Honey
For ages Honey made by the bees from flower nectars was the one food full of pure sweetness available to man. Honey was considered wonderfully complex and exotic food.
Each honey is a unique blend of 200 or so constituents that vary with its nectar and honeydew sources. Most important, honey contains antioxidants—disease-fighting enzymes that protect your body by trapping free-radical molecules before any damage occurs to a human body.
Honey wizards such as Steven G. Pratt, M.D., note that honey contains nutrients, such as amino acids, carbohydrates (natural sugars), minerals (including calcium, fluoride, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and selenium. chromium), vitamins (including vitamin C, folate, and choline), and water. Honey is a complex collection of enzymes, plant pigments, organic acids, esters, antibiotic agents and trace minerals.
Sugars form around 81 per cent of honey’s weight. Next is water, at 14–18 per cent. The remaining three per cent include enzymes, acids, proteins, plant pigments, minerals, vitamins and various other substances. One tablespoon of honey supplies about 22 calories of energy and 17g of carbohydrate as sugars.
Honey is rich in vitamins and minerals which are retained during its shelf life. Fruits and vegetables do not possess the same quality. For example, spinach will lose 50 per cent of its vitamin C content within twenty-four hours after being picked. Fruits lose their vitamin content to a marked degree during storage.
Rich in vitamins and minerals, and with antioxidant and antibacterial properties, honey has been shown to soothe ulcers, burns, skin sores, and inflammation. It’s an amazing beauty treatment, natural digestive aid, sugar alternative, allergy treatment, energy invigorator, skin salve, and topical antiseptic. And studies have shown that honey does a better job of easing night time coughs and improving sleep than do many popular cough suppressants.
Research also shows that eating antioxidant-rich superfoods—like honey—may lower the risk of developing diseases and even stall the aging process. Medical researchers around the world continue to find new health-promoting nutrients in honeys.
Honey raises the blood calcium levels. Blood studies show that blood calcium will rise three hours after honey is taken, and will stay up for twenty four hours. Honey taken each day will maintain the ten parts of calcium needed to unite with the four parts of phosphorus.
Honey is a powerful remedy for migraine headaches. Two teaspoonfuls of honey taken at each meal may well prevent an attack. If, a headache has appeared, take a tablespoonful of honey at once. Since it requires no process of digestion and will quickly be in the blood stream, the results will be visible within 30 minutes. If not, another tablespoonful of honey should be taken. Its sedative effect on the body is just what is needed by the characteristics which produce this type of headache.
Honey is a magnet for water. If it is taken at each meal it draws excess fluid from the blood, lowering blood-pressure. Its sedative quality helps releasing the tension disturbing the nervous system.
Honey contains all of the vitamins which nutritionists consider necessary to health. Iron, copper, manganese, silica, chlorine, calcium, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, aluminium, and magnesium are all present in honey. They are derived from the soil in which plants grow, and are passed through by the plant to the nectar which is the base substance used by bees to make honey.
Whereas cane sugar and starches must undergo a process of inversion in the gastro-intestinal tract by the action of enzymes to convert them into simple sugars, this has already been done for honey by the bees, by means of the secretion from their salivary glands, which converts the sugar in the nectar into the simple sugars levulose and dextrose, taking the burden off the human gastro intestinal. This predigestion of honey by the bee saves the stomach additional labour. The fact that honey is a predigested sugar is extremely important for a person with a weak digestion specially for an individual who lacks the two enzymes invertase and amylase which help with the process of inversion.
Honey has all the raw material to renew and regenerate body cells. It is packed with the things the body needs to build and rebuild itself. It gives a quick energy release, needed to start the day right.
Because honey is rich in sugar and small amounts of enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrient factors, it has been used as a healer when applied topically to wounds. Not only does honey protect the wound from infections but may be superior to more expensive hospital wound dressings.
Besides being a superb energy food, honey is one of nature s most powerful germ killers. Germs simply cannot survive in honey. Primitive man not only used honey as food, but also as medicine to heal his wounds.
Honey is a popular folk remedy. It’s also recommended in traditional healing systems such as Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine.
Studies convincingly demonstrate that the contents of this amber elixir can be:
• Alkalinizing
• Anti-cancer
• Antimicrobial
• Anti-obesity
• Antioxidant
• Anti-inflammatory
• Capillary (tiny blood vessel) strengthening
• Cholesterol-lowering
• Detoxifying
• Digestion-enhancing
• Immunity-boosting
• Nerve-message-carrying
• Smooth-muscle-relaxing.
Since honey is a partially digested product from the bees gut, the digestive enzymes probably play an important role in the nutritional value of honey. Therefore, always use “raw” or “unpasteurized” honey, since cooking the honey denatures its valuable enzymes.