Healing power of honey

A friend of mine was not feeling well recently. She came to my house and asked if I can recommend anything that she can take.

I opened my fridge and there it was - my super magical mix that gets rid of any illness. I wrote about this before but I'll keep repeating it until you try it.

I mix raw honey with crushed garlic and apple cider vinegar. It creates an amazing blend that works wonders for infections, colds, flu, or just about anything.

I usually take three teaspoons a day of that blend and get better within 1-2 days. I've even tried it on my kids and my clients, and everybody whose tried it now swears by it.

"So how do you make it?" she asked.

Honey usually has the biggest ratio in this blend. It's all up to you really, but I make it using three parts honey to one part garlic and vinegar.

"Can you use just any honey?" she inquired.

No. The quality of the honey makes a big difference to the healing qualities of this blend. Most commercial honey is watered down and heated and loses a lot of its benefits. I recommend using raw honey, even better if it's on the comb.

A friend of ours always brings us raw honey on the comb from Iran when he travels there. I cherish it and use it for medicinal purposes only.

But you can also look at local bee keepers for raw honey, Yemeni honey is also of very good quality, and so is a type of honey called Manuka honey. I buy Manuka honey at health stores and find it very powerful when used for healing.

Honey contains as many as 80 different substances important in human nutrition. It offers vitamins A, C, D, E, K, beta carotene, and all of the B-complex vitamins. In minerals, it offers magnesium, sulphur, phosphorus, iron, calcium, chlorine, potassium, iodine, sodium, copper and manganese.

Raw honey contains live enzymes, important to the internal actions of many systems of the body.

It also contains proteins, carbohydrates, organic acids, and antimicrobial and antibiotic factors.

As you might already know, honey has a long history in healing. Its antibiotic properties make it very effective in healing wounds. It has also been used to treat bronchitis, sore throats, anaemia, sinusitis, and many digestive complaints such as constipation.

Honey also has a light appetie-stimulating effect and facilitates assimilation and digestion of other foods. It also has laxative, sedative, antitoxic, antiseptic, anti-anaemic, fever-reducing and emollient properties.

The Manuka honey I spoke about earlier is made from tea tree blossoms (i.e. The New Zealand Manuka Honey). It has an anti-fungal, anti-bacterial action in addition to other properties. It is especially effective in the treatment of gastric ulcer.

A teaspoon of Manuka honey after each meal and at bedtime for a month, can be very effective for eliminating H Pylori - a major cause of gastric ulcers.

Honey can soothe mucus membranes and is used to treat coughs, colds, bronchitis and sore throats and it has sedative sleep inducing and tranquilising properties. And when applied externally, it can also aid in the healing of wounds and burns.

In general, honey is twice as sweet as sugar with a variation in colour and taste depending on the origin. It is often used for sweetening other foods.

People who have diabetes or hypoglycemia should be careful when consuming honey and its by-products, because they affect blood sugar levels in the same way that refined sugars do.

When replacing refined sugar with honey in cooking the following rule should be followed: for each one cup of sugar in the recipe, substitute one cup of honey plus one-fourth to one-half teaspoon baking soda to neutralise the natural acidity of honey. Also, reduce the liquids in the recipe by one-fourth cup total because honey retains moisture for longer periods.

When buying honey, you have to be very particular. Commercially processed, clarified, strained honeys lose from 33 to 50 per cent of their original vitamin content. It is therefore important to emphasise that 'raw, unprocessed honey' is the type that is valued for its nutrient content and medicinal properties.

This unheated, unprocessed honey should never be given to an infant under one year of age because it could contain spores of the bacteria that cause botulism.

This bacteria poses no problem to adults and older children and it is safe for babies after age one.

Good quality honey is a must in everyone's kitchen. It makes the best medicine!

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