Sweeten your Christmas treats with a spoonful of raw, local honey.
For years, honey has been used as a natural remedy for colds, sore throats, and allergies. The naturally-occurring properties in the sweet drizzle come in specific strains of honey. Raw, local honey, for example, contains many more benefits than processed honey. Below is a brief guide as to why this natural sweetener works most powerfully in raw, local form.
Raw honey refrains from heat or pasteurization. Normally, the heating and pasteurization that is meant to refine the honey and remove pollutants, bee bodies, and pollen also removes many nutrients and benefits. Honey harvesters strain raw honey instead of heating it, leaving behind traces of pollen from your local area. Local honey includes any honey that has been produced within 50 miles of your home. Raw, local honey combines these two ideas into one rockstar sweetener.
While honey generally contains many natural vitamins and enzymes, raw, local honey takes the health benefits a step further.
You can think of ingesting the pollen in raw, local honey similarly to getting a flu shot. While the shot gives you a tiny dose of the flu in order to make your body produce the antibodies to protect you from actually contracting the virus, honey gives you a dose of local pollen that normally spurs on allergies. One of the properties in honey, quercetin, can reduce inflammation that sparks from allergy-symptoms (i.e. stuffy nose, sore throat, itchy eyes). While all of these allergy symptoms work towards inflaming your body, honey shoots to negate its work and stabilize your body’s release of histamine. Thanks Claritin Antihistamine, but honey can take over from here.
Ingesting this natural allergy relief does take some time to kick in. So start in the seasons that do not promote pollination or allergy spikes. Since plants bloom in the spring and the wind blows in the fall, try to start your honey intake during the summer or winter. Usually allergies are not as bad in the heat of summer or the cold of winter. They fare much better in tepid conditions, with some rain and a nice breeze to carry the pollen straight into your home and up your nose.
Try to ingest about two teaspoons a day for three months. After summer wanes and fall begins, you will most likely notice a relief from your usual fall allergy symptoms. Your body will be ready to fight.