The claim that local honey would affect allergies also assumes that the honey actually does contain pollen and actually comes from where the package says it does- which often isn’t the case.
If local honey really did contain a significant amount of pollen that people were allergic to, there would be a risk of triggering allergic reactions by eating it.
Another alternative/natural medicine claim bites the dust (or pollen, in this case).
The first year we found a source of local honey, my gf pointed out that her allergies were improving!!! I reminded her that her allergies are seasonal, and they always improved around that time. But the honey is delicious.
Growing up, we had neighbors who were oldtimey farmers. The father made poison ivy and butter sandwiches. He and his two sons ate a sandwich a piece every year. The kids told me about the horrible diarrhea they’d get. They also got poison ivy many times every year. Their dad always pointed out how much worse they’d be if they hadn’t been protected by the sandwiches he made them eat.
You can get chevre with honey from Trader Joe’s. You should, even though it probably won’t affect your allergies or your response to poison ivy, because it’s yummy.
They’re lucky they just got diarrhea. You can die from eating poison ivy. Think about it- you’re putting a substance that can cause irritation and swelling in your throat. Some other animals don’t react to poison ivy the way humans do, and they can eat it.
Elaborating on Anne Neville’s response and link, basically the idea is to train your immune system to have a more measured response to the allergen.
An allergic reaction happens when certain classes of antibodies (immunoglobulin E or IgE) bind to an allergen, which then causes mast cells to release histamine. Allergy immunotherapy gives you regular doses of the allergen, which encourages the development of regulatory T cells that recognize the allergen. The regulatory T cells will bind to the allergen and then secrete substances that prevent the production of the IgE antibodies. The general approach pretty reliably reduces allergy severity for most allergens studied so far.
Traditionally the allergen is administered by injection, but this needs to be done by a doctor since there’s a risk of anaphylactic shock. Now there are also sublingual drops which are a lot easier to administer. Since they also have a negligable risk of anaphylactic shock, the patient can take the drops without regular doctor visits. However, I haven’t found a satisfying explanation of how and why allergen dosing in one way (pollen all up in your nose) causes an allergic reaction, but when dosed another way (subcutaneous injections or sublingual drops) there is the development of the regulatory T cell response.
So, going back to the idea that honey might treat allergies: conceptually it might work as well as sublingual immunotherapy. However, that requires regular dosing of the exact kind of pollen that causes your allergies. Most seasonal allergies are caused by pollen that spreads with the wind, but bees gather pollen from flowers that do not release their pollen to be blown around indiscriminately. Therefore, as the study in the OP demonstrates empirically, honey won’t help your allergies.
(This year I started a course of sublingual immunotherapy for tree allergies, but the specific allergen I need is off-label for this use. Unfortunately, since the FDA wants clinical trials to prove efficacy of immunotherapy of each individual allergen, and there are so many different allergens, there probably will never be FDA-approved immunotherapies for a lot of common allergens. We just saw that Oralair was approved for grass allergies, but I suspect there will be diminishing returns for any pharmaceutical company considering treatments for the less common allergies.)
Swallowing an allergen to reduce sensitivity to it isn’t really any crazier than injecting it (arguably less so, if you’re a needle-phobe like me), but we know that people get allergy shots. Of course, this isn’t something you would want to do at home with no one looking out for symptoms of a serious allergic reaction. Taking an unknown quantity of the allergen, which is what you’d have in local honey if it did contain pollen you were allergic to, doesn’t seem wise, either.
