Sugar in honey..

[laterade]

Vonderplanitz seems to think that the sugar in honey should be disregarded, at first look I saw this as incredible or should i say uncredible.
After hearing of "Brady" eating a pound a day... I wonder...I know that raw crystallized honey is noticeably different than heated but still may have these sugars.
Do you think the 16 grams of sugar per teaspoon should be disregarded in raw honey?

[PaleoPhil]

There's an easy way to find out. Test your blood sugar--one hour, two hours and three hours after eating the honey. If it contains no sugar or carbs then it should have little effect on your BG. I tried this myself and my BG was spiked above 200 mg/dl even by raw untouched honeycomb (the bees make the honeycomb right in the little container that is shipped to you so no heating or even handling is necessary).

In the USA some BG kit makers give out free kits including a small number of test strips. You should be able to find an offer by googling it.

[Haai]

Surely it is normal for blood glucose levels to rise temporarily after eating sugar, because the glucose is absorbed from the intestines into the blood. I would probably be worried if my blood glucose level did not rise after eating honey (because where did the sugar go if it isn't in the blood?). As we all know, we have insulin to bring our blood glucose levels back down to "normal", by increasing uptake of glucose from the blood and into the cells of our body. So in a healthy individual spikes in blood glucose levels from the occasional honey meal should be nothing to worry about. Our body is perfectly adapted to handle it. As far as I know, it is when we eat sugar/honey too frequently, causing frequent spikes in blood sugar, that causes problems like diabetes, because the cells begin to respond less to insulin, reducing the rate of uptake of glucose from the blood.

[PaleoPhil]

This may be the sort of claim by Aajonus that Actup90 was referring to:

"Unheated honey contains an insulin-like substance that is produced by bees when collecting nectar. That insulin-like substance converts 90% of the carbohydrate in nectar into enzymes that help digest, assimilate and utilize protein. Unheated honey is a wonderful sweet food that helps digest all types of meat."
The Recipe for Living Without Disease, 2nd edition, p. 31

AV may be talking about insulin-like polypeptides in royal jelly. In the silkworm Bombyx mori it has been named bombyxin. As far as I know, the form that is in bee royal jelly hasn't been given a name yet.

Perhaps AV doesn't think the BG spiking effects of honey are a problem if royal jelly is included? Current science supports that to a certain extent: "Serum glucose levels after 2 hours and the area under the curve for glucose were significantly lower (P=.041) after royal jelly administration. Substances originating from the pharyngeal glands of the honey bee with insulin-like activity are likely to have caused this effect and may thus be, at least partially, responsible for the lowering impact of honey on blood glucose levels." (Royal Jelly Reduces the Serum Glucose Levels in Healthy Subjects
by K Münstedt - 2009, www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/jmf.2008.0289)

However, for some reason AV only wrote of "unheated honey" and didn't say that you have to make sure that the honey you buy contains royal jelly. Since many of the unheated honey products sold by makers that he recommends aren't claimed by the makers to contain any royal jelly, this is puzzling.

I am currently using raw fermented honey of the Really Raw brand, which is one that AV appparently recommends, and while it nicely reduces the dry flakes on my scalp, eyebrows and forehead, it does spike my BG tremendously at 1 hour and 2 hours after intake and does so to about the same extent as centrifuged honeys. So there is little if any offsetting effect to the blood sugar spike from the absence of heating or by using one of the favored brands. However, I do notice that I feel much better after I eat the RR fermented hand-packed honey than when I eat centrifuged honeys and only the fermented honey is effective on the dry flakes. Not even a raw honey product I tried that was recommended in this forum and that claims to contain royal jelly provided me with these benefits. So there may be some other positive effect going on here.

As for why BG 1 and 2 hour postprandial BG spikes MIGHT be a problem, here are excerpts from Glucomania, by Dr. William Davis, cardiologist, at http://www.heartscanblog.org/2011/02/glucomania.html:

"[A] glucose meter is your best tool to:

1) Lose weight
2) Cure diabetes
3) Reduce or eliminate small LDL particles
4) Achieve anti-aging or age-slowing effects

[M]easure blood glucose to assess the immediate effects of food choices....

