Raw Honey and AllergiesRaw honey and Raw honey and allergies are a subject dear to my heart. At a very young age I suffered terribly with an allergy to tree pollen in the spring and to ragweed and golden rod etc. in the fall months. For six months of the year I had itchy eyes, runny nose, cough, sore throat and headaches. From first frost in October until the trees started to blossom in late April I was symptom free. When I was nine years old my father inherited the family farm and that is where we went to live. We began farming and my allergies got worse for a time, relief came in the cold months, except when I went to the barn and handled hay to feed the cattle. The next spring the pine pollen came, the oaks, maples, cherry, apple, locust, basswood all blossomed and my allergies were not nearly as bad as they had been in the past. I didn't know why it was happening but I welcomed the relief. The second harvest season came and went and I had no allergy symptoms at all and no one could tell me why except to venture a guess and say, "guess you grew out of it"! Later I found that not to be the case. The family moved onto the farm during world war two when strict rationing was in effect. Sugar was one of the items rationed so dad bought raw honey and beeswax from a neighboring farmer who kept bees so we used little or no sugar after that, even after rationing ended. The honey dad was buying was unfiltered and contained small bits of delicious honeycomb most of which floated to the top and was eaten first. One day talking with our neighbor Mr Easterbrook [the bee keeper]The man that sold honey to our family, the subject seemed to naturally turn to bees and raw honey and a number of other things related to bee keeping. Mr Easterbrook showed me around his apiary which had a great number of different sized hives. Then he showed me how he extracted and packaged his honey for sale. All of the honey went into five, ten and twenty pound tin buckets, smaller amounts were by special order only. The ten pound buckets made great lunch pails when the honey was gone. I took my school lunch in one every day. The whole process was done by hand there was no heat involved in the processing except in the cooler months when he kept his processing area at a temperature between 85 and 95 degrees. Honey does not flow well at temperatures below 80 degrees making the extracting procedure nearly impossible. It is important to know that raw honey and processing it above 100 degrees F leaves very little if any of it's nutritional value. Many bee keepers don't know this or refuse to believe it to be true. Excess heat does destroy the nutritional value of honey! Everyone knows that raw vegetables and fruits are more nutritious when dried or eaten raw. Cooking destroys important vitamins minerals and enzymes that our bodies need. The same is true of honey. Excess heat will destroy the enzymes in the raw honey. The enzymes are what make raw honey so valuable for our health and well being. If you use honey for it's unique flavor and and sweet taste go for it. But if you use honey for it's unique healing properties you must insist that your supplier provide cold processed honey. The best way to make sure is to visit your local bee keeper and talk to him and tactfully explain what your needs are. If you are looking for allergy relief, local honey is what you will need. Raw honey and bees wax contains naturally occurring allergens so it is possible you could be allergic to raw honey. If your not accustomed to using raw honey, start off slowly 1/2 teaspoon or less and gradually build up to one or two teaspoons over a period of several weeks If you have an allergic reaction stop eating raw honey for a couple of weeks and then start again in an amount a little less than what you were using when the reaction began and you should be fine. This is a case where too much of a good thing can be bad for you. Be careful and start slowly. In our discussions the subject turned to the medicinal qualities of honey and allergies were mentioned. I told Mr. Easterbrook how I had suffered with seasonal allergies for years and how over the past two years the symptoms became less and less severe and now I seem to have no allergies at all. His response,
"raw honey can do that for you".
If you have allergy problems you will probably find relief by eating locally produced cold processed Raw honey. I found out that raw honey and a good healthy diet can do that for you. It can relieve the severity of the allergies and in many cases totally eliminate them. So I didn't outgrow the allergies after all! If you have allergy problems you will probably find relief by eating locally produced cold processed Raw honey. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any disease.
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