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Roman Chamomile and MRSA

Hi, has there been any research in the effectiveness of this oil on skin infections such as MRSA? My Dad has had confirmed MRSA. I have had a bad infection in my finger, from a cut, and Mum now has a Sty in the eye. I have been using various Antibiotics and Bactroban cream. As the infection is clearing up I have switched to using Chamomile Oil. I had used it for a day before all the antibiotics and it had quite a positive effect. I ran out of this oil and the infection worsened. I then have been on 2 antibiotics since and the infection is in decline. Seems the greatest effect on this MRSA/or similar infection is the Chamomile Oil. Could this be a possible help in the fight against this tricky infection?? :)
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Avatar universal
Just seen my chamomile oil was 100% pure so no other ingredients :)
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3 Comments
That's actually not possible.  Chamomile isn't an oil, it's made from flowers, so if it has been made into an oil it has to have been extracted from the flowers -- if you've ever had chamomile dried to make in to a tea, the way most people use it, you've seen what they look like when nothing has been added to them -- which is usually done by some form of alcohol, as that's the traditional way of doing it.  You could use vinegar, but you wouldn't get as good of an extraction.  There are other methods sometimes employed which are better at extracting fat soluble nutrients than alcohol, but I don't think chamomile's important ingredients are fat soluble.  So you can then burn off the alcohol or evaporate it out but to make an oil you have to add an oil, which in a quality oil is usually going to be organic extra virgin olive oil, but you could use any oil you want.  Often they also add a preservative -- an alcohol extract doesn't need one because alcohol is a great preservative, but if you try to take out most of the alcohol to make an essential oil you would want something in there like an antioxidant vitamin to keep it from oxidizing as soon as you open the bottle, or to protect it if it's in a clear bottle that light can get to.  So there is certainly at least two ingredients, the extracted ingredients from the chamomile flowers, residual alcohol, and the oil they are using to make it an oil.  
I think the commercial stuff doesn't need a carrier oil.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_oil
I don't really use wikipedia as it's not a peer reviewed source.  That's just me.  All essential oils you can buy and don't make yourself are commercial, so I don't know what that means either.  An essential oil is pretty pure.  A perfume oil isn't and is almost always synthetic.  Whatever you've bought, it it's made from organically grown ingredients and from a recognized quality company rather than something that's, say, only sold on the internet then you're fine as to quality whether or not it needs oil added to make it an oil.  My main point is, if it's working, keep on keeping on.  But you seem to indicate it isn't, and again, as someone who spent much of his career managing health food stores, chamomile wouldn't be a first choice for this purpose, as there are stronger plant antiseptics.  I'm just concerned that you say it's infected without knowing if it actually is or not and that it doesn't seem to be getting better despite using antibiotics on it, which weren't probably necessary but should have been effective for an infection.  It's always important to know what you're dealing with but I think time will take care of this, it takes time for cuts to heal, but if time doesn't fix it you do need to see a doctor.  That's the main thing.  But don't worry about MRSA, you don't have that.  Peace.
Avatar universal
Thanks for that. I have had HSV infections too over many years and the Chamomile Oil has been mainstay in the treatment of it. I have to use Aciclovir tablets as a general rule to suppress the virus and when it does flare up the chamomile oil is top of the list.
The Oil has had a bigger effect on my finger problem than the Baclofen in my present infection. It's certainly a serious finger infection and more swollen than this image below (not my finger- just off google images)
Just think it's worth a go and worth studying some more as resistance to these infections is becoming a big problem.



https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BFNHFG/mrsa-staph-infection-on-the-ring-finger-of-a-79-year-old-male-with-BFNHFG.jpg
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1 Comments
Look, you're putting a picture of a MRSA infection to look up (I'm not going to look it up, by the way, I'll just take your word for it) and you don't have one of those, that's a staph infection that is a runaway infection as it doesn't respond to antibiotics.  If you have that, you have to see a doctor, and since you don't seem to be doing that, I'm guessing you don't have that serious of an infection.  If it is swollen due to infection so badly it looks like MRSA,. why haven't you seen a doctor?  That's an emergency, and while I know we're in covid times, they're not going to let you die from a runaway infection and turn you away.  The question you have to ask is, is it getting better or worse?  MRSA gets worse and worse.  If you just cut yourself, did you properly clean it?  But as I said, chamomile does have antibacterial effects.  Some think it's pretty good for some purposes.  It's not what I'd use for a cut, but if it's working for you, good.  But the finger doesn't seem to be getting better, which is pretty common, as it takes time for cuts to heal.  They don't usually get infected however unless you didn't exercise proper hygiene by keeping it clean and using a bandage or you were cut by something that passed an infection to you.  My only point is, cuts slowly heal as the skin closes back up again.  Infections are a different matter.  Swelling isn't just a sign of an infection, it's also a sign of a broken or dislocated bone.  With a finger there's not much they'd really do about that.  I think German chamomile is stronger than Roman, but both have the same active ingredients, but they might be somewhat more potent in an alcohol extract of German than Roman, but again, if it's working, fine, and if it isn't, it isn't.  I'd love to see more good research done on natural antibiotics as if they work, even if more slowly, without causing the die off of beneficial bacteria that pharmaceutical antibiotics do, then that can save us a lot of grief.  Hope you heal quickly, but if you don't, you're going to have to see a doctor, I'm afraid.  But if it's your generic cut finger (I have one, by the way, cleaned it and put a bandaid on it will now ignore it until the cut heals) it should heal within a week or two depending on how deep the cut was.  Peace.
Avatar universal
I'm not sure what you mean by using antibiotics for a cut on your finger.  Are you sure it was infected, or just red?  It looks red because the body's immune system is working to heal it.  If it's infected, it would form pus or something that looks a lot worse than a cut.  With a cut, you usually, if you use natural remedies, would just clean it well with soap and water, put something like tea tree oil on it, and put a Band-Aid on it.  If it was so bad as to be badly infected, it would most likely have been pulsating and the pain would be pretty bad and you'd have seen a doctor.  So I assume you put some OTC topical ointments on it.  Chamomile oil doesn't actually tell us what you used.  There are a lot of different ways to make a product that could be called chamomile oil.  If it was pure essential oil of the chamomile plant, and there are different types of chamomile, it would be an alcohol extract.  At best, it might calm the area down a bit, but chamomile isn't a strong anti-biotic.  It has some properties, but not enough for that purpose.  Usually for healing a cut you'd go to tea tree oil or neem oil or aloe vera concentrate or something like that, but really, cleaning a cut that isn't bad enough to go the doc for and putting a Band-Aid on it pretty much takes care of it.  Please don't put chamomile oil in your Mom's eye.  Just putting warm water on a wash rag and putting on the stye for a few days might help.  But if you're using an alcohol extract you obviously don't want that near the eye.  As for MRSA, this is a horrid infection that I think comes about from antibiotic resistant staph bactera.  Anyone who has this is in for a rough time and needs a specialist.  Chamomile won't do a thing about it.  Whether stronger antibiotic plants such as tea tree, garlic, neem, etc. have ever been tried because the body isn't resistant to them is unlikely, as plants are not as strong, but I have no idea if they've ever been investigated.  I think they deal with it by using a stew of antibiotics in the hopes something will still work.  This infection I believe came about because of the extreme overuse of pharmaceutical antibiotics.  
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