 We've known about painful apthas ulcers, canker sores. For thousands of years, the most common lesion of the lining of our mouths, named perhaps by Hippocrates himself. Well, what did he prescribe for it? Well, he was a big fan of honey for healing a bunch of sore body parts. Though, beat to the punch by a few millennia by the ancient Egyptians on that score, also known by the ancient Chinese, the oldest wound dressing known to humankind. Well, how about a few thousand-year update? Evidently, honey has been successfully used as a treatment of a number of types of wounds, including chronic ulcers. The evidence is apparently strongest for burns. Yeah, but okay, compared to what? Compared to a boiled potato peel? I'm not making that up. Apparently, honey works twice as good as boiled potato peel dressings, perhaps because of an antibacterial effect, whereas the potato peels only seem to kind of cover things up, like slapping on cadaver skin. Ew, maybe y'all stick to the potatoes. But what else are you going to do in a resource-poor country? Here we have antibiotics to fight infection, so quality of healing is often more defined as the aesthetic look of the resulting scar. So plastic surgery patients had half of their surgical scar covered with conventional dressings, and the other half of the same scar covered in a honey dressing. And the halves of the scars covered in honey healed about a third narrower than those covered conventionally, suggesting an improvement in the healing process. Okay, but what about canker sores? Here they report 19 cases. It started out with severe pain, but evidently one day after rubbing honey on the sore, the pain was reduced drastically. In fact, gone in 92% of patients, and in most cases the ulcer was gone completely by day 3 or 4. Okay, but there was no control group. Maybe they would have gotten better anyway. Maybe there was a placebo effect. Yeah, modern medicine has neglected honey as a therapeutic agent because the science was poor, essentially a series of published anecdotes. But look, one could argue that there's never been any significant side effects associated with the topical application of honey, so lots to lose. I sympathize with that logic, but would really like to see it put to the test. But there hasn't been any good studies until this one, a randomized controlled trial honey tested head-to-head against a steroid gel against canker sores. There's all sorts of things doctors can prescribe for canker sores, topical agents like steroids and antibiotics, systemic medications, even laser therapy. But look, why not seek out the least toxic agent first? May not be the most profitable, but why not start with the safest? So they randomized folks with canker sores into one of three groups where they applied, with a Q-tip three times a day after meals, either an over-the-counter soothing pain-relieving paste or a prescription steroid cream or just plain commercial honey directly onto the canker sore. Here's what happened. Here are the pain scores. On the over-the-counter stuff, the pain was cut in half by day 4 and gone by day 8. On the prescription steroids, half by just two days and gone by 4. What about the honey group? Remember the series of cases that claimed a total pain relief in one day? Well, it was put to the test and total pain relief within one day. That's crazy. Pain for a week or just pain for a day. And honey is like 500 times cheaper. What about ulcer size? Mostly gone by 8 days, 7 days, or 3 days, and cut in half in just one day as opposed to 3 or 4 days. Here's a before and after. Day 1, massive canker sore, but dab a little honey on three times a day, and day 1, 2, and gone day 3. So a significant acceleration of healing and resolution of pain all without systemic side effects, or local side effects, for that matter, whereas the topical antibiotics that are sometimes used can have a variety of side effects. And the nice thing about honey is that it doesn't lead to the development of antibiotic resistance. Now, this was a single blind study, meaning the person evaluating the lesions didn't know which group someone was in, but the patient surely knew, as honey would have had a very different taste and texture. And evidently, the prophet Muhammad was a big fan of honey, and this study was done in Saudi Arabia, and so it's possible there was some bias, but given the extraordinary results, one might want to give it a try. Now, the benefits of honey may be due in part to the phytonutrients from the flowers the bee is making the honey from, so why not try the flowers directly? A chamomile extract appeared to cut pain in half within 10 minutes of application, but they didn't fall them out in terms of healing. But a 2% lavender oil and glycerin solution, two drops three times a day, also had an immediate effect on pain and, more importantly, seemed to accelerate healing, wiping out the ulcers by day 4 with pain diminishing in a day or two compared to over a week in the placebo group. However, you choose to treat your canker source if you keep getting them. You should see a medical professional to make sure it's not some sign of an underlying disease. There are a number of conditions that can manifest with chronic canker-sore-type lesions, like inflammatory bowel diseases or acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis. I think I'd rather have something like sweet syndrome or even better, magic syndrome. Who wouldn't want to have magic syndrome? Anyone, I guess, who doesn't want genital ulcers? I think I'll stay a muggle.