Comments | liveonearth: Honey is Good For You

liveonearth

Honey is Good For You

Sep 10, 2010 13:07

7/2010 report from Cardiff School of Health Sciences in Wales
n = 655 men
41 of those men reported eating honey regularly
followed them for 25 years, examined diets
honey eaters significantly less likely to die
‘hazard ratio for all-cause mortality’ dropped 56% even when adjusted for possible confounders
(95% confidence limits 0.23, 0.86; P<0.017 ( Read more... )

sugar, herpes, psoriasis, honey, diet, bees, food

Comments 5

innnteresting... machmed September 11 2010, 03:35:49 UTC

This is neat. Though I can't help but wonder if perhaps those who eat honey tend to just be healthier people in general?

For example, I eat mostly whole/natural foods, lots of vegetables, and very little processed sugar. In fact, I go out of my way to avoid white/processed sugar, and only use honey or fruit/fruit juice as a sweetener if I use sweeteners at all. Furthermore, many people I know with similar dietary habits also use honey as their primary sweetener. On the other hand, it seems those who don't care about what type of sugars they consume--or anything else they consume, for that matter--rarely use or even own any honey.

What are your thoughts?

Though I admittedly don't entirely understand what this means: "adjusted for a number of possible confounding factors..." Does this take into account what I'm suggesting here and therefore strengthen the hypothesis that honey, and honey alone, is responsible for the lower mortality rates observed in this study?

Re: innnteresting... liveonearth September 11 2010, 05:05:02 UTC

Yeah, I have pretty similar questions to your own. I suspect that the honey eaters had substantially different diets overall from the non-honey eaters. Maybe they are tea drinkers, or maybe they are careful about their sugars as you suggest, or maybe they are rural and grow their own food including keeping bees, or or or....who knows. I don't know what confounders they adjusted for but usually they consider stuff like pre-existing conditions such as hypertension and other cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, infectious and immune disorders, also for stuff like smoking and drinking, risky lifestyle or work, etc.

So odds are good that honey is not the only difference between the populations. It is also not certain if this result would be replicated in a larger study, so stand by, and keep being careful with your sugars. =-]

1bigguy_new September 13 2010, 13:53:27 UTC

With the study using men as the subject I'm wondering if the aromatase inhibiting properties of honey are driving the results?

liveonearth September 14 2010, 01:02:33 UTC

Hmmm, interesting theory. Inhibiting aromatase would lower estrogen and increase androgens which could potentially influence the development of prostate cancer.....but most men don't die of prostate cancer so I'm not sure how it would work. Do you have more to your theory?

1bigguy_new September 14 2010, 02:07:52 UTC

I'll try to find the research I was reading that linked the ratio between testosterone and E2 as being a key risk factor for men rather than the absolute levels of each. If high testosterone levels were the primary risk factor for prostate cancer, teenage boys would be at the greatest risk.

The research is really interesting but I'm dead tired and sure to mess up the details from memory.