What is honey?
Honey is a sweet food made by bees from the flowers’ nectar or honeydew droplets. It is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water and even more, it’s the only food that contains pinocembrin, an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.
Honey is also the only food that doesn’t spoil. It was found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, ans it was still edible. It crystallizes in couple of months after harvest, but this is a natural process and it doesn’t alter its properties.
Honey bees collect the nectar from blossoms and put it in their special stomach. On the way back to the hive, they add inverse, an enzyme synthesized by the body of bee, and other digestive acids. They ingest and regurgitate the nectar many times, until it is partially digested. The bees work together as a group, and do the regurgitation and digestion until the product reaches a certain quality. Then the bees store the honey in honeycomb cells and left them unsealed.
The resulted honey is still very high in water and natural yeasts, but the bees don’t let it to ferment. They fan their wings and create a strong draft across the honeycomb, which enhances evaporation of water from the nectar. This evaporation raises the sugar concentration and prevents fermentation. The honeycomb cells are then sealed.
The bees produce honey as a food and energy source during winter or cold weather when fresh food is hard to find. Beekeepers harvest the honey in autumn, leaving enough for bees to survive during winter.
Healthy Benefits Of Honey
It contains flavonoids, antioxidants which help reduce the risk of some cancers and heart disease.
Recent research shows that honey treatment may help disorders such as ulcers and bacterial gastroenteritis. This may be related to the 3rd benefit.
“All honey is antibacterial because the bees add an enzyme that makes hydrogen peroxide,” said Peter Molan, director of the Honey Research Unit at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.
Ancient Olympic athletes would eat honey and dried figs to enhance their performance. This has now been verified with modern studies, showing that it is superior in maintaining glycogen levels and improving recovery time than other sweeteners.
It helps with coughs, particularly buckwheat honey. In a studyof 105 children, a single dose of buckwheat honey was just as effective as a single dose of dextromethorphan in relieving nocturnal cough and allowing proper sleep.
It has been used in Ayurvedic medicine in India for at least 4000 years and is considered to affect all three of the body’s primitive material imbalances positively. It is also said to be useful in improving eyesight, weight loss, curing impotence and premature ejaculation, urinary tract disorders, bronchial asthma, diarrhea, and nausea.
Honey is referred as “Yogavahi” since it has a quality of penetrating the deepest tissues of the body. When honey is used with other herbal preparations, it enhances the medicinal qualities of those preparations and also helps them to reach the deeper tissues.
Even though it contains simple sugars, it is NOT the same as white sugar or artificial sweeteners. Its exact combination of fructose and glucose actually helps the body regulate blood sugar levels. Some kinds of honey do have a low hypoglycemic index, so they don’t jolt your blood sugar. Watch this video Sweetener Comparison where I compare stevia, brown rice syrup, honey, molasses, and agave, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each.
External application of honey has been shown to be as effective as conventional treatment with silver sulfadiazine. It is speculated that the drying effect of the simple sugars and honey’s antibacterial nature combine to create this effect. Studies have shown it to be very successful in healing wounds.
Some varieties possess large amounts of friendly bacteria. This includes up to 6 species of lactobacilli and 4 species of bifidobacteria. This may explain many of the “mysterious therapeutic properties of honey.”
Honey has been found to stimulate the production of immune cells
13 unusual ways to use honey, from food to Medicine .
1. Make your own honey moisturizer
If you’ve got a handful of sweet smelling herbs – think lavender – laying around and ready to be used, why not use them for your own homemade honey lotion? Warm honey over a saucepan until it gets to a liquid consistency. Pour honey over herbs and cap tightly; the ratio you want to use is 1 tablespoon of herbs per 8 ounces of honey. Let sit for a week and then mix 1 teaspoon of liquid into an 8 ounce bottle of unscented lotion.
2. Eat it with goat cheese
In need of a classy hors d’oeuvre but lacking in the time department? Try this: put a round of goat cheese in a ramekin, sprinkle honey and chopped walnuts on top and place in oven at 350F until honey and cheese are both soft. Serve with baguette or crackers and you’ll be the life of the party.
4. Make a salad
One of my favorite and easiest fruit salads uses just a touch of honey to enhance the sugars in the fruit, and it’s a perfect late summer dessert.
1 cantaloupe, chopped
3 nectarines, chopped
4 tablespoons chopped basil
2 tablespoons honey
Mix together and enjoy!
More recipes with Honey …coming soon !!
Honey Suggestions
Honey Suggestions
If you want to get the goodness from your honey, make sure it is pure and raw.
Raw honey contains vitamins, minerals, and enzymes not present in refined honey.
For Beautiful Skin
For Beautiful Skin
Its anti-bacterial qualities are particularly useful for the skin, and, when used with the other ingredients, can also be moisturizing and nourishing!
Powerful home beauty treatment with honey : Coming Soon !!
