old patients with ulcers or wounds that would not heal, and this was the least expensive and most effective way to treat them. I have also heard about combining sugar with lemon juice (sounds painful). But just white bleached sugar works very well.
“She probably believed in this because her training involved day by day contact with patients, doing chores that are now usually performed by nurses in the USA. She actually changed the wounds’ dressing, touched, palpated, probed, listened to the hearts and lungs and performed intensive hands-on examinations of real suffering people. She also learned some compassion for the patients in the process. All that is gone from medical schools in the USA where patients have been replaced by crash dummies with electronics for training future doctors (this is true)…. but I digress!!!”
