Health care costs are a hot topic these days, and wound care expenditures must be part of the dialog. Every year in this country, more than 1.3 million patients develop diabetic ulcers, and up to one-quarter of them will eventually require an amputation. We spend more than $5 billion treating these patients, plus another $1 billion on related amputations. These costs can easily be avoided with simple and virtually pain-free wound care.
Cecil is a 68-year-old gentleman who came to Whitaker Wellness had a decades-long history of diabetes, and, like many patients with his condition, he had problems with his feet. A small blister had progressed to a gaping, gangrenous ulcer, and his doctors back home had amputated all the toes on his right foot in an effort to curb the spreading infection. Two months later, despite intensive, expensive wound care, the ulcer still hadn’t healed, and Cecil was facing a leg amputation.
The thought of total amputation was devastating. Then a friend at church mentioned the Whitaker Wellness Institute. As a last resort, Cecil came to see us. After just four days of treatment, the open, oozing sores began to close. Within a week, he was well on his way to recovery. And today, his wounds are completely healed.
How did we accomplish in a matter of days what Cecil’s doctors failed to achieve in months? We covered it with sugar, a remarkable therapy that is ignored by conventional medicine.
Sugar Outperforms Conventional Care
As you may know, conventional wound care involves debridement, or removal of dead and infected tissue to prevent infection and support healing. It’s a painful experience that requires frequent visits to a clinic or wound care center. With sugar dressings, however, this practice is completely unnecessary because sugar stimulates natural debridement—it’s one of the ways in which it promotes healing.
Antibiotics are also often given. Although these drugs are appropriate for bone or systemic infections, they are unwarranted for superficial wounds. And no antibiotic comes close to sugar for local infection control. Sugar dissolves in the fluid of an open wound and creates an osmotic environment in which no bacteria can survive. Like freshwater goldfish thrown into the Great Salt Lake, bacteria and fungi quickly die in this concentrated, hyperosmotic environment. Furthermore, there’s no danger whatsoever of drug resistance with sugar.
As sugar draws fluid from deep within the wound, it reduces edema. This stimulates the growth of granulation tissue to fill in the wound and the formation of new skin cells to cover and repair the lesion. The end result is rapid, consistent, and predictable healing of any type of open wound, with minimal scarring.
Here’s My Recommendations
To treat any open wound—burn, laceration, scrape, or ulcer—take a 4″ x 4″ piece of gauze, pull it into a long strip, coat it with Vaseline, and place it around the outside of the wound. (It will act as a dam to contain the sugar.) Put a thick layer of regular white sugar over the wound and cover with a sponge gauze. Secure with a cling dressing that holds the sugar in place but does not constrict. Change the dressing every two to three days by removing the gauze, rinsing the wound with water, saline, or hydrogen peroxide, drying, and applying fresh sugar and gauze. Honey may be used in place of sugar, but I prefer sugar because it’s less expensive.
