Past Your Eyes Honey

We can't even let the poor bees do their thing..............

From:

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=96

For 15 days, 8 healthy subjects, 6 patients with high cholesterol, 5 patients with high cholesterol and high C-reactive protein (a risk factor for cardiovascular disease), and 7 patients with type 2 diabetes were given solutions containing comparable amounts of sugar, artificial honey or natural honey.

In healthy subjects, while sugar and artificial honey had either negative or very small beneficial effects, natural honey reduced total cholesterol 7%, triglycerides 2%, C-reactive protein 7%, homocysteine 6% and blood sugar 6%, and increased HDL (good) cholesterol 2%. (Like C-reactive protein, homocysteine is a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease.)

In patients with high cholesterol, artificial honey increased LDL (bad) cholesterol, while natural honey decreased total cholesterol 8%, LDL cholesterol 11%, and C-reactive protein 75%.

And in patients with type 2 diabetes, natural honey caused a significantly lower rise in blood sugar than either dextrose or sucrose (refined sugars). So, enjoy a little honey in your morning coffee, lunchtime yogurt or afternoon cup of green tea. Looks like a daily spoonful of honey may help your need for medicine go down.

Although our food ranking system did not qualify honey as a dense source of traditional nutrients, it did emerge as a source of vitamin B2, vitamin B6, iron and manganese.

and from:

http://www.thatsfit.ca/2008/01/09/the-buzz-about-honey-which-kind-y...

There is an old Ayurvedic saying that says "raw honey is medicine, cooked honey is poison." At first glance this may look a little counterintuitive - how can honey go from medicine to poison just by cooking it? What this ancient Indian sage was talking about are the nutritional substances found in raw honey that are destroyed by heat. These include many antioxidants, vitamin C, B vitamins, minerals and enzymes, which help to digest our consumed food and give our pancreas a much needed rest.

Honey has been used as an antiseptic and antibacterial for thousands of years in human culture, used to dress external wounds and even internal injuries like ulcers. As an antimicrobial, honey can be used to heal many difficult-to-treat bacterial infections in humans.

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Unfortunately, all these healing properties are only available in raw honey. Cooked or pasteurized honey is just sugar (which is likely why it is referred to as "poison" in Ayurveda, as we all know the dangers inherent in sugar consumption).

So it is definitely worth your while to get your honey from the health food store in the unpasteurized form. Using it as a sweetener instead of sugar will do wonders for your health. Remember, when you're adding honey to hot food, like porridge or tea, it's better to wait until the food has cooled to the temperature at which you'd want to consume it before adding the honey. If it's too hot to put in your mouth, it's too hot to preserve the nutrition of the honey.