Raw Honey And Ulcers (1)

IT’S amusing hearing many people talk glibly about ulcers as if it is not a life-threatening disease. Yet, ulcer is an insidious and deadly disease often underrated by most sufferers.

What is ulcer? It is a break on the skin surface or a mucous membrane, which is inflamed and fails to heal. Ulcers can develop in the colon, mouth, duodenum, stomach and leg in the case of diabetics.

The most common form of ulcer is gastric that affects the lining of the stomach. Most often, gastric ulcer occurs during stress, when the body’s defence of the lining of the stomach is damaged and the stomach cannot secret sufficient mucous to protect it against the strong acids essential for digestion.

Other causes of gastric ulcer are aspirin often prescribed to prevent stroke in people at risk, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for people suffering from asthma, arthritis and other auto-immune diseases.

Latest studies showed that 90 per cent of all stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium known as Helicobacter pylori.

But why does ulcer fester and remain incurable with conventional medicine? Most doctors do not factor the involvement of bacteria in the treatment protocols for ulcers. Even when antibiotics are part of the treatment regimen for ulcers, helicobacter pylori resist the medications, thus making the ulcers fester.

Synthetic antibiotics also kill all the bacteria in the gut, both good and bad, thus distorting the natural flora in the gastrointestinal tract. This distortion, according to John O. Hunter, a gastroenterologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, England, can throw the whole body system off balance causing a vicious cycle of infections.

Most ulcer medications also reduce or neutralise hydrochloric acid, thus encouraging the growth of bacteria.

However, helicobacter pyloric does not only make ulcer incurable, there is also a solid link between this bacterium and stomach cancer. Evidence is mounting that this bacterium causes most stomach and gastrointestinal problems, which are precursor to stomach cancer.

As a matter of fact, the World Health Organization WHO has classified helicobacter pylori as a Class 1 carcinogen. For instance, Japanese researchers studied 544 patients with early stomach cancer, half of whom received helicobacter pylori eradication regimen, while the other received standard care.

After three years, the researchers found that eradicating helicobacter pylori after stomach cancer surgery reduced the risk of recurrence by about 65 per cent.