Around 2600 BCE, honey was listed in an ancient Egyptian trauma manual, much treasured for its ability to speed wound healing. And now, modern science has proved these ancient wisdoms correct.  Manuka honey is now accepted, in even mainstream medicine, for its ability to heal wounds and successfully fight an array of nasty bugs like strep infection and E. coli.

But the latest evidence suggests that manuka honey’s healing effects are more wide-ranging.  Early research suggests that manuka honey can even be a potential treatment for breast cancer. Recent studies (albeit in mice) showed that small amounts of the honey shrunk estrogen-receptor positive tumors in mice by 82 percent in a month and a half.  This joins earlier evidence showing that it may have a positive role in shrinking colorectal and liver cancer, as well as prostate, bladder, kidney, endometrial and even bone cancer cells.

A number of possible mechanisms are responsible: manuka honey induces apoptosis, or cancer cell death, lowers inflammation, re-regulates cell cycles and mitochondrial pathways, and inhibits angiogenesis (cancer growth). In fact, it appears to affect the entire lifecycle of cancer by inhibiting the start, promotion and progression of cancer cells.  And while honey is highly toxic to cancer, it has no effect on normal cells.

Those extraordinary results beg a basic question:  how can something that is basically sugar – some 80 percent fructose and glucose – kill cancer, when cancer feeds on sugar?

The answer is simply that manuka honey contains a great deal more than sweetness.  Among the vast variety of natural honeys, manuka honey is the prom queen. This dark rich substance is chock full of phenols and methylglyoxal, both highly potent antimicrobials.  Although most honey comes from wildflowers and clover, the purest and most potent form of manuka honey is ‘monofloral’ made when bees, of their own choice, exclusively pollinate the manuka flower, the sweet-smelling white or pink flowers of the manuka plant (Leptospermum scoparium).

In all, manuka honey contains some 200 compounds, many others also lethal to cancer cells, including phenolic acids like caffeic acid, benzoic acid, and gallic acid and flavonoids such as quercetin, catechin, kaempferol, luteolin, and apigenin. It also has less than half the sugar content of regular honey.  And you don’t need to take large doses of the stuff in order to benefit.

The other unexpected benefit of manuka is its ability to heal or improve gastrointestinal issues like reflux; a vast range of skin conditions, such as dermatitis and psoriasis; a range of eye conditions, and even Alzheimer’s and dementia.

All this and the other near miraculous benefits of manuka honey for wound healing, respiratory infection and other less life-threatening conditions have driven up demand:  given the increasing resistance to antibiotics, hospitals are urgently buying up supplies, as are consumers.

This growing popularity is a problem. Bees are nectarivores whose food source is exclusively nectar from flowers.  But when seasons change, flowers are in short supply, so they have to store it. A bee’s method of preserving food is to collect nectar, then ingest, regurgitate and chew it to remove moisture before storing the residue in a honeycomb.  Anytime they’re hungry out of season, they go back to the honeycomb and suck up the honey like a Slurpee.

The manuka plant flowers for just two to six weeks a year and only grows in the remote hills and forests of New Zealand, with their unique microclimate.  It is here, away from insecticides or pollution, that bees produce the strongest levels of manuka honey.

This leaves a short window during which the manuka plant flowers and bees can collect the nectar.

All manuka honeys are not created equal. Their power as an anti-cancer agent depends upon something called the Unique Manuka Factor, mostly known as UMF™.  This rating system tests for manuka honey’s three most important chemical markers:  leptosperin (responsible for its anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties), methylglyoxal (which reacts with advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) – products in the body linked with cancer,neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes – and DHA, the omega-3 fatty acid.  Even pure manuka honey may not contain levels of these three factors high enough to heal health conditions.

That’s why the best brands use a rating number as a guarantee of the levels of these substances in individual jars.  They also test to ensure that the honey comes exclusively from the manuka plant.

The main challenge is not only keeping this natural medicine pure but also keeping it out of the hands of the pharmaceutical industry, with its tendency to seize on natural substances with healing promise, isolate their active compounds and bastardize them into an expensive, patented drug.

Most of the time the best treatments are not the latest ‘miracle’  pharmaceutical  but those natural treatments whose healing successes have long stood the test of time.