update on sugar used for bad wounds

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Ok, it's been just over a week since we first started using the sugar pack on Job's leg ulcer (from standing in the mud). It definitely worked! We started with an oozing, weeping sore the size of my palm, and today it is only a little bigger than my thumb, dry, and healing beautifully. I really wanted to try using honey instead of sugar, but it took me all week to get the unprocessed stuff, and now the wound is practically healed. So we'll try the honey next time. I did clean the wound daily with a warm wet rag, because the sugar collects on the edges of the sore. It wipes off easily, though. So that's basically it, sugar and warm water cleaning did the trick. I would very much like to hear from anyone else who tries this in the future.

-- Shannon at Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary (gratacres@aol.com), March 24, 2002

Answers

I must have missed the original post. What exactly is the purpose of the sugar? How does it work?

-- Marge (mboyc73@yahoo.com), March 24, 2002.

Ive used honey on myself and on critters, cuts, scraps and burns

-- Stan (sopal@net-pert.com), March 24, 2002.

The original post concerned a pitiful little horse that came to the sanctuary. He had abcessed hooves, urine scald, and chunks of hide falling off, along with mud fever. Mud fever (also known as grease, or scratches) happens when a horses flesh breaks down from being forced to stand in wet & mud. (Although, it can also sometimes happen to horses who are perfectly well-cared for, too.) Bacteria enter the wound, and you get pus-sy, nasty, infected areas that are very difficult to heal. What I did was pack plain white sugar into the wound and then wrap it with Vet-wrap. Sugar has healing properties, apparently. It's all there in the original post...look in the archives under horses health/treatment.

-- Shannon at Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary (gratacres@aol.com), March 24, 2002.

Have seen extremely bad decubitus ulcers heal up using sugar. I usually would wet it down with betadine first, then pack it into the sore. If the sore doesn't respond quickly to this you can squirt some insulin onto the sore first, then pack it. I have also had extremely good results with a paste made of charcoal powder and corn starch, boiled until it was thick then squirted into a bullet wound on my dog's leg. (No I never caught the creep who did it, but I had a pretty good idea who it was, just no proof.) The wound healed very rapidly and it had been badly infected before I discovered it. kim

-- kim in CO (kimk61252@hotmail.com), March 24, 2002.

Hmmmm...I am not finding the original post after all, in horse health or anyplace else in the archives....?

-- Shannon at Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary (gratacres@aol.com), March 24, 2002.


Original post is currently in the Uncategorized listing at the very bottom of the list. Title of the post is "sugar pack for deep, infected wound."

-- Martin Longseth (paquebot@merr.com), March 24, 2002.

My mother worked at a Seventh Day Hospital in CA, and I remember her telling me they used sugar on bed sores and it healed them. My father mixed sugar and Fels Naptha soap together with a little water to bind them together to make a poltice when I was a kid to put on infections or boils and it would clear them up. I have used this several times to do the same thing. I've also cleared up abcesses on a cat and dog with this, tho' it was more difficult to keep a dressing on them than to clear them up.

-- Duffy (hazelm@tenforward.com), March 24, 2002.

If you decide to use honey make sure to use the pasturized honey. The honey in it's natural state harbors bacteria which can cause a infection to worsen. Pasturized honey works wonderful.

-- Michelle (keweenawbaybum@yahoo.com), March 25, 2002.

Yup, that's the old fashioned cure for bed sores--my great aunts used it on my great grandparents and told about it for the next 40 years. :). Works great. Glad to hear it's doing the trick here!

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), March 25, 2002.

There is a lot of miss conception about pasturizing honey. All it does is kill all of the ensynes that make honey healthfull and retard the crystillization and make it look pretty longer on store shelves so city foks will buy it. Studys done in the 1930's and fortys show that bacteria and germs can ont live in honey because of it's high acidity and high sugar content. Raw honey works best and is best for any purpose.

-- Butch (beefarm@scrtc.com), March 25, 2002.


Great news, Shannon! I have always had good luck with sugar packs. Best wishes!

-- cowgirlone in OK (cowgirlone47@hotmail.com), March 25, 2002.

My vet told me he uses brown sugar,works great. He said they use sugar on people's wounds in hospitals. They just call it something else to justify charging a fortune for it. Jo Ann

-- Jo Ann Weaver (hillfarm3@peoplepc.com), March 26, 2002.

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