Health benefits of honey

                Food and therapeutic uses of bee products                                             Honey/Pollen/Royal jelly/Propolis/Beeswax

GENERAL

•    About the beneficial qualities of honey and other bee products, which is a reminder of their popular therapeutic use since time immemorial. Modern science has long been skeptical about the nutritional and especially therapeutic qualities of these products because it did not have experimental results from the biometric method. However, over the last four decades, scientific research on hive products has developed, first in Eastern Europe and more recently in the West. The results of this research are gradually highlighting their exceptional nutritional and therapeutic qualities.
•    All the nutritional, antiseptic, preventive and curative properties of hive products are far from being known. The result is abusive publicity, and some firms and traders do not hesitate to extol certain healing qualities of honey, pollen and royal jelly without supporting their claims on scientific grounds. Fortunately, recent official standards in the most advanced countries are eliminating these abuses.
•    It is often said that beekeepers live longer than average men. To our knowledge, we have not statistically established a higher longevity of beekeepers. However, a survey of 580 dead beekeepers showed that they are statistically less affected by tumors of the respiratory system: 2.6% against 4.6 at P <0.05. However, this survey did not reveal any significant difference between the cancer rate in beekeepers and non-beekeepers.
•    For the purpose of promoting research on the therapeutics of ruch products. In addition, within the Medical Section of the International Institute of Bee Technology and Economies, research laboratories are studying drugs based on apiary products. At present, apitherapy has gained worldwide the right to be a specialty in medical practice. Today, we know that the hive is an antiseptic chamber whose products, honey, pollen, wax and propolis contain substances that are both nutritious and / or antimicrobial that can be of great benefit in the diet. human therapy.

                        Value of honey in human nutrition and therapeutic.

         

•    The biological properties of honey are numerous, but it is necessary to reject first the misconceptions that have been introduced into the beekeeping bibliography on this subject. These properties are subject to an infinity of variations associated with living organisms and are much more difficult to establish than those that are purely physical or chemical. Books and several thousand articles have been written in scientific journals and popularization on this subject. Only the statistical results obtained under experimental conditions related to the rules of biometrics are valid. We have endeavored to specify the biological properties of honey defined on the basis of an experiment which seems sufficient to us.

                                                                                                                                                                         1) Honey as food sugar

•    What is particularly striking in the list of honey components is the very high percentage of invert sugars (levulose and dextrose) directly assimilable (70%) and the very low percentage of sucrose (1.3%) not directly assimilable. It is necessary to clarify this notion of direct and not direct assimilability: sucrose is a dimer of glucose and fructose. In the stomach, it is hydrolyzed to give a molecule of glucose and fructose per molecule of sucrose. So it does not go into the blood as such. Consuming sucrose amounts to consuming a mixture of glucose and fructose in a 1/1 ratio. In recent decades, publications have often reported the harmfulness of an abundant consumption of sucrose (sugar beet or cane)

 by increasing the level of fats in the blood (hypertriglyceridemia) and recommending its replacement with honey. In fact, the influence of sugars (sucrose, glucose, fructose) on hypertriglyceridemia is still poorly known as shown by the results of the following tests.

                                        - The following results: By varying the diet of rats.

   According to these figures, it seems that fructose induces a net increase in the rate of fats in the blood, whereas glucose does not have this effect and sucrose has an intermediate effect. The biochemical mechanisms involved in this phenomenon are not yet well clarified: fructose has a direct action on the hepatic secretion of triglycerides. Honeys contain on average glucose and fructose in the same proportions. Their sugars must therefore have the same effect in the blood as white sugar (sucrose).

