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 recently alerted us to the healing potential of manuka honey.
How Can You Heal Cracked Fingertips?
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.
