I mean it's not terrible advice. Alleegies or not, local honey is generally delicious.
While it's not a cure all, the advice is also legit.
50 - 80g of honey a day?! Allergies are gone hello diabetes!
Seriously 1g honey to 1kg of body mass is insane. This is obviously ignoring the cost which is also insane.
Same idea as immunotherapy shots or sublingual drops.
Whether it's actually local, and if the allergens are actually concentrated enough to make any difference, is a very different question. Set of questions.
Don't forget this one: Is it actually honey? Honey flavored corn syrup doesn't help.
They said local honey, not factory made junk.
I would hope the roadside stand in front of the apiary has real honey and not corn syrup. But you never know...
Excuse me? Immunology shots are freaking amazing. I've been on them for about 2 years and the difference between last spring and this sptirng is incredible. I no longer need Allegra daily.
I only did mine for 6 months, but I went from dying every spring to getting a bit sniffly if the pollen count is so high walking outside smells like it. I can't imagine how effective it would have been if I did all 3 years.
Fun fact: you can do it with poison ivy. I knew someone who had it done, and he could rub the stuff on his face with no reaction.
Pollution makes my hayfever so much fucking worse.
Walking down the river, trees, grass, weeds everywhere. Fine.
Walk to work down busy A-roads, eyes and nose streaming.
Fuck cars.
You’ll encounter more flowering plants in urban/suburban environments thanks to planning that favors male trees to female trees which makes more pollen.. So yeah, cars definitely contribute to breathing problems, but city planners make it even worse.
Big ass conkers in my street are definitely female considering the fruits it gives, so funny in the middle of a city
I see lots of competing discussion on whether this is a bs wives tale or not.
The things you are alleegic to aren't the things bees are making honey out of. We mostly have allergies to things that are broadcast spwaning obscene amounts their pollen like ragweed, mold, and grass, while bees use flowering plants to make their honey.
Jokes on you, I'm allergic to basically everything!
The hypothesis is that you are eating all of the flower allergens that are causing your allergies. The body usually doesn't react to things you eat so by consuming those allergens your body does have an immune response since it's part of food.
This is a fine point because I have oral allergy syndrome, which is my body violently reacting to bananas because of my ragweed allergy and my immune system being dumb as hell.
But also o do react less to flower pollen with a spoon of local honey a day so maybe it's just a big weird world we live in.
There really aren't a lot of good studies/experiments done.
So we're left with anecdotes. While that's not totally worthless, it also can't be conclusive.
Honey is better for you than refined sugar.
Also, getting local honey helps limit your carbon footprint and helps out your region economically.
This article describes a study that looked into exactly that claim: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/11/honey-seemed-like-a-healthier-choice-then-scientists-tested-it-against-high-fructose-corn-syrup/
It's gotta be organic and it's gotta be local, but it works like magic. A tablespoon a day over winter.
This is a myth, but placebos can be powerful... https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/is-local-honey-a-cure-for-hayfever
You appear to be attempting to link to a specific study, however that study is not accessible from your link. It's possible you were trying to reference this study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11868925/, which was done on 36 (human) participants at the University of CT in 2002. Full paper available at: https://sci-hub.scrongyao.com/10.1016/S1081-1206(10)61996-5
I'm not certain that a paper with 36 participants would be representative of all humans.
Searching PubMed non-exhaustively for "honey" and "allergies" yields this paper, Allergies and Natural Alternatives (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.otc.2022.06.005), states, amongst other things, that "The efficacy of these therapies is varied and under-researched." Alas, this seems to be the case.
But there's no pollen to be allergic to in the winter?
Do you know where honey comes from? Read about it. You'll be amazed.
Definitely a shitpost, but please consider other treatments for allergies than honey. Honey bees are domesticated and have a net negative on local environments where they aren't native, such as North America. And rearing honey bees is not vegan, for those who care about pollinator welfare on both the domesticated and natural sides.
alright we doin this okay so most small-time beekepers at least (can't speak for the larger industrial ones) only rarely resort to providing sugar as a substitute for honey because bees massively overprodice it. Also, the lack of micronutrients is not supported by any literature I can find, and additionally sugar substitution should only occur during the winter regardless. Finally: if bees are being exploited they will just leave. Everything I've found indicates that under poor conditions the entire hive will swarm and just go somewhere else. I do think the point about impacting biodiversity is valid, but if that were a decider for whether a food source is vegan there would be a whole lot fewer crops on that list.
My dad is a beekeeper, so I can pretty much confirm what you're saying about sugar bricks/syrup in the winter. And actually there is some evidence online saying that beekeepers should keep honey in the hives.
As for migration, many wild bees hibernate, in-place over the winter, and the research regarding wild honey bees, although sparse, seems to suggest the same. Having bees stay in the same hive over the winter isn't necessarily unnatural.
On the swarming point, beekeepers try to observe and look out for specific signs of swarming in order to prevent this from happening. And if swarming does happen, beekeepers can set up swarm traps. My dad has done this in the past, and he has had some success.
The point about all of the above though is that beekeepers 1) intentionally rob the bees of the work (i.e. honey creation) they've contributed to over the course of the spring/summer/fall nectar flows, and 2) intentionally try to trap hives that want to escape due to a lack of good conditions - both immoral acts imo.
And the biodiversity impacts don't just affect food sources. Honey bees in such high populations that even modest beekeeping operations sustain overcrowd the native populations, capitalizing on nectar resources first, and risk native populations via virus and disease spillover. Native plants often have adapted along with native bees over time such that both species receive/perform pollination activities to 100% effectiveness. Honey bees are generalists, and so while they may pollinate more plants, they may only do so to 75% effectiveness or less (just throwing a number out there). So, plants get pollinated to lesser degrees with honey bees, and the leftover nectar for native bees often isn't enough to sustain populations meaningfully.
This is why when people say save the bees, the actual message of the campaign is geared towards native bees - not honey bees. There are capitalistic interests involved in keeping honey bees populations healthy and high to the detriment of local environments.
Right. Don't get hives because it's an imperfect solution so it's useless. Useless!
Gotcha.
