Honey - Benefits Allergies but Harmful to Babies

Honey is a natural sweetener with proven bioactive antibiotic and antiseptic properties. It's best to get honey that was produced in your area if possible. Honey is made from flower nectar. The nectar turns to honey with the help of invertase, an enzyme bees mix with it. Honey contains vitamins and enzymes necessary for the proper metabolism and digestion of glucose and other sugar molecules.

Many beauticians use honey to extract blackheads. They apply a thin coat of honey to the area with blackheads then lightly pat the area repeatedly until the honey pulls the offending blackhead out of the pore. Disgusting, but it works.

Honey is twice as sweet as sugar and has very high glycemic load food so should be avoided in large amounts if you have diabetes, Candida, or other sugar issues like hypoglycemia. The flavor of the honey varies according to the flower source.

Honey is an excellent source of potassium. It also contains thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pyridoxine, and ascorbic acid, not to mention calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and sodium. I love the darker honey because it has a "snap" to it. The darker honey is also higher in minerals.

Honey and Babies- The National Honey Board (www.nhb.com) warns that honey may contain spores that can cause infant botulism if given to children less than one year of age. Adults and older children are routinely exposed to botulism spores in dust, soil, honey, and other uncooked foods, but are almost never affected by them. In immature infants' digestive tracts, however, the spores are able to germinate and release the botulism toxin.

Symptoms of infant botulism include constipation, lethargy, poor feeding, weak cry, droopy eyelids, and occasionally, respiratory arrest. By the age of 12 months, infants develop a digestive tract mature enough to handle the toxin.

Is Local Honey Useful for Allergies? We don't really know why direct exposure to pollens causes hay fevers whereas small doses of honey (up to two teaspoons per day) does the opposite. Some people think that the tiny doses of pollens in the honey act as a homeopathic. A homeopathic dose of something works in the body by allowing it to recognize a particular foreign body within the body (like a pollen) and get rid of it by attacking it and eliminating the harmful toxin through the kidneys, liver, bowel and skin.

I have allergies and eat honey every day, but I don't really know how effective this is, but it's cheaper than allergy shots. The more local the honey, the better. Getting it local insures that the honey will have those pollens in it that you are allergic to. We get ours at the local outdoor Farmer's Market.