Dr. Weeks’ Comment: I was an organic beekeeper before I was a doctor and I learned about apitherapy from Charles Mraz in Middlebury Vermont. In 1986 I founded the American Apitherapy Society – an organization which is still buzzing over 30 years later! Venom is very medicinal as I have written about since the mid 1980’s and honey is fabulous not just topically (aids wound healing), intranasal (clears sinuses and helps with sore throats) intra-optically (pink eye) , for coughs, as a powerful and safe (centsible) antibiotic. trans-dermally (acne) and, of course, orally. Don’t believe the nonsense that honey can not be given to infants – it is safer and healthier than most baby food.
But much of the honey sold in America is adulterated. The first mistake is that beekeepers, for economic reasons, heat up the raw and viscous honey to make it flow like water which cooks and destroys the amazingly beneficial living enzymes in the raw honey! Enzymes? How did they get into the honey? (Think bee vomit – that is what honey is!) How can you be assured that your honey is RAW? Put is teaspoon in a glass or hot water and look for the bubbles to be released indicating that hydrogen peroxide is being liberated and it forms a thin head atop your tea. That is living honey. The second mistake you can make in buying honey is to by adulterated honey. How does that happen? The FDA allows cheap, watered down, adulterated honey from China and other third world countries to flood the US market. In addition, glyphosate from the herbicide RoundUp™, the #1 health risk in our food and water has been, found in commercially sold honey.
So, how to buy honey? Know your beekeeper and know where her or his bees forage. SAFALAB is delighted to sell a limited offering of Lapis Lane Organic RAW honey (2017 harvest) and for those who understand this to be liquid gold, it is time to stock up now!
My colleague Sayer Ji has a very informative website www.greenmedinfo.com and today he shared this about honey.
Honey has profound medicinal applications, some of which are as follows:
- Feeds the good bacteria: it is a little-known fact that bees have a diverse population of beneficial lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in their honey crop, the bulge between the esophagus and the gizzard of the bee. In fact, according to newly published research in PLoS, “studies of LAB in all extant honeybee species plus related apid bees reveal one of the largest collections of novel species from the genera Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium ever discovered within a single insect and suggest a long (>80 mya) history of association.”[i] Indeed, raw honey feeds good bacteria. It has been experimentally demonstrated in in vitro (petri dish) conditions to increase the number of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus plantarum counts 10-100 fold compared with sucrose.[ii]
- Fights the “bad” bacteria, i.e. MRSA: Reports of honey eradicating MRSAinfection have been reported in the medical literature for well over a decade.[iii] MRSA, an acronym for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, produces a biofilm which makes it especially resistant to conventional antimicrobial agents. Honey has been shown to be effective at killing biofilm-associated MRSA isolates from patients suffering from chronic rhinosinusitus.[iv] This has also been demonstrated in human research, with a 70% effective rate in destroying MRSAin chronic venous ulcers.[v] Moreover, manuka also synergizes with conventional antibiotics making MRSA bacterial isolates more susceptible to their antibacterial action.[vi]
- Kills Dental Plaque-Causing Bacteria: Manuka honey, a special honey produced by the flowers of the manuka plant that grows in New Zealand and Australia, was shown at least as effective as the chemical chlorhexidine gluconate, often used in mouthwash, in reducing plaque formation as a mouthwash.[vii]
- Superior to Pharmaceutical at Killing Herpes: A 2004 study published in the Medical Science Monitor, showed that topical honey was far superior to the drug acyclovir (trade name Zovirax) in treating both labial (lip) and genital herpes lesion. According to the amazing study “For labial herpes, the mean duration of attacks and pain, occurrence of crusting, and mean healing time with honey treatment were 35%, 39%, 28% and 43% better, respectively, than with acyclovir treatment. For genital herpes, the mean duration of attacks and pain, occurrence of crusting, and mean healing time with honey treatment were 53%, 50%, 49% and 59% better, respectively, than with acyclovir. Two cases of labial herpes and one case of genital herpes remitted completely with the use of honey. The lesions crusted in 3 patients with labial herpes and in 4 patients with genital herpes. With acyclovir treatment, none of the attacks remitted, and all the lesions, labial and genital, developed crust. No side effects were observed with repeated applications of honey, whereas 3 patients developed local itching with acyclovir.”[viii]
- Protective Against Gastric Damage: Honey has been shown to prevent alcohol-, indomethacin- (a NSAID pain-killer) and aspirin-induced lesions.[ix]
For the rest of the article and the references CLICK HERE