Q. I have been an amputee for 48 years. I’ve been struggling with a pressure sore on my stump for two and a half years. My wound had staph bacteria almost to the bone.
I tried all of the modern-day medical treatments my doctors prescribed to no avail. Finally, my physician recommended treating the wound with sugar, but he never mentioned the mixture of sugar and Betadine. I found the recipe for this combination online.
I started using the mixture seven days ago, twice daily, and the wound has practically sealed up with no proud flesh or drainage. I would say that this is a great remedy.
A. We first heard of the sugar cure for wounds back in 1985 from a woman who was trying to heal her grandmother’s bedsores. The earliest mention of sugar for wound healing that we could find in the medical literature was during World War I in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Sept. 4, 1915).
This treatment persisted as an old wives’ tale until the mid 1970s when Richard Knutson, MD, began using sugar on hard-to-treat wounds (Southern Medical Journal, Nov. 1981).
His formula involved mixing 4 pounds of table sugar with 1 pound of Betadine (iodine) antiseptic ointment and 6.5 ounces Betadine solution in a double boiler over low heat. He applied the mixture to a depth of one-fourth inch, changing the dressing and cleaning the wound daily. He treated over 5,000 patients over 15 years.
Nurses have pointed out that Betadine might damage delicate cells and slow healing. Any wound that does not heal requires careful medical supervision.