Will Your Cracked Fingertips Heal With Manuka Honey?

In the winter, many people suffer from dry skin. Beyond that, their painfully cracked fingertips may interfere with typing, buttoning clothes or doing any other fine tasks. Some people have developed ingenious remedies for this problem. They may apply lip balm to the fingers or use a greasy moisturizer like Vaseline at night. (Wearing cotton gloves to bed can help protect the sheets and keep the moisturizer where it can do the most good.) Certain individuals find that applying instant glue to the splits helps them heal more quickly. A reader alerted us to the healing potential of manuka honey. Another is enthusiastic about plain old table sugar.

Healing Fingertip Wounds with Sugar:

Q. Thank you so very much for posting about sugar to heal open wounds. Every winter I get deep fissures in my fingertips from cold, dry air. Not only are they extremely painful, I cannot pick up any objects for weeks.

Over the decades, I’ve tried everything including prescription, OTC and natural remedies. Nothing has ever worked.

Last night I tried packing the open splits with sugar and covering that with adhesive bandages and rubber dishwashing gloves. This morning the pain is almost gone, and the wounds are much less deep!

A. We first learned about this approach to wound healing decades ago. Dr. Richard Knutson was a surgeon in Greenville, MS. He described using sugar and povidone iodine to enhance treatment of wounds, burns and ulcers in the Southern Medical Journal (Nov. 1981).  Later, he dropped the iodine and recommended confectioners sugar and vegetable oil.

We were able to interview Dr. Knutson before his death to get more details about his remedy. You can listen to this free podcast by going to PeoplesPharmacy.com and searching for Show 839: Sugar for Wounds.

Can You Heal Cracked Fingertips with Manuka Honey?

Q. I have deep cracks on the sides of my thumb and first finger. They get so sore that I am barely able to hold a pen or pencil to write.

A friend of mine urged me to use manuka honey then cover it with a bandage. Manuka honey is used in burn units to aid healing. My crevices closed up within a couple of days. It’s amazing.

What Is Manuka Honey?

A. Manuka honey comes from New Zealand, where bees visit the flowers of the manuka bush, Leptospermum scoparium. This special honey has antimicrobial and antioxidant activity. As a wound dressing, it stimulates the immune system to help build new tissue (Current Drug Metabolism, Oct. 2017). This medicinal honey can inhibit bacterial biofilm formation, which could be critically important in treating wounds (Scientific Reports, Dec. 3, 2019). Such biofilms might not be important in the development of fingertip splits, but they are a factor in maintaining chronic wounds.

In addition, a systematic review of randomized controlled trials concluded that honey dressings are helpful for treating burns (Burns, Feb. 2017). This review produced evidence that manuka honey speeds healing of burns better than the gold standard of burn treatment, silver sulfadiazine.