
Anyone who has ever tasted honey will understand the benefits immediately! Honey is a strange thing in general: if there is honey, there is no honey at all!
That's the Winnie the Pooh chant everyone recognises. So what is honey? Honey is a sweet, thick, viscous product produced by bees and some other related insects.
Honey composition: Up to 20% water. Depending on the type, 75-80% carbohydrates. These are glucose, fructose, maltose, dextrin, sucrose. Enzymes (diastase, invertase, etc.). Mineral salts and trace elements. In small amounts of vitamins B1, B2, B6, E, K, C, carotene (provitamin A), folic acid. The composition of honey may vary depending on the plant source. The composition is clear.
What is the effect of honey on the body?
Journey into the world of honey: in which cases can bee honey be a medicine?
With the consumption of honey, the heart and vascular system is strengthened. Thanks to honey, blood circulation is improved. Strengthens its wall of the heart and blood vessels. Normalisation of the nervous system. Honey has a calming and mild sedative effect. Reduce the impact on the body stress, normalised sleep. Honey helps to improve immunity. It is useful for people experiencing chronic fatigue. It helps to fight and anaemia, thanks to folic acid. And honey is a natural antibiotic!

Honey also improves spermatogenesis and hormone secretion, which was proved by M. Gholami, A. Abbaszadeh and others. And all men's favourite testosterone increases with oral consumption of honey. Testosterone is an anabolic steroid and is the main sex hormone in men. Maintaining adequate testosterone levels throughout a man's life is highly desirable, especially now it is well known that low testosterone levels are associated with various diseases / disorders of aging. The role of honey in increasing serum testosterone has been proven by the work of Salim Ali Banihani who found that by increasing the production of luteinising hormone, increasing the viability of Leydig cells, reducing oxidative damage in Leydig cells, enhancing StAR gene expression and inhibiting aromatase activity in testes, honey increases serum testosterone. And the use of honey for colds is recommended for anyone who is not allergic to this treat. However, there are a few myths that we would like to dispel.
Myths about honey.
Myth one: Oxymethylfurfural (carcinogen) is formed when honey is heated and it is harmful to health. Then honey becomes almost poisonous and harmful to health, and therefore honey should not be consumed together with hot tea, as my grandmother taught me! And this statement is wrong. The fact is that everyone's favourite dried fruit, jam, coffee and baked goods contain much more of it. So the content of oxymethylfurfurol in honey is extremely small, and has no effect on the body. Myth two. Honey loses its beneficial properties when heated or consumed with hot tea or milk. An indicator of the naturalness and maturity of honey is diastase, it turns out that it tends to zero. Here are the calculations for the reduction of diastase in the book by V.A. Solomka. "Word about honey". In 1964, studies were carried out (which were later confirmed in our time) to find out how the increase in temperature affects the useful properties of honey and the formation of oxymethylfurfurol.
The half-life of diastase: at 80 degrees is only 1.2 hours,
at 60 degrees is already 1 day,
and at 30 degrees and at all 200 days.
This means that if we put honey in hot milk or tea, its usefulness will be halved in 1.2 hours. But we don't drink one cup of tea for 1.2 hours, well, 15-20 minutes at the most. And we should not forget that tea only at the first moment has a temperature of 80 degrees, but it cools down quickly. Here and count whether honey will suffer much if you put it in hot milk or tea? So drink with pleasure and be healthy. Indeed, honey as a living product when heated loses some of its useful properties. But we do not stop steaming or stewing vegetables, boil jam from fruit, even though we know that they become less useful? So you can warm honey, but only wisely. It is better to do it in small portions, for 1-2 times. Melt it on a water bath, about 50 degrees, stirring constantly so that the honey warms evenly. Even short-term heating of honey to 80 degrees is acceptable, followed by rapid cooling to room temperature.

Red honey: mad honey from the mountain slopes of Nepal and Turkey Of the more than 300 types of honey that exist in the world, nothing is more surprising and dangerous than mad honey. This amazing product is produced by bees that collect nectar from certain species of rhododendrons that grow in mountainous areas such as around the Black Sea. For centuries, people have used mad honey for entertainment, medicinal and military purposes. Even small doses of this honey can cause euphoria and dizziness, while higher doses can lead to hallucinations and, in rare cases, death. Although the collection and sale of mad honey is illegal in some countries, it is still collected and sold. On the mountain slopes of Nepal and Turkey, bees produce this strange and dangerous mixture. This rare natural product is different from the hundreds of other types of honey produced around the world. It has a redder colour and a slightly bitter taste, and it is created by the world's largest honeybee, Apis dorsata Laboriosa.

