What Happens In Your Body If You Eat Honey Every Day?

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Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again, now streaming only on Disney+. Quite possibly the greatest healing food today that is one of the most underutilized is honey. Did you know that honey never spoils? Archaeologists discovered 3,000-year-old pots of honey in Egyptian tombs that were still edible due to its unique properties that prevent spoilage.

And also, when we use that on our body, it can help with anti-aging and healing in a powerful way. Now, the benefits of honey and bee products go well beyond its sweet flavor. These natural substances The polyphenols and flavonoids found in honey are some of the most powerful healing compounds on planet Earth.

And today I'll be talking about how honey is medicine and how it can help fight infections, actually balance blood sugar, ease allergies, coughs, reduce pain, and support longevity, and in some cases, even fight cancer. We'll also cover how other bee products like propolis, royal jelly, and bee pollen, and something called MGO, Have been used for thousands of years for their medicinal properties.

Today, you're going to learn everything you'd ever need to know about the healing powers of honey. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. This episode is brought to you by Manukora Honey. Go to manukora.com/Axe and use the code AXE at checkout for a special discount for my listeners only. Okay.

Honey was once considered liquid gold, and it's used not only as a food, but also throughout history, we see it being used as a sacred form of medicine and even currency in certain cultures. We know from reading historical texts that for over 5,000 years, humans have actually revered bees and honey for their nutritional, medicinal, and even symbolic value.

In ancient Egypt, honey was so prized that pharaohs were called bee kings and temples were referred to as mansions of bees. In fact, the Egyptians used honey in over 500 medical prescriptions, including wound dressing, and embalming. Honey is also mentioned more than 60 times in the Bible. We know in Proverbs 24:13, it says, eat honey, my son, for it is good.

Honey from the comb is sweet to your taste. And these are the words of Solomon, who's called sometimes the wisest man to ever live. Exodus 3:8 says the Promised Land is described as a land flowing with milk and honey. And then in Ezekiel 27:17, mentions honey as a valuable trade item in ancient markets. So what exactly is honey and why should you make it a regular part of your health routine?

Well, here's what it is. Honey is a thick golden substance made by bees from flower nectar. It's composed of more than 180 different compounds including natural sugars, enzymes, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, polyphenols, and pollen. And raw honey is a natural antibacterial, anti-inflammatory superfood. It also has antiviral, antifungal, anti-cancer, and anti-diabetic properties.

It's basically an immune booster, gut healer, and beauty remedy all wrapped into one amazing superfood. So what makes honey so special? Well, one, raw unpasteurized honey contains antioxidants, especially powerful phenolic compounds. Darker honey has more antioxidants than lighter honeys. It has enzymes.

Enzymes like amylase and glucose oxidase, has organic acids, bee-derived compounds we've talked about like propolis, royal jelly, and bee pollen, has hydrogen peroxide, and over 200 bioactive substances. You know, one of the greatest indicators of honey being so incredibly powerful has to do with actually the lifespan and the health of beekeepers. You know, beekeepers live longer.

In fact, did you know that beekeepers, when they looked at what professions lived the longest, Beekeepers were number one. You know, there is a medical journal that published this. It was in the Springer Journal. And they said, we found that the telomere length of male beekeepers was significantly longer, suggesting that beekeepers may have longer lives compared to non-beekeepers.

And this was looking at telomere length, which is one of the greatest indicators of longevity in terms of medical tests. There are several prominent beekeepers who have lived well into their 80s, 90s, and become centenarians. I think part of this has to do with when you look at Apirus and these beekeepers, their diet consists of honey.

Also, I've read some studies about sort of the noise that bees give off and just being in nature as beekeepers is also tremendously beneficial for their health. Now, I want to walk you through some different types of honey. There are actually more than 300 types of honey recognized today with varieties relating to the different kinds of nectar collected by the bees.

And sadly, as much as 70% of store-bought honey today is fake. It's filtered to remove beneficial pollen, pasteurized, and diluted. In fact, one study out of Texas A&M University found that 76% of store-bought honey is basically filtered sugar. And the reality is fake honey is harmful for the honey industry because it drives prices down and makes it hard for real raw honey to compete.

And the other thing is it's bad for people. If you're doing not real honey, if you're doing this fake honey, you're not getting all of the enzymes and the hydrogen peroxide and the other healing compounds. And it's going to affect your body more like conventional sugar would.

For the greatest benefits, you really want to look for raw, local, or a Manuka-based honey that is lab-tested whenever possible. And again, there are different types of honey depending upon the benefits you want to do. The honey I consume the most The most is raw local honey from my local farmer's market, along with Manuka honey. Those are the honeys that I use the most frequently.

I like Manuka honey because it's really high in this compound called MGO, which has those highest hydrogen peroxide-like benefits. So it is the most antibacterial. It's the best for gut health. It's the best for clearing out Candida. That's why I like Manuka honey. And then I like the local honey because it's probably the best overall For allergies. The first, let me talk about raw honey.

You want to do raw honey only because it's unfiltered and unheated, and so it's going to maintain the enzymes and the healing compounds. As I mentioned with local honey, this is where it's so beneficial for allergies and for bolstering and strengthening up your immune system.

Where local honey is going to strengthen your immune system in the way of helping act as a prebiotic and good microbial growth, now Manuka honey—.

Okay.

Is sourced from the Manuka bush in New Zealand. Now, the Manuka bush is part of the plant family along with eucalyptus and tea tree. So maybe you've heard of essential oils and using eucalyptus for your lung health or tea tree oil for its antifungal, antimold, antibacterial properties. Well, the Manuka bush is that same family and has a lot of those similar compounds.

