Health benefits of Honey and the treatment of Hay fever

I recently attended a talk by Daniel Bailey, about Honey and its health benefits.

There was a few important points that I will resume in this blog post.

Honey has been used by humans for over five thousand years. Most Ancient populations including the Chinese, Egyptians, Romans and Babylonians used it.

It contains mostly carbohydrates in the form of fructose and other sugars. Its main compounds are proteins, amino acids and vitamins, and also in smaller amounts, minerals and organic acids, flavonoids, polyphenols, alkaloids, glycosides, cardiac glycosides, anthraquinone and volatile compounds. That is the reason why honey might have some beneficial health properties. It has been traditionally used for throat infections, asthma, eye diseases, fatigue, tuberculosis, healing of ulcers and wounds, and even constipation and worm infestation. Some of this traditional uses include the treatment for hay fever.

The theory of treatment of hay fever arouse from the idea of immune tolerance: the presence of pollen in the honey primes the immune system. Some parts of the pollen that bees collect can pass to honey during harvesting and when you ingest it you can potentially develop some immune tolerance to the pollen.

In 2002 a double blind placebo study was conducted to try to find out wether the use of honey could have some positive effects in the treatment of hay fever. The conclusion of that study was that neither honey group group experienced relief from their symptoms in excess of that seen in the placebo group.

However this study had some big limitations, to start with the study was conducted in a very small population of only 40 subjects, from which 13 subjects dropped out. Secondly the study was only conducted for less than 2 months, or 50 days.

Also another limitation was that the honey versus placebo was done with a sugary corn syrup and perhaps some of the subjects were able to notice the difference. And another limitation was that the honey dose given to these subjects was too low. Perhaps a larger study over a longer period would produce different conclusions.

What is surprising is that a larger cohort study hasn't been conducted since 2002 and that there is no interest in funding such a study, since a ready available product such as honey doesn't produce any money for those who fund the studies.

Other studies have been done on immune tolerance and in 2014 a new US drug was licensed for the treatment of hay fever with sublingual immunotherapy, with ragweed pollen, this means absorbing a drug under your tongue. This has been now proved to be helpful for the treatment of hay fever as this leads to immune tolerance. This study proved that a drug is actually helping hay fever. But a larger study hasn't been done to prove that honey ingested might have some beneficial effects too? The route of absorption and the type of pollen included in the honey at different times of collection can have an effect on the type of pollen tolerance developed.

Lastly, the talk mentioned about the benefits of using Manuka honey which comes from mono floral honeys from a tree called Leptospermum scoparium. In 2009 some scientist isolated the chemical marker Methylglyoxal (MGO) in New Zealand Manuka honey. And it was discovered that this substance is very antibacterial.

The content of this antibacterial substance is what makes the different MSG grades of Manuka honey, where MSG of +5 and MSG of +8 do not have signifying antibacterial qualities, anything above it does have antibacterial qualities. Manuka honey is a multimillion market.

Other honeys available in England when raw and locally produced also have antimicrobial effects, as they all contain hydrogen peroxide. Even though the research for raw honey in England hasn't been conducted to see how antibacterial is, and wether certain varieties of flowers and areas might also contain MGO. We can assume that there are many scientific studies to be done to prove all the health benefits of raw local honey for our health.