Honey, did you know?

[Quadophile]

Honey is probably the oldest known sweetener for human kind. A healthy replacement for sugar, honey also has tremendous nutritional value and health benefits. Honey can also be used as a beauty aid and has medicinal value too. Honey is obtainable all through the year but is special in summer and fall when it is collected fresh.


Read on to find out how you can partake of the benefits of honey.

Uses of honey: Burns

Honey applied over burns cools, removes pain and aids fast healing. A salve and antibiotic, bacteria?s cannot exist in honey.

Honey benefits for Children

To avoid bed wetting in children, a teaspoon of honey aids water retention, and calms fears in children.
Honey to help you sleep

A mug of hot milk with a dessert spoon of honey acts as a mild sedative (minerals, vitamins amino acids) aiding sleep

Honey to clear nasal congestion

To clear nasal congestion, mix a dessert spoon or two of honey in basin of hot water. Bend over the basin, covering your head and the basin with a large towel and inhale the fumes.

Honey to heal wounds

Wounds such as cuts, grazes, scrape when covered with honey and bandage is an excellent healer
Benefits of honey: Digestion

Mix honey and apple cider vinegar in equal proportion, dilute with water. This wonder drink aids digestion and eases joint inflammation

Honey to cool your throat after pungent food

Trickle down a teaspoon of honey down the throat for inflamed raw tissues for sore throat. If you have eaten any thing pungent, spicy and feel your tongue burning after downing glasses of water. Eat a spoonful of honey to appease your taste buds.

Honey as a energy booster

A spoon of honey is an instant pick-me-up, giving you the much needed boost of energy. Alternatively 25% of honey with water is a good stabilizer to calm highs and raise lows.

Calcium utilization

A teaspoon of honey per day aids calcium utilization and prevents osteoporosis

Good for your heart

Heart patients are advised to replace white sugar with honey that has natural fructose and glucose.
Honey to help Asthma patients

Chewing the tops of honey combs for 20 minutes a teaspoon of bee capping; five to six times a day stimulates the immune system. It?s effective for asthma patients.

Honey for Longevity

Regular users of honey are most long lived people. Beekeepers are known to suffer less from cancer, arthritis than any other working group worldwide.

Effective use of honey during migraine attacks

For people who have frequent migraine attacks, should sip a dessert spoon of honey dissolved in half a glass of warm water at the start of the attack. Repeat after 20 minutes if needed. Its effective as migraine is stress related.

Honey during conjunctivitis

Honey dissolved in equal quantity of warm water is good lotion or eyebath for the conjunctivitis (pus in the eye).

Benefits of honey: Curing coughs

Mix 6 oz. of liquid honey, 2 oz. of glycerin and juice of two lemons. Mix well, store it bottle with a tight screw cap and use when required. An instant home made remedy for cough.

Honey as a food preservative

Honey is good food preservative. While baking cakes by replacing sugar with honey, they will stay fresher longer due to natural antibiotics as honey retains moisture.

Honey as a multi-vitamin

Few teaspoons of honey say four; to a baby?s bottle of water is an excellent pacifier and multivitamin additive.

Honey as a beauty aid

• Pat your skin with honey while you go for a shower and keep patting till the honey gets really sticky, this helps improve blood circulation and lends a glow to the skin.
• Rinse your hair with honey and lime; this will add shine to your hair.
• Add ¼ teaspoon of honey to your bath and this will bring a glow to your skin.
• Mix honey with oatmeal and ground almonds, this will make for an excellent face cleansing scrub.
• When apple and honey are blend together and applied on the face for about 15 minutes, it acts as a brilliant moisturiser while also making the skin firm and soft.
• As a facial mask mix 2 tsp. of honey and 2 tsp. of milk and leave it for 10 minutes, this will get your skin glowing.
• Honey acts as a lotion for dry skin, mix ¼ tsp lemon, 1 tsp vegetable oil and 1 tsp honey and leave it for 10 minutes.

