This is What Happens to Your Body If You Eat Honey Every Day.
Honey has been used as medicine since ancient times, but there are plenty of people who have no idea how it works or what it does to your body if you eat it on a regular basis.
Is honey good for you?
Can it improve your health?
The answer to these questions depends on whether you get raw honey or commercial honey.
Honey has been around as long as humans have, and its naturally occurring sugars make it an excellent alternative to refined sugar.
But how exactly does honey affect your body? Here’s what happens if you eat honey every day.
So read on to learn more about the benefits and drawbacks of eating honey every day and how it can benefit your health.
No. 1:
Less indigestion
By filling your stomach with natural sugars instead of white processed sugar, you can avoid indigestion.
Studies show that the average American eats around 62 pounds of white sugar per year.
Since honey has a low glycemic index and doesn’t cause as many fluctuations in blood sugar levels as regular table sugar, it’s one less thing for your stomach to deal with.
Plus, this makes for a great substitute for those pesky high-fructose corn syrup sweeteners found in many of our favorite foods these days.
Even just a teaspoon or two of honey before bedtime will help ease any acid reflux and heartburn symptoms.
But don’t worry: even though honey contains traces of pollen, it won’t make allergies worse.
No. 2:
It detoxifies your system.
Detoxification is essential for a healthy body.
It gets rid of the environmental and dietary toxins that your liver can’t process on its own and it removes any pathogens (bad bacteria) in your intestines.
The long-term effects of living in a toxin-filled environment or diet can be detrimental to our health.
But with honey’s natural antibiotic properties, you’re reducing the amount of these substances in your system.
Eating honey every day will help keep you clean inside and out!
To maintain this detoxifying effect, try taking 2 tablespoons daily.
If you find that honey isn’t agreeing with your stomach or has adverse reactions such as headaches and allergies,
Take note:
Different people have different tolerance levels when it comes to foods like this.
That being said, if you want to see how your body reacts after eating honey each day for two weeks, then feel free to experiment without getting too worried about negative side effects.
No. 3:
Improved weight management
The antioxidants in honey can help fight off infections and speed up the metabolism, making it easier for you to lose weight.
It has also been shown that eating honey before bedtime can increase the production of leptin and decrease ghrelin production by as much as 25%.
Leptin is a hormone that sends a message about when you are full, while ghrelin tells your brain when you need more food.
Having higher levels of leptin and lower levels of ghrelin helps suppress appetite and reduce cravings.
A diet with high sugar content can result in too many inflammatory cells, which cause insulin resistance (making it harder for your body to process sugar) and an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and some cancers.
But honey manages body weight without negatively affecting your immune system.
In fact, studies have found that those who eat honey actually have stronger immune systems than those who don’t.
It’s also worth noting that using just one tablespoon of raw honey each day can help control cravings and sweeten foods without causing spikes in blood sugar or inflammation.
No. 4:
Boosted immune system
Regular consumption of honey also benefits your immune system.
After eating a meal that contains sugar, your body begins to process the sugar by breaking it down into glucose and fructose molecules.
These sugars are then transported throughout the body and distributed by the liver so they can be used as energy.
The glucose molecule enters cells and combines with oxygen in order to produce a chemical called ATP (adenosine triphosphate). The cells use ATP for energy production; this is called aerobic respiration.
Fructose, on the other hand, has a more complicated pathway.
When it reaches the liver and has processed some glucose from the bloodstream, insulin tells it to enter other cells in order to react with them.
In these reactions, fats and proteins are broken down into pieces that create acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA), which then creates more ATP through another set of reactions known as keto-dehydrogenase shunt glycolysis.
The way your body digests the sugar, fructose or glucose, determines whether you will have an increased level of ATP or not.
If you’re eating a lot of refined sugars like sucrose, lactose or high-fructose corn syrup every day and constantly being bombarded with food sources high in these ingredients such as soda, pastries and breads, then your body will not have an increased level of ATP because the large amounts of refined sugars break down into simpler forms of carbohydrates without much nutritional value.
While honey does the opposite.
No. 5:
Lowers cholesterol
Adding honey to your diet may also reduce cholesterol levels and, in turn, improve your heart health.
Not only does it not have any side effects that commonly come with cholesterol-lowering drugs, but it’s cheaper and more natural.
The Mayo Clinic states that one to two tablespoons of honey a day can reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol by 10%.
For those who suffer from diabetes, a tablespoon of honey before bed reduces blood sugar spikes.
If you’re looking for a healthier alternative that won’t have any negative side effects on your body and won’t cost you an arm and a leg at the pharmacy, honey may be an ideal choice.