                          2) Honey as a preventive and remedy

•     In addition to sugars, the components of honey are numerous and their action on the human body is varied. The medicinal properties of honeys were already known empirically in antiquity: honey was classified into eight species and attributed to each specific medicinal properties: against cooling, cough, asthma, etc. It is currently experimentally proven that honey has regenerative properties of certain functions of the body by the presence of catalysts such as enzymes, acetylcholine and vitamins. A striking example of the stimulating and regenerative properties of honey is given by the experience of 387 babies aged 0 to 4 months at New York's Foundling Hospital. These babies were abandoned and neglected children. The experimenters divided the babies into three groups according to whether they were fed or honey (a), or dextro-maltose number one (b), or Karo corn syrup (c). Babies in group (a) and (b) gained more weight than (c) and their hemoglobin levels were higher. Eleven of the babies in group (c) had anemia, seven in group (b) and only two in group (a). These results show the superior efficacy of honey in the regeneration of anemic infants.
•    The biochemical mechanisms by which honey acts on the human body have not yet been elucidated. Our purpose is not to go into the details of the medical experimentation conducted in recent years on this subject. We summarize below the main results obtained: at the level of the liver, the honey increases the quantity of available glycogen and exerts a hepatoprotective action; several researchers in Russia, Switzerland and other countries have shown the marked effectiveness of honey in retrogradation and in many cases, in the complete absorption of stomach ulcers or duodenum. In Russia, its curative action has also been shown in some cases of infectious diarrhea; although honey is relatively low in vitamins and minerals, it plays an important role in bone and dental calcification; the medicinal properties of the honeys also depend on their specific origin: thus the sweet clover honey would be superior to the others as a remedy for sore throats, the fir honeydew honey against bronchitis, the honeys of lime and hawthorn particularly soothing and Light sedatives, lavender honey would be more effective than others against diarrhea. It can be seen that honey often has the same medicinal properties as the plant from which it comes. The nectar which is sap developed, contain the active substances of the plant from which it is derived. So willow honey would lower fever as well as willow bark that contains acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin)
•     Some traders sell very high-glycoside (fructose) honey, for example tupelo honey (Nyssa aquatica), a plant growing in Florida, and include on the label: honey for diabetics. However, levulose is largely converted to glucose as it passes through the intestinal mucosa. As a result, honeys rich in levulose would not be more suitable for diabetics than other honeys with lower levels of levulose. Others produce and sell artificial honey. In Belgium, the shortage of honey-producing flowers has become such that an artificial honey industry has become prosperous. This food is made by bees from beet sugar dispensed as a syrup feed. He is glad that the law prohibits the use of honey as a product without the qualities of the nectar of plants.

                                     3) Honey as antiseptic                               

•    The concept of inhibin in honey was introduced in 1937. the effect of inhibin is due to a small amount of hydrogen peroxide (hydrogen peroxide) in dynamic equilibrium in honey. This oxygenated water is produced by glucose oxidase, and found another group of antibacterial factors in honey that is sensitive to light, but less sensitive to heat and that can be kept for at least two years in a refrigerator.
•    These antibacterial properties were already known empirically more than two thousand years ago since Hypocrate recommended the application of honey on boils, abscesses and burns, while Dioscoride, in a work entitled "Mate- ria medica", prescribed it in the treatment of injuries. In ancient Egypt and India, it was already used for the same purpose. During the war it was used successfully for the dressing of wounds. Modern medicine now seems to rediscover the exceptional antiseptic and healing qualities of honey: some use it again in surgery and for the dressing of wounds and burns. We use honey dressings ourselves every time we hurt ourselves. We found that not only were the wounds thus dressed never infected, but that they healed more quickly than sulphonamide powders and ointments.                          
•     It should be noted that the bactericidal power varies from one honey to another. Thus it has been shown that honeydew honey from chestnut (Castanea sativa), Pinus, Picea and Abies alba had a very strong bactericidal effect on Staphylococcus pyogenic aureus, even when diluted, while honeys of dandelion (Taraxacum officinalis) and heather (Erica and Calluna) had average bactericidal power on this same staph. In addition, the bactericidal power of honey of the same species may vary with variety. Thus, Eucalyptus meullerana honey has a markedly inhibitory action on the growth, but that with Eucalyptus micro-theca is not an inhibitor of this bacterium. 
•     Honey can be fungicidal or fungistatic. Thus Aspergillus flavus, a mold that under certain conditions develops on nuts, including pistachios and peanuts, and produces aflatoxin, a body known to be carcinogenic, does not develop in the presence of honey. It is therefore wrong to pasteurize honey. Finally, it can advantageously substitute sucrose which has been recognized as an indirect agent of dental caries: sucrose present on the dental surface allows the development of a caries agent bacterium. Honey is mainly glucose and fructose is not a favorable substrate for the multiplication of this bacteria.