Buying honey and storing it

• Buy honey that is labelled 100% pure.
• Darker the colour of honey, the better will be the flavour and quality.
• Buy honey that has not been pasteurized, clarified or filtered. Get it straight from the farm.
• Honey should be stored in airtight jars lest it absorb any moisture from the atmosphere.
• Store in a cool dry place.
• Honey exposed to cold temperatures tends to thicken. Honey exposed to high temperatures tends to get darker in colour.

 

[Taffycat]

Honey certainly gets our vote Last year, Terry had an ulcerated leg, which just refused to respond to prescribed meds. So after about 7 months of getting nowhere, we decided to give Manuka Honey "Wound Care" a try (basically, it's Manuka honey in a tube.) Within just 3 weeks, the leg began to heal. It's amazing stuff.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Hmm.

For a while I was under the care of a dietician at Guys Hospital, London.

Honey was something I could easily consume.

I asked the dietician what benefits honey had.

She told me 'None, it's just a calorie source. If you have reached your ideal weight and it's staying steady, by all means eat honey but it has no nutritional value whatsoever except calories'

Food for thought

 

[TriplexDread]

And yet if you got through customs in most parts of the world they class it as a risk, Especially Autrailia and New Zealand saying it can damage their precious crops

 

[Taffycat]

Hmm.

I asked the dietician what benefits honey had.

She told me 'None, it's just a calorie source. If you have reached your ideal weight and it's staying steady, by all means eat honey but it has no nutritional value whatsoever except calories'

Food for thought

The practice nurses who were treating Terry had a similar "take" when I asked if it would be okay to give it a try. But even they were impressed by the results. They hadn't caught up with some of the research papers on the subject, I don't think, but there is some quite compelling "evidence" coming to light from independent sources (not just honey producers.)

To date the evidence to support the efficacy of honey in wound healing is largely anecdotal, but a number of clinical trials have now been completed. Our group has established that honey alters the responses of immune cells important in the clearance of bacteria from wounds and essential in the wound healing process. The components of honey responsible for these effects and their mechanism of action were previously undetermined. We have recently isolated a component present in honey which stimulates cytokines important in the inflammatory phase of wound healing. We have also identified the key receptor through which the component stimulates cellular responses7. We are currently working to fully characterise the chemical composition of the component and investigate the potential role of the component in wound healing models.

Source Dr Amanda Tonks, Cardiff University School of Medicine

All honeys have an antibacterial activity, due primarily to hydrogen peroxide formed in a "slow-release" manner by the enzyme glucose oxidase present in honey, which can vary widely in potency. Some honeys are no more antibacterial than sugar, while others can be diluted more than 100-fold and still halt the growth of bacteria. The difference in potency of antibacterial activity found among the different honeys is more than 100-fold.

Source: University of Waikato NZ

 

[floppybootstomp]

Fair nuff TC, medicational properties it may have, just like garlic, but I was merely referencing diet values here

Sometimes I think all the remedies to all our human woes may be staring us in the face and somebody, somewhere, is having a real big laugh watching us trying to figure it out.

But that's just whimsy...

 

[Taffycat]

Oh I think you could be right there Flopps. Remedies have been "discovered" completely by accident, such as when pilots were shot down during the war, for example. They found that the poor guys who were badly burned fared better when they had landed in the sea.

I've always believed that garlic was good at keeping colds at bay..... but then it occurred to me that if one consumes enough of it, nobody ever gets close enough to pass on germs!!

 

[Quadophile]

Here is the information on nutrient analysis of honey

 

[captain zed]

I too can vouch for honey....hang on until i get the jar. Yeah its manuka alright !!It's made in New Zealand. It has a biotic activity factor of 10 UMF's which is fairly high but i have had stuff with a factor of 20 UMF's. My mother has pushed it on me for years and i consume about 5 jars a year. A spoonful everyday til its gone and i usually feel better after it.
I didn't know it aids sleep which is great news.
Nice Topic from the Quadmeister and all who input.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Looks like Quad's link to the nutritional analysis shows what my dietician said to correct, vitamins and nutrition are negligible, calories are relatively high.

However, I will say again that I'm only referring to nutritional aspects here, not it's healing powers.

I don't doubt it will work as a cure for some ailments.

