Someone in another thread wants to know if locally produced honey can kill you, so it’s only fair that I ask whether it can help you.
We have beehives and honey at the farm where I volunteer. I was chatting with some visitors last weekend, and they mentioned that unprocessed, locally produced honey was good for allergies. I suffer from hay fever pretty badly, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. I bought some in the gift shop.
My question is, is there any logical sense to this? The idea, apparently, is that local honey contains local pollens, so feeding it to yourself acts something like a vaccination, and trains your immune system in how to react. I’m skeptical, to say the least. But what do I know? Do any of you medical types have knowledge about this?
There was a study on this, and the people taking honey had just as many allergic symptoms as the control group. I read it awhile ago, and will try and find it again.
This study didn’t find honey to be any better than a placebo.
A quick dig through PubMed didn’t turn up anything useful.
Going off my own minimal knowledge of the immune system, it seems plausable. There are areas of the gut where immune cells sit, waiting for novel antigens to come by. When they find new ones, they can induce local antibody production against the antigen way up at the nose and mouth.
This honey theory depends on one major point, though: that the bees visit the plants you are allergic to.
From casual observation, bees seem to have different kinds of flowering plants that they prefer over others. What if your allergy plant isn’t interesting to bees? The honey theory also won’t work if the pollen your body dislikes comes from outside the range of the bees, which is possible if you live in a windy area. Eating raw honey especially won’t work if your allergy is to grass or pine trees, since bees don’t have much to do with them.
IMHO worth trying, but don’t throw out the antihistamines yet.
Never mind.
Damn your quick fingers, pinkfreud!
Oleander honey is poisonous, or so I’ve heard.
This is likely uncommon, but here’s a case of someone with hay fever who developed a severe anaphylactic reaction after eating honey - apparently because the bees that made it visited plants she was allergic to.
Honey allergies in general are well known.