Health benefits of honey

[stevesmith]

Honey is a combination of sugar like glucose and fructose, and minerals.It also includes the vitamins like Vitamin B1, B2, C, B6, B5 and B3 this is due to nectar and pollen.
Thus honey is very much beneficial for health..

•It strengthens the heartbeat and prevents form heart attacks.
•It cures from arthritis.
•It cures toothache.
•It also helps to increase life-span.
•It is very much beneficial for weight loss.
•It makes a person more alert and flexible.
•It cures deafness.
•It also helps to treat bone and stomach cancer.
•It is a great source of antioxidants which plays an important role in the prevention of cancer as well as heart disease.
•It supports blood formation.

[MichaelShantz]

That beats the snot out of my snake oil.

[Gibbus]

I'm all about the health benefits as anyone, and it can help make a nice selling push, but, with the exception of the antioxidants, is there any actual research to back any of these claims? (I would think if it cured deafness, toothaches, and arthritis, we wouldn't have deafness, toothaches, and arthritis around)
I am hesitant to claim anything positive that can be easily refuted later, as it will weaken my argument for the true benefits. (History is filled with this - smoking aides digestion, leeches, currative mercury, hair perms for men, Abba, etc, etc)

[sqkcrk]

What is the prescribed doasge? How many milligrams of honey should I consume per day to address my desired weightloss?

What? Please speak up.

[jim lyon]

My guess is the op is a prank and this site would best served by ignoring it.

[honeyman46408]

Thats my feelings too Jim.

I am hesitant to claim anything positive that can be easily refuted later

I tell people that ask questions about health benifits of honey that "it helps a lot of people but not all people"

Oh what was it you said my $4K herring aids arent working verry good today

[Barry]

You forgot to put honey in your ear first, didn't you!

[sqkcrk]

As Tom and Ray of Car Talk sometimes say, "Who screens these calls anyway?"

[Bee Bliss]

Mark,
Apparently, you will be more alert and flexible if you take honey and that helps with the weight loss. It translates to staying awake while exercising. LOL

[New Ky Beekeeper]

I read some where that honey will not spoil... only turn to sugar. is this true?

[John Smith]

Obviously you guys need to read the book, “The Honey Revolution!”

Honey helps us get well and stay well, but no one said it was what Jesus used to raise Lazarus from the dead!

Eat your honey, enjoy great energy. Your life will be full of adventure and romance, and you will die one day too.

The main reason beekeepers (of long standing?) tend not to be “believers” in honey, is that they themselves are quite energised and healthy, and assume everyone else is too. Beekeepers take good health for granted, but the humble bee has already had a great deal of impact on their great energy.

The reason other medications and medical procedures pushed honey out of the medicine cabinet was that the people who made those medicines (and the ones who peddled them) SOLD the customers on the idea that the new ones were superior to honey.

People buy what people SELL. So if you want to do a favour for your own industry, get proactive and SELL the idea that honey is the finest medicine in the world. Some of your patients will find it miraculous, others will die. It is the same at the best hospital in New York.

The simple fact that the New Zealand Manuka honey is now acknowledged to be the antibiotic of last resort against Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and is now widely being used to make surgical bandages and burn medication, should tell you something. There is a strong surge of new interest in honey as a health food, and for good reason. Unfortunately, most beekeepers are going to be caught sleeping when the demand for REAL honey really gets going.

But it is happening!

Cheers

[sqkcrk]

Read a book? What an idea.

Patients? I'm a beekeeper, not a Doctor. In the USA making unsubstaniated health benefit claims is illegal.

I don't know where you got the idea that beekeepers are healthier than the general public. What is your background? Beekeeping?

[Gibbus]

I have read pieces of Honey Revolution and I dont doubt many of honey's beneficial properties - I just think that if you go around telling people it curesdeafness, arthritis, and decapitation, they're not going to stick around to see what it can really do. Over-hype can backfire worse than underselling.
Also, many of the 'studies' I have read are filled with invalid conclusions. They often point to people who take honey daily or use it in place of processed sweeteners, as having more energy, living longer, leaping taller buildings, etc. These people are also not smoking, eating their veggies and other variables that cumulatively account for many of these factors.
(Now there has been rather well-documented research done on the Manuka, and these studies conclusively show a specific medicinal property. The extent seems to be unique to the Manuka alone, but honey in general does have antimicrobial effect due to yada,yada,yada....) I just feel the first post does not help promote the homeopathic view but hinders it by being so over the top.
Personally, I just like the stuff for what it is.