The age old remedy of honey, cider vinegar and lemon juice taken with hot water as relief for a cold/sore throat is well known and works, in my experience.

 

[Quadophile]

Looks like Quad's link to the nutritional analysis shows what my dietician said to correct, vitamins and nutrition are negligible, calories are relatively high.

However, I will say again that I'm only referring to nutritional aspects here, not it's healing powers.

I don't doubt it will work as a cure for some ailments.

The age old remedy of honey, cider vinegar and lemon juice taken with hot water as relief for a cold/sore throat is well known and works, in my experience.

Listed below are some common problems and ailments which can easily be cured and avoided from the use of Honey:

Colds and coughs
Honey is remedial in cases of persistent coughs and sore throat. The strong antibiotic properties it contains coats the throat and reduces throat irritation.
Mix 6 oz. liquid honey, 2 oz. glycerin with juice of 2 lemons. Bottle and cork firmly. Use as required.
For blocked noses, place a dessert spoon of honey in a basin of hot water and inhale fumes after covering your head with a towel over the basin.
For sore throats: Let 1 teaspoon of honey melt in the back of the mouth and trickle down the throat. Eases inflamed raw tissues.
Uneasiness felt in the mouth and throat due to infection can be relieved immediately with honey, so there is extensive scope for honey in cough mixtures and expectorants.

Skin
Honey is extremely nourishing for the skin when used as face pack and helps in rejuvenating the skin leading to the elimination of fine wrinkles. It is a good moisturiser. Honey has considerable Laxative effect on the human digestion system which in turn helps in reducing skin problem i.e. (pimples) and other problems associated with constipation, which become revealed on the skin.

Antibacterial and antifungal properties
Honey contains many minerals and vitamins beneficial to man. However, one of the most important properties seems to be its antibiotic action. Honey has been shown to be superior to certain conventional antibiotics in treating some infections. This bactericide (bacteria-killing) property of honey is named “the inhibition effect”. Experiments conducted on honey show that its bactericide properties increase twofold when diluted with water. It is very interesting to note that newly born bees in the colony are nourished with diluted honey by the bees responsible for their supervision - as if they know this feature of the honey.

Healing wounds & grazes
Honey is of value in treating burns, infected surgical wounds and ulcers. Honey is very viscous, enabling it to absorb water from surrounding inflamed tissue. For example, a study in West Africa showed that skin grafting, surgical debridement and even amputation were avoided when local application of honey to wound promoted healing, whereas conventional treatment failed.
For such wounds or Grazes, cover the wound with honey and a bandage.

Diarrhoea
At a concentration of 40%, honey has a bactericidal effect on various gut bacteria known to cause diarrhoea and dysentery

Teeth
Although Honey is sweet, it helps to maintain and protect teeth! Its anti-microbial activity has been tested on several species of dental plaque bacteria. A study shows that honey has been proven t\\o sharply reduce acid production, thus killing the bacteria responsible for dental caries, and blocking the growth of oral bacteria.

Digestion
Since sugar molecules in honey can convert into other sugars (e.g. fructose to glucose), honey is easily digested by the most sensitive stomachs, despite its high acid content. It helps kidneys and intestines to function better. Hence honey is beneficial for maintaining a healthy digestive system as well as combating illnesses such as constipation.
For poor digestion, Mix 1:1 honey with apple cider vinegar and dilute to taste with water.
Patients suffering from various maladies of stomach who consume 10 grams of honey on an empty stomach in the morning & do not eat anything thereafter for about 1 hour, will start feeling relief from the disorders within a few days.

Weight control
Honey has low calorie content. Honey, when compared with the same amount of sugar, gives 40% less calories to the body. Although it gives great energy to the body, it does not add weight.

Rapidly diffuses through the blood
When accompanied by mild water, honey diffuses into the bloodstream in 7 minutes. Its free sugar molecules make the brain function better since the brain is the largest consumer of sugar.

Conjunctivitis (pus in the eye)
Honey dissolved in equal quantity of warm water. Apply, when cooled, as lotion or eye bath.

