Health Benefits of Honey

Since ancient times, Honey has been used for several purposes like food and medicine. Honey isn’t just delicious but also useful in many parts of our life. Honey, especially in its raw form, provides a lot of health benefits you might not be aware of. And if you already knew of the health usefulness, there are still more for you to learn from this piece. Below are some of the major health benefits of honey.

Cough medicine

Honey has always been used as cough medicine. One of the prominent health benefits of honey in many homes. World health organization W.H.O. lists honey to have soothing effects, forming a protective film that helps relieve mouth or throat irritation. Research shows honey works like ingredients in cough medications that help with cough, sleeping difficulties, and helps infections in children’ upper respiratory tract. A lot of families use honey for its soothing effect.

Honey treat wounds

Until the early 20th century, honey was used continually as conventional therapy for ear infections. It is another health benefit of honey popularly used in many homes for self-treatment of ear infections. The advent of penicillin gradually eliminated the use of honey. However, that doesn’t deter the use of honey as it is now gaining popularity in wound care, making researchers look for ways to use honey in fighting serious skin infections. The antioxidant, antibacterial, and antifungal activities and potentials of honey make it ideal for treating wounds. Manuka honey is being used in the United States for burn dressings and Medihoney wound. Manuka honey is made from pollen acquired from the flowers of a medicinal plant, Manuka bush in New Zealand. The Manuka honey has lot of health benefits because of the medicinal plant (Manuka) bees feed on. The type of honey can eliminate over 250 clinical strains of bacteria-it is clinically proven. Tualang honey is another type of honey found in Malaysia, also proven to fight staph and digestive bacteria that causes peptic ulcers.

Improve scalp

Another health benefit of honey is improving scalp. A mixture of warm water diluted with honey was shown to improve scalp conditions that cause itching and dandruff. According to researchers, after the application of the solution, every day for 4 weeks, skin lesions were healed totally within two weeks, itching was relieved, and scaling disappeared completely within a week. Treated patients showed remarkable improvement in hair loss. Isn’t that amazing? Provided you get raw and pure honey.

It boosts energy

The general assumption to get boundless energy is that – you need proper sleep and a healthy whole food diet. Nevertheless, if you want a quick energy boost before or after a daily workout, honey is a great alternative. This is especially useful for athletes looking for a continuous source of energy for a long period of time. This is indeed a natural way of getting health and fitness benefits from honey.

Reduce allergy symptoms

Bees pick up pollen pores from local plants to make honey, and this influences the introduction of a little amount of allergen into your body system. Theoretically, the allergen can activate your immune system against those local pores of plants which you may naturally be allergic to overtime. Basically, it is recommended you take about a teaspoon full of honey produced locally before the pollen season to help build your immune system against it. This helps because of its build immune system against locally produced honey from the pollen of local plants which you might be allergic to.

The health benefits of honey supersede its disadvantages. You might be wondering if honey has a negative effect on the body. Just like everything else, too much of it is not good. Aside from that, honey, in its raw form, is very beneficial and has its side effect. The side effect will be explained in details in the next post.

Written & Edited by: Mr. Adegbenro Tajudeen (Entomologist)

Entomology Unit of MyAgricWorld Agribusiness Consulting Firm, Akure