Albert Cilia-Vincenti, chairman, Academy of Nutritional Medicine, UK, Attard
Honey every day keeps hay fever away
I note the leader (February 24) about nurturing and protecting the Maltese honey industry from possible fake (sugary syrup) honey producers (foreign or local). Some genuine and excellent honey is certainly made in Malta.
Perhaps most of these columns’ readers are unaware that a honey made by Charles Camilleri of Malta’s Mġarr (predominantly from carob tree flowers) won first prize at a honey blind tasting competition held in Tuscany’s Montalcino last year.
Various health advantages are attributed to honey but one which seems credible is that daily consumption of a little local honey is a natural treatment and possible cure for hay fever.
The tiny quantities of pollen in local honey, which encounter the body’s immune system via the intestine, are said to slowly desensitise the hay fever sufferer, thus gaining relief without use of pharmaceutical drugs. Daily ingestion of small quantities of honey needs to be started at least some months before the hay fever season starts, and the honey needs to have been made by local bees from local flowers.
Popular Stories
In Discussion
7 Comments
Post comment
Please sign in or create your Account to post comments.
J.F.Micallef
Mar 1st 2011, 16:26
I can personally attest to the veracity of the writer's claim. I was an acute sufferer of Springtime Hay Fever in my youth and used to take daily doses of histamine pills to alleviate my miserable condition at the time, with little or no success. Luckily, I read an article some 40 years ago about a surgeon who was himself a sufferer of seasonal allergy just like myself. He wrote that he managed to cure himself by taking a teaspoonful of honey every day for a number of months, explaining that such repeated doses helped to desensitize the body's untoward reaction. He stressed that the honey had to be the produce of bees that pastured on highly-pollinated plants, for this cure to take place. I tried this out at the time, buying one litre bottle of honey after another from a bee-keeper in Gudja, and took a daily spoonful for two years. It worked wonders on me, and I was rid of the unpleasant condition that used to debilitate me during Spring every year.
Adrian Borg Cardona
Mar 1st 2011, 18:39
I had exactly the same experience! I used to hate spring with a passion as it meant itchy weeping eyes. sneezing non stop and sweating. Then I read an article about the effects of honey. I managed to buy honey from my area (so as to counteract against the effect of pollen on my system) and within about year or so I was cured. I have not had a bout of hayfever for about 35 years now. And I do not take honey every day - only every so often. You have take honey raw not mixed with hot water or milk as that will kill its beneficial properties.
Joe Camilleri
Mar 1st 2011, 10:31
Until there is some kind of official standard of maltese honey, I will surely not beleive anybody saying that he is selling "ASEL PUR"
m vella
Mar 1st 2011, 11:36
Why?
DVella
Mar 1st 2011, 13:22
. . . perhaps because we've ALL been had before by some maltese 'entrapreneur' wanting to get rich quickly . . . perhaps it's because we have all endured decades of paying inflated prices for second and third-rate products . . . fake imitations and similar rubbish . . . and perhaps it is because we know for a fact that there are one of two brands of viscous golden liquid being widely sold that claim to be honey but contain about as much as road asphalt does!
Standards and regulation and associated testing are in the interest of the genuine producer and allow him to produce a certificate of authenticity and an indisputable guaranteed level of quality. People tht have nothing to hide should welcome them . . . . ! It's the people that have been selling us rubbish that would obviously object.
Robert Agius
Mar 1st 2011, 15:35
@M vella
...because some honey sold locally was found not to contain ANY traces of honey.
S. Zammit
Mar 1st 2011, 18:45
A simple solution, buy directly from the producer, and not some entrepreneur. That's what I do and I have never regretted it.