The psychoactive properties of "mad" honey are not explained by the characteristics of the bees themselves, but by what they feed on in certain regions - a genus of flowering plants known as rhododendrons. All species of these plants contain a group of neurotoxic compounds called grayanotoxins. When bees eat the nectar and pollen of certain species of rhododendrons, they absorb the Grayanotoxins, which then get into the honey, making it "crazy". Bees are more likely to produce "mad" honey where there are many rhododendrons growing. The reason for this is due to limited choice: with fewer plants to feed on, the insects switch almost entirely to rhododendrons, consuming more grayanotoxins. The result is a particularly pure "madder" honey. However, gaining access to the honeycomb containing this unique product can be difficult. One reason is that rhododendrons grow best at high altitudes, and bees often build their hives on cliffs next to the plants. This means that honey collectors have to climb up mountain slopes to reach the coveted honeycomb.

However, honey collectors who are brave enough to go after the honeycomb are extracting mad honey in extreme conditions, but charging a lot of money to do so. The Guardian reports that a kilo of high-quality mad honey can be purchased in shops across Turkey for around $360 per kilo. At the same time, National Geographic notes that a pound of mad honey costs about $60 in Asian black markets. In general, the value of mad honey is significantly higher than that of regular honey. This is partly due to the fact that many people believe that rabies honey has more medicinal value than regular honey. In the Black Sea region and beyond, people use it to treat conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, and sore throats. However, research into the medical benefits of hallucinogenic honey from Nepal and Turkey remains incomplete.
What are the effects of grayanotoxins on the body?
Justin Brower, a forensic toxicologist, on his blog Nature's Poisons said: "Grayanotoxins exert their toxicity by binding to sodium ion channels on cell membranes and preventing their rapid closure, similar to aconitine. This leads to a state of depolarisation in which sodium ions are free to enter cells and calcium influx is increased." This process can cause a range of symptoms, including increased sweating, salivation and nausea, Brauer noted. He also emphasised that symptoms usually disappear within 24 hours, as happened to a man in Seattle who got honey poisoning in 2011. While the exact amount of crazy honey needed to cause poisoning depends on the person and the quality of the honey, the 2018 RSC Advances report states, "Consumption of approximately 15-30 grams of crazy honey results in intoxication, with symptoms lasting between half and four hours. The level of intoxication depends not only on the amount of mad honey consumed, but also on the concentration of grayanotoxin in the honey and the season of production. According to Özhan et al, consumption of one teaspoon of rabies honey can cause poisoning." A couple of dozen cases of poisoning from mad honey are reported annually in Turkey itself. A 2012 study published in the journal Cardiovascular Toxicology noted that humans rarely die from the substance, although animal deaths have been reported.
Mad honey in the history of mankind
For thousands of years, people near the shores of the Black Sea have been beckoned by the mysterious properties of madder honey. One of the earliest references to it dates back to 401 BC, when Greek soldiers passing through the Turkish city of Trabzon encountered large quantities of this unusual delicacy. The Athenian general and philosopher Xenophontes, author of Anabasis, wrote: "The quantity of beehives was extraordinary, and all the soldiers who ate the honeycomb fainted, they vomited, were stricken with diarrhoea, and none of them could stand upright. Those who ate little were like highly intoxicated people, and those who ate much were like insane people, and some were like people at death." "The result was that they lay on the ground in great numbers, as if a defeat had taken place; and there was a general despondency. The next day none of them were found dead; they recovered about the same hour they had lost them the day before; and on the third and fourth day they rose as if after taking a medicine." A mere 100 years later, in 67 B.C., the Roman soldiers were less fortunate. In pursuit of the Pontic king Mithridates and his Persian army, they encountered a honey craze that the Persians had left behind deliberately, intending to use it as a biological weapon. Vaughn Bryant, professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University, explained in a press release, "The Persians collected pots full of local honey and left them for the Roman troops to find. They ate the honey, lost their bearings and were unable to fight. The Persian army returned and wiped out more than 1,000 Roman soldiers with few casualties." However, mad honey was more often used for non-violent purposes. The inhabitants of the Black Sea region have long since consumed it in small quantities (about a teaspoon) in boiling milk or separately, both for pleasure and as folk medicine. In the 18th century, merchants in the Black Sea region sold honey to Europeans, who added it to liqueur to enjoy its milder and more relaxing effects.

What's with the mad honey today?
Today, beekeepers in Nepal and Turkey still harvest mad honey, although it represents a small proportion of the country's total honey production. Both countries allow the production, sale and export of mad honey, but the substance is illegal in other countries, such as South Korea, which banned the substance in 2005 . In the meantime, interested buyers can purchase mad honey from countries such as Nepal and Turkey. In Turkey, this honey is sold in specialised beekeeping shops, along with other types of honey produced in Turkey. Our journey into the world of honey is over, but if you have any questions or comments, we will be happy to answer them.
SOURCES: 1. Salim Ali Banihani. Mechanisms of honey on testosterone levels
2.M Gholami, A Abbaszadeh, Hanipour Hayat, K Anbari,P. Baharvand, A. M. Garravi.Honey improves spermatogenesis and hormone secretion in testicular ischaemia-reperfusion-induced injury in rats
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