Manuka honey & neti

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

As anyone else tried doing the neti with manuka honey?

After reading this article http://calsun.canoe.ca/Lifestyle/2008/09/23/6895891-cp.html I decided to give it a try. I’m trying this because I have been having a lot of reoccurring sinusitis the past 2 years. Regular neti’s help a lot but every time I get tired I get a sinusitis. My hope is to find a final cure :stuck_out_tongue:

Since I didn’t find any info on how to do this, I created my own procedure. I started by doing a regular neti with water and salt to clear the way. Then I mixted one teaspoon of active 16+ organic manuka honey with 3/4 cup of warm water in my neti pot. Then I did the irrigation with this solution. I’m actually surprised how smooth it went.

#2

Namaste,

I haven’t done this myself, but a freind of mine has done it a few times and she is hooked on it. The rationale apparently behind it is to actually use locally produced organic honey (I am not sure if the honey you mentioned is locally produced in your area) as it still contains some of the pollens of your area which causes the hayfever and sinus. According to her you should start about a month before the spirng season starts with a honey neti. What happens is that your body assimilate the pollens in the honey through the nasal membranes and in this way you build a natural resistance to the pollens, so by the time spring and all the pollens are in full bloom, you have a natural resistance to them which will lessen your reactions.

From my own pov: honey has many anti-bacterial properties and I can see the value of using it in a nasal neti, I myself use if on open wounds as an anti-bacterial application. When I do my own neti with the salt water, I also take about 4-6 Nat Sulph tablets afterwards. Nat Sulph is one of 12 the Tissue Salts, which are the natural building blocks of your body, and works on the elimination of fluids like cattarh from the body. It is natural and homeopathic and I can recommend it strongly as well.

Please let us know what benefits you have derived from using the honey neti.

#3

Thanks for your reply! you bring another interesting twist to it (for allergies).

Hay fever season is over here. Winter is about to come and its the season for colds.

The manuka honey is from New Zealand and I’m in Canada. The reason that I use this honey is because it has been shown in a study to kill bacterias better than antibiotics. The study also said that honey from my region had no effects on bacterias :frowning:

I would like to know what is the ratio of honey /water that your friend uses. Also does she rinse it out later?

I woke up this morning feeling very good. Didn’t really need to do a neti this morning but I decided to rinse it out because everything taste and smells like honey LOL!!!

#4

Namaste,

She say she uses 1 teaspoon of honey (roughly 10ml) per 250ml of luke warm water (boiled before hand). She just rinse with that and do not use another rinse afterwards. She says the quality of the honey makes a huge difference and it must be organic, but I think this you know already.

Hope it helps. :wink:

#5

Perfect, Thanks! Its reassuring to know that somebody else does this as well :wink: I also find that 1 teaspoon of honey per cup of water is a good ratio!

#6

I am enjoying this thread and think it is a valuable addition to the forum. Thank you both for sharing here.

JLG, in addition to the honey, which I think it great to explore, have you also tried colloidal silver or grapefruit seed oil or using a copper neti pot? All of these offer benefits too and maybe be therapeutic for you too. I am unsure of the salts you are using, but I would like to offer this to the thread; that using higher grades of pure salts, like the those from the Himalayas or the Dead Sea often make a tremendous difference in jal neti. Simple table salt is anything but simple, with added ingredients that allow the salt to keep pouring even in damp weather. It is best to avoid these products.

Please continue to add your experience here and thank you for inviting us along!
Namaste,

#7

Namaste All,

This thread has really inspired me to give it a go, we are in our spring in South Africa, still hasn’t rained yet so it is dry, dusty and pollens are high and the humidity is also very low.

I have done it this morning with the honey instead of my normal himalayan salts in my ceramic pot and here are my observations:
[ul]
[li]It is a much gentler neti on the nasal membranes and if some of it runs down the throat by accident it is not so bad as with the salt water.[/li][li]The smell of the honey in your nose just sweetens your day and as i do my meditation directly in the mornings after my ablutions, it added a wonderful sense of peace and calmness to my meditation.[/li][li]My nose feels much smoother inside, perhaps what I am trying to say is that the airflow in and out of my nose feels much smoother, there is less of a burning irritation which I always experience with the salts no matter what the ration or type of salts I used.[/li][li]The amount of muck that was expelled through this neti was quite different and also more than through the normal salt neti.[/li][/ul]I used a raw and unsifted organic honey as per the 10-250ml ratio as described earlier in this thread. I didn’t use all of the water as I didn’t need that much irrigation.

