The Sweet, Sweet Folly of the Internet

Have you ever heard someone say "Don't believe everything you find on the Internet"? The saying is not lost on Honey by any means.

In the early days of the Internet, it was easy to believe everything you read because, after all, why would anyone want to deceive you out here in cyberspace? With some education and several years of experience on the web, today's savvy surfers generally know what to avoid, although tricksters (aka slime bags) are aggressively trying to come up with more ingenious ways to ruin a truly great achievement in technology. Unfortunately, innocent ignorance is playing just as harmful a role by propagating erroneous and sometimes just downright false information about the health benefits of so many products, and Honey is no exception.

In my early days of beekeeping, I began to hear about the health benefits of Honey, and actively took to digging, researching, creating, and printing pages of information that I encouraged people to read. I professed (rightly so at times) the health benefits attributed to Honey, and jumped right on board the Healthy-hype-train not caring about my own looming derailment on the tracks ahead... until one day, while putting together an easy to read bullet list of truly unbelievable benefits that I wanted to hand out, I came to an abrupt halt as I typed out the fantastic claim that "Honey can cure cancer". Sadly, this is not true. I stared at the words for a moment and thought, wait a minute, if this were really true, why isn't Honey a part of every hospital's oncology department drug cabinet? Why are so many people still suffering or dying from Cancer when the cure is literally, right in my very own hands? And why am I selling Honey for just a few dollars a pound when I could be making thousands? (Ok, I just made that one up). Truth be told, I just couldn't believe this declaration I had just added to the list, I was stopped in my tracks.

In this day & age of medical miracles, some have chosen to withhold inoculations based on their beliefs, hoaxes, and blatantly false information... Can you imagine if someone stopped cancer treatments in lieu of this miracle cure called "Honey" because they read it on the Internet? So what is the truth about Honey, and why are there so many postings making the same misleading claims?

Have you ever played that game, where, say, a dozen or more people sit in a circle, and the first person whispers a phrase in the next persons ear, and that person whispers to the next, and the next, and on & on? It's a rare round where the last person actually is told anything resembling what the first person said. So it's easy to understand how an idea can be misinterpreted, misconstrued, or even intentionally altered to fit someone's agenda or misunderstanding. Welcome to the Internet!

And what is the real story? Step in the Mayo Clinic. As just one of the many sources of information that I navigate to, I became familiar with the phrase "No clinical trials...". In other words, yes, there are a lot of claims out there, and yes, studies have suggested that some very specific attributes in nature can inhibit and even reverse the growth of so many diseases in the world, but cure cancer? No, beyond the current treatments available today (none that I understand aren't without their own debilitating short or long term side effects), a real, sure fire cure just isn't available. As we all know, so many things available in medicinal form come from plants, herbs, minerals, and things provided by nature. The Chinese and Native American medicine man have been healing ailments for thousands of years; there are definitely things in their medicine cabinet that our modern day scientists have yet to discover.

Do I myself definitively know all of the benefits of Honey? No, I do not. And I do on occasion make assumptions about the benefits of Honey based on what I read, but I temper that with a reality check if the claim seems too good to be true... you know where that can end up. But numerous "Honey users" have stepped forward and personally attested to their own experiences with Honey, and there have been quite a few. Specifically those that swear by the allergy relief they experience with daily Honey use, "a tablespoon a day" by some accords.

I've read a lot about Honey, and I know there are real health benefits found in Honey, based on its complex array of antioxidants, enzymes, and other components that have proven health & wound healing properties. And research is being done on a very specific type of Honey that Bees collect from the Manuka flower in New Zealand that has demonstrated positive results in regards to fighting cancer. As suggested in the whisper-game I mentioned earlier, I suspect that this is where the misunderstanding lies; working on it though, does not mean it's done. Yes, they see promising results, but I think we are still far from a cure.

Someday, I believe in my heart that we will find a cure to all forms of cancer, and I would be tremendously proud as a beekeeper to know that my little bees might be doing that kind of amazing work. But I also believe that if in fact that cure comes out of Honey, it'll most likely require some specialized extraction process targeting perhaps just one, or a few components in a very specific kind of Honey.

I believe Honey is a health food, but before you rely on it to cure, heal, or alleviate any health concerns, check with your doctor, do your own research (thoroughly), and for goodness sake, don't believe everything you read on the Internet!

Thank you for your valuable time.