The concept is simple: Check a blood glucose just prior to a food or meal of interest, then one hour after finishing.

[A spike in 1-hr postprandial blood glucose] causes 1) glycation, the adverse effects of glucose modification of proteins that leads to cataracts, kidney disease, cartilage damage and arthritis, atherosclerosis, skin wrinkles, etc., 2) high insulin response that cascades into fat deposition, especially visceral fat ("wheat belly"), and 3) glucotoxicity, i.e., direct damage to the pancreas that can, over years, lead to diabetes.

[If] you fail to trigger glycation, you stop provoking insulin, and visceral fat mobilizes rather than accumulates: you lose weight, particularly around the middle.

We therefore aim to keep the one-hour blood glucose 100 mg/dl or less."


Sources on Royal Jelly:

Kramer K.J., Childs C.N., Spiers R.D., Jacobs R.M. (1982) Purification of insulinlike peptides from insects haemolynph and royal jelly. Insect Biochemistry 12(1):91-98.

Kramer KJ, Tager HS, Childs CN, Speirs RD. Insulin-like hypoglycemic and immunological activities in honeybee royal jelly. J Insect Physiol. 1977;23(2):293–295. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/853242

Royal Jelly Reduces the Serum Glucose Levels in Healthy Subjects
by K Münstedt - 2009
www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/jmf.2008.0289

Preclinical and Clinical Study Results for Royal Jelly
(Case No. 8031-67-2)
http://www.explorepub.com/articles/inderst.html

Lucien Lavenseau
Immunofluorescent localization of a substance immunologically related to insulin in the protocerebral neurosecretory cells of the European corn borer
Accepted: 15 May 1984 
http://www.springerlink.com/content/xv10560n8293127l/
Summary  A substance immunologically related to mammalian insulin was demonstrated by immunofluorescence in one of five types of neurosecretory cells in the protocerebrum of the European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis. This A2 cell type contains a secretory material stainable with paraldehyde fuchsin.

Royal Jelly Reduces the Serum Glucose Levels in Healthy Subjects
Karsten Münstedt, Matthias Bargello, Annette Hauenschild. Journal of Medicinal Food. October 2009, 12(5): 1170-1172. doi:10.1089/jmf.2008.0289.
Published in Volume: 12 Issue 5: October 26, 2009
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jmf.2008.0289?cookieSet=1&journalCode=jmf

[laterade]

It is very odd, AV never once in RFLWD mentioned royal jelly.
I have yet to read TPD so I have no knowledge of his fermented honey claims.
No noticeable glucose spike when eating opaque raw honey, and everything seems to digest wonderfully with it.
I am using "really raw" too and I love it, not the fermented one. I'm very interested in that.
Tomorrow I will call them because they are out of stock for the 2lbs 10oz containers.
I WANT THAT DEAL!!!

[PaleoPhil]

I have yet to read TPD so I have no knowledge of his fermented honey claims.

I meant the Really Raw brand, not the fermented honey product specifically.

No noticeable glucose spike when eating opaque raw honey

Did you test your blood sugar? If so, what were your 1, 2 and 3 hour levels? I'm curious how others' numbers compare to mine.

[laterade]

Did you test your blood sugar? If so, what were your 1, 2 and 3 hour levels? I'm curious how others' numbers compare to mine.

I have not, maybe in the future.

[raw-al]

I had just finished writing something in response to a post at the Yahoo group and so I thought I would throw it in here. BTW it meshes in with what you are saying Phil.

In Ayurveda honey is considered to be the only sweetener that is appropo for persons of Kapha constitution. (basically people with issues related to weight). The reason for this is that honey has a heating effect. This heating affect (on digestion is that it speeds up or intensifies digestion in the same way that throwing kerosene on wood helps to start a fire.

