Medicinal honey has been a pleasure to research and study over a great many years for me now, though I have not had the good fortune (yet) to write my own book about this subject.
The health and equally amazing medical benefits of honey are my true passion and any books I manage to get my hands on about this subject attract me like "bees around a honey pot"
Whilst flying to France a few years ago I read a book written by Joe Traynor called “The Gourmet Medicine” my flight went far too quickly that time, so engrossed was I in this book about medicinal honey they had to practically beg me to leave the plane once we had landed!
I have written a short article here for you to read by Joe and his take on medicinal honey, please enjoy this as much as I.
The great number of positive studies on the medicinal benefits of honey, virtually all of them from outside our borders, should encourage U.S. scientists and doctors to investigate honey more thoroughly.
Certainly there needs to be more controlled scientific tests on the medicinal benefits of honey and much more work on developing a product with uniformly high antibacterial activity.
Such studies will be costly and the honey industry, beleaguered by low prices because of global competition, does not have the resources to fund such tests (although, to their credit, honey producers are funding a few).
The National Institute of Health (NIH)
is currently spending $14 million to evaluate the effectiveness of glucosamine to treat arthritis. Why not fund studies on the effectiveness of medicinal honey on a number of maladies?
If honey became an accepted medicine in the U.S, think of the billions of dollars that could be saved – dollars that would otherwise go to prescription drugs.
It’s not too far fetched to think that if honey became an accepted medicine; our economy would become more stable and our country more productive.
A healthy population provides tremendous economic benefits. It has been estimated that a meagre 1% reduction in the mortality rate of cancer alone would have an economic value of $500 billion to the U.S.
Play a word association game with the word “honey” with doctors around the world: the most frequently associated word for U.S doctors might well be “Botulism;” for New Zealand doctors, “Medicine;” for German doctors, “Health;” and for French doctors, “Treat.” Honey still lies well outside the mainstreams of medicine in this country (U.S.)
Eliminating the botulism stigma from honey, which in my (Joe's) opinion is vastly overstated in the first place, by using only gamma-irriated honey in medical experiments, should allow U.S. medical scientists to explore honey’s benefits with impunity.
My (Joe's) background is in horticulture and over 20 years ago, a respected horticultural scientist encouraged his students to think outside the box. His comments are just as applicable to young medical students today:
It is a foolish young scientist who does not learn that the Court of the Inquisition still sits in judgment on the unorthodox. In 1616, it forced Galileo to submit to the orthodoxy of the theologians. Today’s equivalent comes from a web of bureaucratic rules and policies. All are well-intentioned, but their cumulative effect is to exert a powerful pressure towards orthodoxy. Our bright young people need to be allowed a little more freedom and a chance to prove themselves original thinkers without the system whipping them into traditional, sometimes unimaginative channels.(W. Grierson)
Does such a climate as described exist today? You bet it does! Witness the reaction when it was proposed by Australian Barry Marshall that the bacterium, H. pylori was the main cause of ulcers. The poor man was pilloried (if not pyloried), especially in the U.S.’ for daring to question an accepted doctrine of the medical establishment, thereby questioning the establishment itself.
Fortunately Marshall had the stomach (and I mean literally had the stomach: he swallowed a solution laced with H. pylori to prove his point; wouldn’t that make a good book or movie?) to pursue his hypothesis to a successful resolution.
More recently, Paul Ewald is enduring blows for proposing that microbes cause most human ailments. The jury is still out on this one.
It is hoped that a young U.S. medical student (or future medical student) will read this book and
Peter Molan’s work
and other work, and in an appropriate situation ask his mentor “I’ve got a bit of honey here. Why don’t we try it, just to see what happens?”
Since this article was written thankfully medicinal honey has and is being used more and more in healing situations throughout many hospitals and very effective it is too, did you doubt that?
Source: Joe Traynor "Honey the Gourmet Medicine" Permission Granted
