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Mysterious Honey Discovered That Kills All Bacteria Scientists Throw At It (livefreelivenatural.com)
submitted 1 year ago by prozhack
view the rest of the comments →
[–]ughhhhh420 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago* (2 children)
Actually honey doesn't need hydrogen peroxide or acid to be antimicrobial. The main thing that makes honey antimicrobial is sugar. Pure sugar will kill just about anything. Sugar does this because it dehydrates cells, essentially it creates an environment in which high concentrations of sugar outside of cells diffuse in and water diffuses out. Cells obviously have a tolerance for this, but at a certain point it will completely dehydrate the cell and kill just about any living thing. Its the same reason that pure salt is antimicrobial as well.
Products that are very similar to honey, like high-fructose corn syrup, have similar anti-microbial properties and will last "indefinitely" as well.
The reason that pure sugar/salt arn't dangerous to animals is that animals physically can't consume them fast enough for dangerous concentrations to build up in their blood. But, if you somehow could eat your body weight in sugar/salt before your body broke it down or you peed it out, then that would probably kill you.
[–]lwatson74 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago (1 child)
You wouldn't need to eat your body weight in salt for it to kill you. http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/what-if/what-if-you-drink-saltwater1.htm
[–]ughhhhh420 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago (0 children)
Eh, I was referring to you eating enough to cause instantaneous death through direct action on the cells. Seawater poisoning isn't so much because water is being sucked out of your cells as much as it is that water is being sucked out of your kidneys because they're pretty inefficient. Cats, for example, can live on seawater because they have better kidneys.
Yes both kill you because ultimately cells become dehydrated, but salt water poisoning is more analogous to the person just not drinking enough water than it is to true salt poisoning.
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