The next time you visit your local market or grocery store, pick up some honey and try it out for yourself.
It only takes a tablespoon every day for positive health benefits!
No. 6:
It decreases symptoms of asthma and allergies.
According to a study conducted by Greek researchers and published in the Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology, honey may be an effective treatment for asthma.
Adults with mild symptoms of asthma and allergies were given either 10 grams of raw honey or 10 grams of water every day for three months.
They found that those who took the honey had fewer symptoms than those who only took water.
But how does it work?
It’s not exactly clear why honey helps relieve some symptoms of asthma and allergies, but one theory suggests that pollen grains in the honey bind to mast cells—which release histamine when stimulated—and prevent them from releasing more inflammatory chemicals.
Another theory says that sugar (or fructose) molecules bind with receptors on immune cells called T-lymphocytes, which suppress immunity and decrease inflammation.
No. 7:
It helps fight infections and diseases.
This one’s no surprise.
Beekeepers and doctors alike have touted honey as a natural healer for centuries.
But there’s more than anecdotal evidence that the gooey stuff works wonders on your health: Recent studies show that eating honey or applying it to the skin can reduce pain, improve sleep and even help fight infections and diseases like pneumonia.
A study in 2017 found that infants with coughs who were given a teaspoon of honey had fewer episodes of coughing compared to those who were given just a placebo.
In another experiment, scientists found that people who ate two tablespoons of honey daily had less plaque in their arteries after three months.
It also contains antioxidants called phenolics, which are capable of killing bacteria such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).
Eating local honey helps prevent allergic reactions by strengthening the immune system.
No. 8:
It helps in losing weight.
Although a pound of honey has nearly 500 calories, it’s rich in fat-burning enzymes and it makes you feel full because it contains half the calories of other sweeteners like sugar.
If you eat honey every day as part of a healthy diet and exercise plan, you can lower your risk of obesity.
The unprocessed sugars found in honey break down more slowly than processed sugars do, which keeps blood sugar levels steady for hours after eating something sweet.
Eating honey before bed also suppresses nighttime cravings for carbohydrates, which helps keep your weight under control.
And finally, if you’re someone who likes to use honey instead of white or brown sugar when baking or cooking, then eating honey will help you stick to a lower-carbohydrate diet without feeling deprived.
No. 9:
It can help prevent diabetes.
Dr. Mehmet Oz often refers to honey as a miracle food because it’s loaded with minerals and nutrients that are crucial for your health.
Not only can honey help prevent diabetes, it may also slow or reverse the progression of type 2 diabetes.
Studies show eating two tablespoons of honey each day for 12 weeks reduces fasting blood sugar levels by 10%.
That number doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider the high prevalence of diabetes in America, those few percentage points could make a big difference in reducing cases of diabetes.
One study found that even people who have advanced diabetic symptoms have been able to manage their blood sugar levels with honey.
No. 10:
Anti-aging properties
The antioxidant properties of honey have been shown to help slow the oxidation process that leads to wrinkles and aging.
Recent studies have found that the polyphenols in honey have increased collagen production and reduced sun-induced skin aging.
When you’re feeding your skin with ingredients that are potent antioxidants as well as high in vitamin C, like manuka honey, this produces healthier and younger looking skin.
I know I’ve experienced an increase in my own skin’s elasticity since using it for about a month now!
No. 11:
A lower risk of cancer
Cancer cells have been shown to grow more slowly when exposed to honey than when exposed to other sugars like glucose or fructose.
The reason why is still unclear, but some studies say it could be because enzymes found in raw honey fight off cellular damage caused by free radicals.
Other research points to a substance called methylglyoxal that has anti-cancer properties and is found in high concentrations in honey.
In fact, the healing properties of honey are so great that cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy are encouraged to eat up to four tablespoons of raw honey each day before and after treatment sessions to help prevent the side effects of these harsh drugs on their immune system.
In conclusion,
No matter how you might feel about honey’s health benefits, you should know that taking it every day may have some not-so-great effects on your body.
Yes, honey can provide a great source of calcium and vitamins B6 and C.
But too much of anything will put your system out of whack—especially if you’re eating too much sugar in the form of honey on top of other sweets.
Consuming too much honey also messes with your blood sugar levels and interferes with the absorption of nutrients from other foods.
That’s because when the glucose in the honey enters your bloodstream, it triggers an insulin response.
Insulin is necessary for proper metabolism but can lead to problems like hypoglycemia or diabetes if it’s overproduced by your pancreas.
So take honey responsibly and watch it do wonders for you (just don’t eat it by the spoonful).