[John Smith]

There are plenty of good reasons to like and use honey.

There was a time (not that long ago actually) when the simple advice about honey was mainstream, and no one took umbrage when they heard it.

I am equally put off when I hear about all the surgery touted as being a health benefit.

My background, squark, has been heavily slanted towards natural living, natural medicines, and philosphy. My beekeeping experience commenced some 55 years ago. But I have witnessed at close quarters the development of what is today called "Alternative" therapy. It is the REAL medicine, as far as I am concerned and the druged-to-the-eyeballs medical culture of today is a very POOR ALTERNATIVE.

Giving advice on how to live is not practicing medicine. It is called CULTURE. Practicing Medicine is when you charge for your services. So how about popping out the keys and take the handcuffs off me, OK? ................. But each to his own, of course.

Cheers

[sqkcrk]

You are free to do as you wish and advise as you are moved to. Same as me. I choose not to tought benefits I am not certain of and medicinal properties is something I am not comfortable telling my customers about. Besides, my honey sells well enuf, so I don't need to make such claims. And people, the buying public, already have their own ideas, which benefit sales and, at times, don't.

There is this idea that honey from one's area helps one w/ allergies. Some people won't buy "local" honey, to address their allergy, unless it comes from their back yard, or their neighbors back yard. And I have even had a person looking for local honey for allergy reasons who wouldn't buy my honey because it didn't come from close enuf to wherew she lived and she didn't suffer from allergy.

The reason we have the medicines we have today is because the old stuff didn't work well enuf.

No handcuffs, just skepticism.

[cg3]

My flat feet don't seem to be improving...

[Bee Bliss]

While I was making a funny off of Mark's comment, I do believe in health benefits of honey. I used it this fall to get over what I felt may have been food poisoning. I was very very ill. In hind sight, I wish I would have also added a little apple cider vinegar. Honey does help in matters especially involving the gut. The acids from the vinegar and the antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal properties of honey would all help.

My cholesterol for the past 25 years was never below 220 to my knowledge. I started drinking a beverage every day once or twice a day and after some time was shocked to have a reading of 197. Now I can't prove it, etc. but I believe it was due to the drink I made every day as I really wasn't eating much different. It was honey and apple cider vinegar with 1/2 orange juice and 1/2 water, topped with ice. Apple cider vinegar is touted as helping with cholesterol, etc. in the book, "Folk Medicine".

I have both books from the honey revolution people which I need to finish reading. Also, need to finish the apple cider book (Folk Medicine by D.C. Jarvis, M.D.)

The Honey Revolution book will change your mind about diabetes and artificial sweeteners. The book explains how honey helps the body rid the blood of excess glucose and store it for future use. It also states that artificial sweeteners while having basically almost no calories actually cause the body to store fat. This apparently is due to the body producing insulin because it "thinks" the artificial sweetener is SUGAR. Honey is very different from sugar. (Long story, read the book)

Lots of info also in the HR book that explains how the liver works (key to health) and how to make the liver work properly for your benefit of burning fat instead of bone and muscle. There is also a lot of information on how properly fueling the liver can effect the body in many ways to improve health. Honey is an important part of that according to the book as it contains glucose and fructose which is what the body needs. Apparently fructose is necessary for the body to utilize glucose properly.

A lot (not all) of health problems are due to diet and instead of addressing that people just want the "easy" way to deal with it with a "gimme the pills" mentality. Long term..........many of these health problems could be eliminated/prevented by proper diet.

[John Smith]

They have just BEEn BLISSed, Sir/Madam. Thank you for that witness. You have described it adroitly. Please give us all you’ve got about the healing effects of beeswax candles too.


Squark, if you care to try some good strong medicinal honey in your own daily regimen, you will soon be so convinced you will turn into an evangelist. Don’t try to unravel the thinking processes of the masses. It will send you mad. Make life a personal challenge, not a worldwide one, unless of course you are secretly working for the World Health Organisation.

Cheers

[sqkcrk]

Thanks for the advice John Smith. Are you practicing some upside down humor or something? My name is right down there at the bottom just like yours. Besides, sqkcrk is short for Squeak Creek, if you care to know.

[sqkcrk]

Okay, I'll bite. Say a person, such as myself, wanted to loose 30 lbs, which would be beneficial to my health, what's the prescribed amount of honey which I should add to my daily regimen?

Does the floral source of the honey matter?