Living Well for Tomorrow

Sitting at my computer this week I was about to begin writing another article when I was overcome with a sneezing fit. Maybe like me you suffer with some seasonal allergies and are always on the look out for natural remedies. One possibility is the use of local honey. It is claimed that eating honey manufactured by honeybees in your local area that can improve your symptoms.

Honey, of course, is derived from pollen-collecting bees that lick the nectar away from pollen-bearing plants. So when you think about it giving honey to someone with hay fever may seem like a potentially foolish move, when one considers the substance’s origins.

Surprisingly, though, honey does often work to mitigate problems with hay fever.
That is because the final raw honey product is almost devoid of pollen.

Although trace amounts do remain, those amounts are so slight that they usually will not create a problem for hay fever sufferers. What they will do is allow the ingesting party to build up something of a “tolerance” for pollen.

In essence, honey is a means of introducing trace amounts of pollen into the system as a means of desensitization to the allergen. Over time, honey consumption can help to decrease allergy problems.

If one is taking honey as a means of fighting hay fever, many experts recommend using a product that is harvested locally. This tends to be more effective than using honey from more distant locales. A related treatment is chewing the wax caps for honeycombs. Although this really is not a “honey treatment,” strictly speaking, it is an interesting means of fighting allergies that has worked successfully for many people.

As with all these things we would strongly recommend that you only try this after first consulting your personal doctor.