Honey Beneficial In Warding Off Heart Diseases.

Individuals
worried
about
warding
off
heart
disease
should
substitute
honey
for
refined
sugar as a sweetener in their tea, coffee or
morning cereals. Expert’s assessment of
honey found it to be rich in chemical
substances that ensure a healthy heart by
improving blood circulation, helping to
prevent blood clot that could affect
important organs of the body such as the
brain as well as in reducing blood’s level of
bad cholesterol.
Honey is a sweet food made by bees using
nectar from flowers. The variety produced
by honey bees is the one most commonly
referred to and is the type of honey
collected by beekeepers and consumed by
humans. Honey produced by other bees
and insects has distinctly different
properties. Honey bees form nectar into
honey by a process of regurgitation, and
store it as a primary food source in wax
honeycombs inside the beehive.
It is composed of sugars like glucose and
fructose and minerals like magnesium,
potassium, calcium, sodium chlorine,
sulphur, iron and phosphate. It contains
vitamins B1, B2, C, B6, B5 and B3 all of
which change according to the qualities of
the nectar and pollen. Besides these, honey
also contains copper, iodine, and zinc
existing in small quantities. Several kinds of
hormones are also present in it.
Honey has a long history of human
consumption, and is used in various foods
and beverages as a sweetener and
flavouring. It also has a role in religion and
symbolism. Flavours of honey vary based
on the nectar source, and various types and
grades of honey are available.
Historically, honey has been used by
humans to treat a variety of ailments. It is
cheap, making it potentially useful for
treating wounds in earthquake-stricken and
war-torn areas where running water is
scarce and often contaminated. It is being
used to treat burn, wounds, effective in the
treatment of stomach ulcers.
Preliminary studies in the 2004 edition of
Journal of Medicinal Food on honey
suggested that eating honey can reduce
blood levels of some markers that are linked
to an increased risk of heart disease.
For many years, blood levels of cholesterol
and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol have been used,
and more recently homocysteine and C-
reactive protein (CRP) have been added to
the list of heart disease risk factors. People
with high homocysteine levels have higher
rates of heart disease, cancer, and some
other conditions, but antioxidants, vitamin
E, and some medications, such as statin
drugs, can lower CRP levels.
Antioxidants present in honey come from a
variety of sources, and include Vitamin C,
monophenolics, flavonoids, and
polyphenolics. Now, experts’ review of
studies on antioxidant properties of honey
and their ability to protect cardiovascular
diseases such as heart problem indicated
that honey’s antioxidant levels rivals those
levels found in tomatoes and sweet corn.
Although honey by itself may not serve as a
major source of dietary antioxidants, it
demonstrates the potential for honey to
play a role in providing antioxidants in a
highly palatable form.
For instance, one of these studies involved
seven small trials with between five and
nine participants. In each trial, blood was
examined before and after drinking
solutions containing honey, glucose, and
artificial honey (approximately half glucose
and half fructose). The solutions used in
each trial contained between 1 and 3
ounces of honey, glucose, or glucose and
fructose. Healthy people experienced an
immediate slight decrease in total
cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglyceride
levels after drinking the honey solution but
not after glucose and artificial honey
solutions.
This trend persisted in healthy people
drinking the honey solution for 15 days,
after which HDL cholesterol levels rose and
homocysteine levels dropped. The effect of
taking the honey solution every day for 15
days was even more pronounced in people
with high cholesterol: total cholesterol levels
dropped by 8 per cent, LDL cholesterol levels
dropped by 11 per cent, and CRP levels
dropped by 57 per cent.
Interestingly, they indicated that “due to
honey’s pleasing taste, it may be more
readily consumed by individuals reluctant
to ingest plant-derived antioxidants.
Certainly, compared to refined sugars such
as sucrose and fructose, which has no
antioxidant value, honey can be a flavorful,
supplementary source of antioxidants
because of its unique positive effect on risk
factors for heart disease.”
Furthermore, substances that belong to a
class of chemical substances called
polyphenols that are found in honey have
been reported as promising pharmaceutical
drugs in the treatment of cardiovascular
diseases. For instance, epidemiological
studies reported that quercetin, an
antioxidant flavonol that is present in
honey, is associated with reduced risk of
coronary heart disease and stroke.
The researchers in the review of health
benefits of honey for the heart, in the 2010
African Journal of Traditional,
Complementary and Alternative Medicines in
their conclusion wrote: “This review has
clearly demonstrated that certain honey
polyphenols have a promising
pharmacological role in preventing
cardiovascular diseases. After generating
more in-depth and exhaustive information
of these compounds jointly in vitro and in
vivo studies, clinical trials should be initiated
to further validate these compounds in
medical applications.”
So individuals avoiding honey because they
think its consumption can cause obesity,
high blood pressure, and heart disease,
must have a rethink. Indeed, honey
contains sucrose, glucose and fructose, but
fortunately, the substances in honey is
healthy.