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If you aren’t diggin’ honey, you ain’t been paying attention.

Think that diabetes is out of control? How about infections? Well, honey, you should be happy to note that this sweet message is brought to you by your truly, Miss Kimbely Ann. And the way I see it: I put the information into your hands, it’s up to you what you do with it. Challenge yourself to treat yourself better, cause honey child: you deserve it.

PART ONE: Honey, your sweet-tooth is irresistible!

Dr. Bodog Beck, MD has a name just drums its way along your tongue in a honeyed kinda fasion. Dr. Bodog Beck is a dude that got honey and health all figured out back in the 1930s with his book, appropriately titled: Honey and Your Health. This publication is even more mind-boggling considering that current research is just catching on to this age old, healing tradition. His historical accounts and research concludes that honey treats just about everything, from successfully curing diabetes and allergies and asthma, to providing the body with basic materials for optimum health. And that’s not all. Its anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-bacterial properties make it the ideal topical salve for open and festering wounds, as well as an aid during the sick season. And that’s still not all. Here’s an excerpt from his book Honey and Your Health:

Beyond any doubt, a great error in the present feeding methods for children is to permit them to consume sugar-candy instead of natural sweets. Dr. Seal Harris (New Orleans Med. & Surg. Journal. 81, Sept. 1928) remarks: “The sugar-fed child often becomes rachitic, is prone to acquire colitis and other infections. If he survives infancy he becomes the pale, weak, undernourished child, or the fat flabby indolent and self-indulgent adolescent. Sugar saturated and vitamin-starving America presents a problem…. An ounce of prevention in an infant is worth more than the proverbial pound of cure in an adult. Sugar-fed children will not enjoy milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables to provide them with protein, fats, minerals and vitamins, which are needed for their growth.”

Dr. Harris thinks that the sugar-saturated American children are confirmed sugar habitués. They cover their breakfast cereals with sugar, spread sugar-syrup over their pancakes, cheap jams over the muffins and often even sweeten their milk. They are served sweet desserts (the sweeter the better) for lunch and dinner. Between meals they devour candy and ice cream, and indulge in all kinds of sweet “soft” drinks. Candies contain 40- 60% of some sort of processed sugars. As a result, these children suffer from flatulence, hyperacidity and headaches and become irritable, restless, capricious and undernourished. They are physically underweight or overweight and mentally precocious or retarded; are easily fatigued and unmanageable, suffer from one cold after another. Physicians, instead of conducting the fashionable search for some non-existent endocrine deficiency, should rather be guided by the fruity breath of acetone of these children, which in itself usually reveals the difficult (?) diagnosis. The French Dr. Le Goff contends that about 80,000 children die in France from the direct effect of industrial sugar. Dr. Le Goff would not permit in his practice the minutest quantity of sugar in the food and drink of infants and children. The results are astounding because almost all the new-born grow up to robust childhood. Many pediatricians recognize the existence of so-called “sugar-fever.”

Sound like our current state of affairs is still struggling with the sugar issue? Maybe if we all started supporting the honey industry, give them hard-working busy bees some just due, then perhaps we could see some drastic changes in our overall health care system. We could begin to eliminate those difficult to manage cases such as irritable bowel disorders that affect 30% of all Americans. Just a thought, and it was just too simple to pass up mentioning.

PART TWO: Honey, Give it to me straight!

To make the situation even more interesting, our honey resources are rapidly declining, as our honeybee populations are decreasing due to an umbrella term call the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). There are many theories about the decline of the honey bees, and I have my own thoughts to add fuel to the debate: it’s the classic bait-and-switcheroo. Commercialized honey farmers extract more honey than the hive is capable of providing, to compensate: the farmer substitutes a corn-syrup substitute for the bees to eat instead. Well, here’s the catch: honey contains substantial mineral components from the soil, these minerals are vital to the structural integrity and proper metabolic functioning of the honeybee. Honeybee diets that are based upon the sugar substitutes may not provide our winged workforce with essential vitamins, minerals, and nutrients typically found in honey and most importantly essential to proper immune function. No wonder these little buggers keep getting sick. These mineral components are also, coincidently, missing from the diet of a typical American (instead consuming an interesting hodge-podge of sweetener alternatives) thereby lacking those essential components for our body and immune system.

Years ago, Western nutritionists discounted the minerals in honey, on the assumption that their quantity was too small to make them important. Now it is known, however, that numerous minerals are needed by the human body in very small amounts to keep the body in mineral balance. Honey contains minerals, in about the right quantity, to serve the needs of the normal individual. (Great resource)

Perhaps the same corn syrup/honey substitute craze found in our food sources is to blame for our lack of structural integrity. What components are found in honey and how does the body use each item, you ask? Iron, copper, chlorine, manganese, silica, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, calcium, aluminum, melanin, and magnesium are typically found in the darker varieties of honey. To learn more about minerals, what purpose each serves in the body, and what happens when the body does not have enough of it, click here or here. You will be startled to know about the multitude of unmanageable diseases that can be managed if honey was used instead of the refined and artificial counterparts typically used in today’s food industry.

Still hungry for more, Honey?

An essential guide to help you understand the health benefits of honey can be found here.

To learn more about refined sugar foods, current trends on sweet-toothed consumption, and tips to reduce your intake of honey substitutes, click here.

To understand the properties of honey and it’s wound healing properties, click here.

For a comprehensive look at honey’s healing properties, click here.

For those pesky STAPH infections, want a truly viable solution? Click here.

Honey: Nature’s Perfect Food by Tariq Sawandi, MH, has more than enough information to satiate your appetite about the stats of honey and treatment options.

Dr. Bodgog Beck should be a household name, his reference, unabridged is: Beck, Bodog F, MD. Honey and Your Health. Robert M. McBride and Company: New York, 1938.