Honey Is a Healthy Tonic

 

Honey contains phytochemicals that are beneficial to your body's health by offering nutritional benefits, healing properties and antioxidant protection. Researchers have been interested for a while as to what phytochemicals are contained in honey.

Why Investigating Phytochemicals is Important

This is important because they can trace back the honey to the exact plants that the honeybees have visited in their journeys. This is considered the honey's fingerprint as far as the phytochemicals are concerned.

The researchers do this by extracting the phytochemicbals from honey and pinpointing which plants produce them. Then they can compare this to the areas the bees feed in to get the pollen and nectar to make honey. Beekeepers can learn from this how to locate their hives better.

Fingerprinting Honey for Legal Purposes

Fingerprinting honey is also important for legal classification of it. For a honey to be considered being from a single plant source or unifloral, it must be made of 51 percent of that plant's nectar or 45 percent of the pollen needs to be from the plant.

This has helped to identify the phytochemicals in various herbal medicines and teas. One example of this is the Australian Eucalyptus sp. honey that has been shown to have linalool, menthol and other essential oils along with kaempferol, tricetin and other flavonoids.

Prompt Enzymes

These things spur enzymes into action as far as sterilization, clean up and controlling damage is concerned. ROM can bring on swelling, fever, and inflammation to the site of a wound. Even though this makes the wound painful, this action also starts the process of healing in motion. Many chronic conditions such as asthma and arthritis have too much ROM, which keeps the body irritated and hampers its ability to heal.

The antioxidants we receive from food such as fruits, vegetables and honey sacrifice themselves to protect your body. They intercept and disable the ROM before the ROM can reach the body's cells.

Buckwheat Honey Found Highest in Antioxidants

Studies were conducted that tested nineteen different commercials types of unifloral honey to see which ranked highest in antioxidants. Buckwheat honey from Illinois ranked number one in antioxidants, while the lowest ranked what the sage honey from California.

This buckwheat honey has twenty times the power antioxidant wise as the sage honey!

A test was done with the buckwheat honey with humans, and it was found that it also helped with the blood's antioxidant action.

Twenty-five men were given a variety of beverages including black tea, water, black tea and buckwheat honey, water containing 80 grams of the buckwheat honey, and black tea with some sugar syrup. The water and honey is the only one that increased the antioxidant ability in the bloodstream. Multiple studies agree the darker a honey's color is, the more antioxidant it contains.

Recipes for Honey Tonics

  1. Ginger Honey Tonic - Mix one cup of boiling water and one-inch fresh ginger coarsely chopped together and let steep for about two to three minutes. Add one teaspoon of raw honey.
  2. Cinnamon Honey Tonic - Steep one cinnamon stick (or one teaspoon freshly ground cinnamon) in one cup of boiling water for two to three minutes. Add a teaspoon of raw apple cider vinegar and one teaspoon of raw honey and stir until honey is dissolved.
  3. Apple Cider Vinegar Tonic - Mix two teaspoons of raw apple cider vinegar (ACV), two teaspoons raw honey and eight ounces of cold filtered water together.
  4. Molasses Honey Tonic - Mix two tablespoons each of raw apple cider vinegar, blackstrap molasses and unheated raw honey in 8 ounces of filtered water. This one is great for in the morning.
  5. Ginger Lemon Honey Tonic - Add the juice of a fourth of lemon to the ginger honey tonic mentioned earlier.