This same effect is not so great for people like me who have great or strong digestion because it's like throwing the kerosene on a hot fire. You get a too hot fire causing the digestion to burn the food being cooked (by digestion). Of course burnt food = no nutrition and messes with the flow of food through the intestines as burnt food like burnt logs is too hard and dry to flow. This causes other problems such as damage to the gastrointestinal tract which can/will cause pain, upset stomach, ulcers, burning in the GI tract and eventually the burning will (like all fire and smoke) flow uphill to the throat and mouth and top of the head. This all depends on other factors such as the environment, diet, basic body type etc.

Honey according to Ayurveda is one of the group of Anupans which are carriers of nutrients to the cells. In the case of honey it acts as a transporter of nutrients to the brain cells. The brain is indeed surrounded by a sweet fatty liquid and this is why Ayurveda advises parents to feed children fats and sweet tasting (definitely not white or manufactured sugar) foods. Sweet is considered a taste and not necessarily sugar. For instance meats are considered sweet as well as milk etc. Sweet promotes growth which is what childhood is all about.

So by spoiling children you are doing them a world of good up to a point of course. The reason children like sweet is because their body craves it because they need the energy to grow. Your job is to filter out the bad, processed, manufactured sweet crap. SAD diets are full of the crap sweet taste. MacDonalds etc crap.

For this reason honey is part of some herbal preparations particularly associated with brain issues or memory etc.. So does this mean you should all run out and eat tons of honey??? Absolutely not! All foods are medicine according to Ayurveda and that would be that same as having your grandmother's pills for breakfast.

Also there is a huge difference in having a taste of something compared to a bowl full. Really you are your best gude. If it tastes and feels good and you notice benefit then you are indeed having something appropo. Think of Arnold Swartzenegger and Twiggy. They have different nutritional requirements.

This is one major reason that "modern" research starts off on the wrong foot. Everyone is lumped together. It's so laughable that research tries to determine what to give the average person. Whoever that is. They have no method of dividing populations into identifiable traits or categories which is what Ayurveda excels at.

it's a stubborn donkey attitude that pervades the current Allopathic industry based on too many years of making too much money. It's like a dam holding back a mighty river. Once it is breached by some crusader it will fall like a house of cards and like Bobby D. said so long ago "The times they are a changin". The attitude is at root, primarily because they are trying to sell health to as many as possible (obviously to make dough ray me) and not really helping anyone in the process.

Prior to starting on raw food, honey was too strong for me. I would get all the Pitta symptoms if I ate it. However since I started on the raw diet and I eat it with butter the effect is very nice. The properties of butter are complementary to honey. Butter tends to put out the fire and honey ignites it so when mixed they bring out the best in each other.

Butter (or generally in Ayurveda they say ghee which is clarified butter) is considered an Anupan also and it's job is to carry nutrients to the muscles.

Ayurveda says that you should never heat honey as it makes it turn toxic and it will give you skin issues. It also says that you should never eat equal amounts of honey and ghee as it will cause issues.

However it says that any other combo than equal will be of great benefit. I have forgotten the exact formula but as long as you double one compared to the other it is benefic.

I have to have probably 4 times the amount of butter. We make our own raw butter.

Another factoid about honey is that it comes in different grades. Some people wax poetic about the health benefits of this variety and that and there are indeed certain varieties that are superior and I know one that is definitely the best but amoungst good honey there are different grades based on the season local flora and fauna.

In our area we bought some early season honey directly from the beekeeper. It was way too strong and we both got upset stomach. For a person with a weaker digestion it probably would have been fantastic but for us it was too strong. The summer and fall stuff was/is dynomite and we love it. We eat it whenever we feel like it and so self-regulate. I can tell if it's too much. I get upset stomach and a sore throat. Also when I have had my fill I have no desire to eat more.

I have noticed a steady decline BTW in the spots on my skin since I started on AV's diet. My family typically gets them. They eventually become melanoma. This is not to say that everyone should do as I do, it's simply my mileage so far. Lots of other stuff also.

I know this is a lot to digest (sorry it's a disease on my part : )

Just another thought Ayurveda suggests that the bark of the cinnamon tree is good for issues with sugar and indeed this has been confirmed through research, although I could not give you a link.

Alan