Blood
Honey provides an important part of the energy needed by the body for blood formation. In addition, it helps in cleansing the blood. It has some positive effects in regulating and facilitating blood circulation. It also functions as a protection against capillary problems and arteriosclerosis.

The Heart
British researchers have discovered that honey slows the oxidation of \'bad\' LDL cholesterol, which is responsible for causing arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. So Honey can fight against Cholesterol. And the darker the honey, the better.
Pure honey taken with food daily (instead of white sugar) relieves complains of cholesterol. This is beneficial for those of Old age, sufferers of Heart-disease, Diabetes, High-blood Pressure, Stroke, and others.

Appetite
Honey improves appetite in children suffering from conditions of Appetite loss.

Headaches & Migraine
Take 2 teaspoons at meals to prevent an attack. For Migraines, Take 1 dessert spoon honey dissolved in half a glass of warm water at start migraine. Repeat in 20 minutes if necessary.

Insomnia
Honey helps in nervous disorders including Insomnia and acts as a tonic in recovery of any damage to the human nervous system.
In cases of Insomnia (Sleeplessness) one teaspoon full of honey mixed in Luke-warm water (or milk) & drunk before going to bed helps in getting sound sleep.

Healing
Honey also greatly helps in convalescence as it has properties to make the body heal faster.

Tuberculosis
Honey helps patients suffering from Tuberculosis as it vastly helps in arresting the spread of this disease.

Asthma
Honey helps in conditions of Asthma as many conditions of Asthma respond favourably to Honey.

Fatigue and exhaustion
Honey is best used to increase the physical stamina & energy level of the human body & since honey is easily absorbed in the blood, it is the best ingredient to remove tiredness ad fatigue after hard work almost instantly.
Dissolve 1 teaspoon honey in warm water or quarter honey balance of water in a jug and keep in the fridge. Honey is primarily fructose and glucose and so it is quickly absorbed by the digestive system.

The Old and young
French doctors advise weak, emaciated children & older patients to take honey & cream or honey & butter instead of cod liver oil.
Boiled milk mixed with equal quantity of water & seven percent honey is a fabulous energy packed drink for children.

Osteoporosis
1 teaspoon of honey a day helps calcium utilization and prevents osteoporosis. Essential from age 50 onwards.

Burns
Apply freely over burns. It cools, removes pain and aids fast healing without scarring. Apart from being a salve and antibiotic, bacteria cannot live in honey.

Constipation
For patients suffering from constipation as spoon of honey mildly heated with a small quantity of wheat husk added after it is cooled & administered to the patient, gives immediate relief.
Else, take ½ teaspoon honey mixed with ½ - 1cup warm water 2-3 times a day.

High Blood Pressure
Take 1 teaspoon honey, 1 teaspoon ginger juice and 1 teaspoon cumin powder 2 times a day.

Anaemia
Honey is the best blood enricher by raising corpuscle content. Take 1 ripe banana with 1 tablespoon honey 1-2x a day

Hay Fever
Chewing the tops of comb honey stimulates the immune system due to minute amounts of pollen. During the season chew for 20 minutes a teaspoon of bee capping (tops) five to six times per day. Highly effective and useful for asthma sufferers as well.

Insect Bites
According to Islamic medicine, for cases of bite or stinging of poisonous insects, a paste made of one part unsoaked limestone, four parts honey & four parts olive oil applied on the affected part will give immediate relief.

HONEY, a most assimilable carbohydrate compound, is a singularly acceptable, practical and most effective aliment to generate heat, create and replace energy, and furthermore, to form certain tissues. Honey, besides, supplies the organism with substances for the formation of enzymes and other biological ferments to promote oxidation. It has distinct germicidal properties and in this respect greatly differs from milk which is an exceptionally good breeding-ground for bacteria. Honey is a most valuable food, which today is not sufficiently appreciated. Its frequent if not daily use is vitally important.

Eating for health has never been sweeter….




Source: The Radiance Weekly (Aisha Ali)

 

[floppybootstomp]

And it's nae too shabby on toast either...

 

[Quadophile]

And it's nae too shabby on toast either...

Looks like you are hungry