I will report later on the long term effects. At this stage I do a neti once or twice a week only so I’ll let you know in due course. :slight_smile:

#8

I was just thinking! I have many aloe vera plants in my house and they are well know for their medicinal purposes. Someone must have tried this before :wink:

Pandara I’m glad you enjoy the honey. Its nice to share and you have a nice way of explaining the sensation!

#9

Hello - I just wanted to see if anyone else was doing this too. I’ve had a sinus infection that won’t go away. I took mild antibiotics for a week but although it started to clear up, it came back right away. I decided to try my neti pot but add some manuka honey to it since I’ve recently read how manuka honey is being experimented with for use with sinus irrigation because antibiotics are not very effective. I’m very happy with the results. It has only been a couple of days but I feel much better. I am just using the manuka honey that President’s Choice sells at the grocery store so I’m not sure if it has “active” properties or not. I use about a tablespoon of the honey with warm water and some salt (about a tsp) and a pinch of baking soda. I think that it helps to soothe the back of the throat as well as clearing things out.

#10

jlg, I didn’t see this before, but its lovely to see another Canadian on board. If I might suggest you try a local farmers market for local honey? I think that regardless of what you have read, they can’t have studied ALL the honeys.

#11

They did try other honey’s in the study but they don’t have the benefits. There is something that the New Zealand bees get in their honey that makes it efficient.

This is the honey that I got:
http://www.wedderspoon.ca/shop/organic-honey/organic-manuka-honey-active-16.html
I can say without doubts that this honey totally changed my life. I was stuck for 2 years with these reoccurring sinusitis and I could tell something bad was inside of me. It got to a point that I was talking to it. Getting hangry at it. GET OUT!!! GET OUT!!! LOL!!!

I’m confident that it went away with the manuka. Now 3 months later and I haven’t felt this good in years :wink:

hamajack: the manuka from president’s choice is from Australia. Not the same. Doesn’t look/taste the same. Maybe it does work to some extent. We never know!

I don’t disregard other honeys. I’m sure their good for local allergies and getting the nostrils smooth.

#12

[QUOTE=hamajack;14915]I am just using the manuka honey that President’s Choice sells at the grocery store so I’m not sure if it has “active” properties or not. I use about a tablespoon of the honey with warm water and some salt (about a tsp) and a pinch of baking soda. I think that it helps to soothe the back of the throat as well as clearing things out.[/QUOTE]

Hey hamajack,

I’m located in Canada and am wondering what results you have had with the President’s Choice Manuka Honey? Regular Manuka honey with active UMF ratings are not available in the stores (only by web order) and it is 5 times as expensive. I’ve been checking in on this board for a long while, hoping you’d give us an update. Please first preface your reply with an explanation of the length and severity of your sinusitis, whether it was chronic or acute, and which treatments you’ve already tried.

I have had a chronic sinus infection from Oct 2008 until today (4 months). I have been on 4 different antibiotics:

Amoxicillin-10 days b.i.d. (had absolutely no effect)
Zithromax- 10 days q.d. (worked, but phelgm returned 10 days after treatment ended)
Avelox- 21 days q.d. (symptoms disappeared after a week, but returned 3 days after treatment ended)
Clavulin- 14 days b.i.d. (took for 2 days with no effect and stopped because of bad diarrhea)
Ceftin- 14 days b.i.d. (haven’t started the course yet!)

There are many news articles on the study on treating sinus bacteria with Manuka honey. It explains that sinus infections are extremely hard to treat because the bacteria have formed “biofilms”, layers of living material that coat a surface (such as sinus cavities) and fight off normal drugs the way a raincoat sheds water.

Has anyone else with chronic sinusitis tried using Manuka honey with a neti pot for nasal/sinus irrigation?

POST YOUR EXPERIENCES!!!

#13

[QUOTE=jlg;15132]I can say without doubts that this honey totally changed my life. I was stuck for 2 years with these reoccurring sinusitis and I could tell something bad was inside of me. It got to a point that I was talking to it. Getting hangry at it. GET OUT!!! GET OUT!!! LOL!!!

