Gastric ulcers are painful, open sores inside your stomach, according to the Mayo Clinic website. The most common cause of gastric, or peptic, ulcers is H. pylori bacteria, which may infect up to half the people in the world. According to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, laboratory studies suggest that manuka honey, produced from the New Zealand manuka bush, has unique anti-microbial components that may kill ulcer-causing bacteria. However, clinical trials have not supported this finding. Consult your doctor before using any home remedy.
Gastric Ulcers
Ulcers were once thought to be caused by stress and spicy foods, but scientists have established that H. pylori bacteria and regular use of certain medications, such as aspirin and ibuprofen, are the most common causes of ulcers. Ulcers may develop when excess stomach fluids or inadequately mucus-coated intestinal tissues are eaten away by digestive acids. H. pylori bacteria don't always cause indigestion or ulcers, but sometimes the bacteria can cause your stomach lining to become inflamed and lead to an ulcer.
Raw Honey
Honeybees produce honey from a variety of nectar sources. All raw, unprocessed honey has antibacterial properties because of hydrogen peroxide-generating components and an acidic pH, according to the New Zealand University of Waikato Honey Research Unit. New Zealand manuka honey has additional antimicrobial activity due in part to methylglyoxal, or MGO, found in the manuka bush. Unlike MGO, a free radical phytochemical, the hydrogen peroxide-generating components in standard honey degrade in stomach fluids.
MGO Research
Some standard kinds of honey have small amounts of MGO, according to the University of Waikato. A 2008 study reported in “Molecular Nutrition & Food Research” compared MGO levels and antibacterial activity in different types of honey. Manuka honey samples were found to have MGO concentrations of 38 to 761 mg per kg, up to 100 times higher than standard honey. MGO was shown to be more effective against bacteria than two antimicrobial components found in standard honey. MGO inhibited E. coli and S. aureus bacteria at concentrations of 1.1 millimole per liter, while one standard honey component was found to be up to six times less effective, and the other was found to be ineffective.
Conflicting Results
Despite previous laboratory studies that showed manuka honey was effective against the ulcer-causing H. pylori bacteria, one clinical study, reported in the April 2010 edition of “The British Journal of Nutrition," showed that ingesting a little over 1 1/3 tbsp. of high-grade manuka honey every day for four weeks resulted in no changes in lower-intestinal bacteria levels in 20 healthy study participants ages 42 to 64.
References
- Mayo Clinic: Peptic Ulcers
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center: Manuka Honey
- University of Waikato Honey Research Unit: What’s so Special About Active Manuka Honey?
- “Molecular Nutrition & Food Research”; Identification and Quantification of Methylglyoxal; Mavric E, et al.; April 2008
- “The British Journal of Nutrition”; Demonstrating the Safety of Manuka Honey UMF 20+in a Human Clinical Trial With Healthy Individuals; Wallace et al; April 2010
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