I’m confident that it went away with the manuka. Now 3 months later and I haven’t felt this good in years :wink: [/QUOTE]

Hi JLG,

Well your post seems like it could have a lot of positive implications for the rest of us with sinusitis. So…I have some questions for you. Did you have chronic sinusitis or recurring acute sinusitis? Chronic sinusitis last longer than 6-8 weeks and does not resolve, except sometimes for a few days (after which it returns). Acute recurring sinusitis is sinusitis that cure within 4 weeks, but you keeping getting another infection because you are predisposed to sinus infections or you have a blockage. The difference is that “chronic” appears like its recurring, but its the same infection, and “acute recurring” is recurring different infections. Which antibiotics did u try?

Can you give us a detailed update of events since your last post and whether your symptoms recurred? Also let us know how many times a day you used the neti pot with honey, and for a total of how many days before your symptoms were resolved.

Looking forward to your responses!

#14

Whew, misterblack – has your dr looked at causes of sinusitis that might not be bacterial - like a fungus or something? Or have you (plural) done a culture to make sure it’s bacteria? I recognize that it’s really impudent of me to be questioning your MD but really . . . if a 10-day course of antibiotics was supposed to do the trick, there might be a different trick that needs trying.

#15

Hi misterblack!

I would say that it felt like 2 years of chronic sinusitis. It was always there… Sure there were days that I felt better but it was still there. Never got any antibiotics. I did go to the hospital one day but after waiting for 7 hours I went home and did my firts neti with a plant watering pot. It was insane and intense but it felt so much better. After that I was doing neti’s 2-3 times / day for almost 2 years waiting for the day it would end. Neti’s were keeping me alive but the problem was never solved just rearranged.

Then one day I read about manuka honey and drove to the nearest health food store and they had it. I can say that I was feeling better right after the first neti with manuka but I kept doing it for a few weeks. I bought 2 x 500g jars and did it until they were gone at a rate of 1 tea spoon in a neti + 1 tea spoon melting in my mouth twice a day the first few days then only once per day. Maybe it was overkill but I wanted to make sure it was gone.

Now a few months later its still gone :wink:

#16

I am fascinated by this forum. I only chanced upon it after googling chronic sinus infection antibiotics. That took me to last year’s study of manuka and sidr (Yemen) honeys by the Univ. of Ottawa, which took me to this forum. I may well be the poster-child for chronic sinus infection. I have suffered from sinus polyps for over 15 years now. I’ve had them removed surgically twice, only to have them return within weeks. I have tried everything, including a strict hypo-allergenic diet for 6 weeks. Didn’t work. I’ve been slowly killing myself with Prednisone for 15 years. It’s the only thing that lets me breathe, taste, and smell. I’m up to 15 mg a day now and even it seems to be losing its effectiveness. That’s why I was most intrigued by this thread. I will give manuka neti a go and report back. Heck, if it works, I’ll build you guys a shrine.

Namaste

#17

If you have never done neti you might want to start with neti with just water + salt at first to get used to the irrigation process.

its harder to do with honey because its thicker and doesn’t flow as easy.

#18

Trust me. I’ve tried neti with saline. I’ve tried neti with oil of oregano. It can be a little frustrating when you’re so congested that whatever’s in the neti doesn’t flow through.

Anyway, I’m just finishing off yet another course of antibiotics - Biaxin - which naturally (I use the term loosely) didn’t work. My ENT doctor keeps seeing infection but doesn’t know what to do with it.

Tomorrow I start the manuka.

Ever hopeful.

#19

Hi I hope everyone is having a pleasant evening.

I am new to the boards but the Neti thread jumped out at me. I have suffered with sinusitis for years and have tried to avoid antibiotics and such. I have done rinses and have had some success. But they kept getting worse.

Now after a CT Scan I have been told I have 2 options: sinus surgery or balloon sinuplasty. Surgery of any kind scares me a little and the balloon is an unknown but supposed to be ok and less invasive.

I am wondering if anyone has had experience with either?

Thanks and peace.
+++
BJA

#20

What kind of sinus surgery are you contemplating? If it’s for removal of polyps, then you should know that they’ll probably return unless you can determine what caused them in the first place, and remedy that.