So when the bees are getting nectar from the Manuka bush, again, similar to a eucalyptus bush or a tea tree, bush. It has all of these powerful compounds. And one of these compounds that you're going to find in Manuka honey specifically is called methylglyoxal. Okay? And methylglyoxal is a potent antibacterial compound. This is excellent for clearing Candida out of the gut and healing your gut.

It's great for SIBO. It has anti-H. pylori properties. It's good for skin repair and acne specifically, and immune resilience. You know, a lot of my patients who have had leaky gut, SIBO, IBS, I will have them do primarily just Manuka honey as their only sweetener if they're going to use a sweetener. And there are loads of benefits there. I've had patients— I'll actually share a quick story here.

My daughter had cradle cap, and I was trying some different things on it, aloe, a number of other things. Finally, I said, okay, I'm going to try Manuka honey on here. In 3 days, completely gone. It was absolutely amazing.

One of the unique properties about honey in general and why it lasts 3,000 years is it has the ability to maintain its exact moisture level, the perfect moisture level for healing. And so, you know, I had surgery years ago on my ankle. I tore off something called my tendon in my ankle, and I had to have surgery. It was a real minor surgery, but they went in and had to cut open my ankle.

And I did this blend of Manuka honey, calendula, and certain essential oils like helichrysum. And there's really almost no remains of scarring. And one of the reasons why it's so good for scarring is is that it keeps the exact perfect moisture level to promote healing. And if the skin gets too dry, it doesn't heal as well. If it stays too wet, it takes longer to heal.

Manuka keeps it that perfect, and all honey keeps it that perfect healing moisture level, which is why it's so beneficial. So again, Manuka honey has this MGO, which is very similar to like a natural and yet gentle on the body type of like similar to hydrogen peroxide and this methylglyoxal for its healing benefits. So loads and loads of benefits.

You know, there's a quote out of a medical journal, and this is the Food of Biosciences, and it says this: Manuka honey represents an alternative remedy for different ailments to include bacterial, fungal, parasitic, and viral infections. So, so this journal says it's one of the single best things you could ever use to fight any type of infection.

When buying manuka honey, you want to look for high MGO-rated manuka honey. Again, one of the ones I've used many times over the years, because I always I always get this question, what brand do I recommend? Listen, there are several good brands out there. The one that I personally use though right now and trust and really like is Manukora.

This is one that, again, we've been using at our home frequently. I've prescribed it and recommended it to people for a number of health ailments. And so Manukora, if you want to get a great one, that is a great one to go out and get. Okay, I want to walk you through now 8 health benefits of honey. Number 1 is wound healing. And burn healing.

Honey is a natural antimicrobial, as we talked about, so it will keep an area from getting infected, but it also promotes tissue regeneration by keeping the moisture levels perfect, giving it antioxidants and other compounds to support healing.

The other thing is it's got a high level of viscosity, which helps create a protective barrier around the area, which is another reason why it keeps areas from getting infected. There are clinical trials that show that honey significantly speeds healing time. And reduces scarring in burns, surgical wounds, and in ulcers.

So that's also good if somebody has ulcerative colitis or if somebody has stomach ulcers. So if you have digestive pain, honey is the best natural sweetener. One example of a specific study was in 2022. This was a meta-analysis, so really large-scale, multiple studies done in trauma care, and they found that honey was more effective than silver.

Which is currently considered the gold standard in topical burn treatments in treating partial thickness burns. In fact, when I had a when I have a burn, I put a mixture together, and it is a mixture of honey, silver, silver gel, and lavender essential oil. Okay, those three together. If you ever have a burn, that is the perfect thing to put on there.

If you or if you only have one thing, just use honey. It's the best single of all three of those. But honey and lavender oil together. Are the perfect thing to help somebody heal from a burn. And as I mentioned, silver is typically the gold standard, the silver gel when it comes to our silver creams, when it comes to treating burns and scrapes and any sort of skin injury.

You know, like I've got girls that fall all the time. In fact, sometimes it blows my mind. My almost 2-year-old now, I mean, she falls 20 times a day and constantly scrapes the same area over and over again. And when she has those now, we We do honey on there, okay? Or we do our little mixture of honey and some essential oils and sometimes silver together.

But I will tell you that when honey and silver-based creams go head-to-head, honey continually wins. Here's an example. There was a study done on 46 patients. Honey-treated wounds healed on an average of 10.8 days compared to 15.3 days with just film dressings, okay? So overall, when we look at these comparisons, Honey's the best, silver's the next best.

Again, I haven't seen one on essential oils alone, but again, lavender and helichrysum and some of those oils are also tremendously good. And I think mixing them together is the most beneficial. The number 2 benefit of honey is allergy relief. Local raw honey introduces small doses of regional pollen, helping reduce seasonal allergy symptoms.

Think about it like this, it's like a natural vaccine or natural immunization. Your body gets a little bit more pollen, a little bit more pollen, a little bit more of these sort of local microbes, and your body builds up more and more of a tolerance and an immunity to those things that are in your local environment.

There is a study published in the Journal of Frontiers in Pharmacology, and they found that honey can reduce seasonal allergy symptoms when consumed in amounts of about 1 tablespoon per day for 4 to 8 weeks. I would say what I have most people do though is about a teaspoon or a heaping teaspoon throughout the entire year. I think that's the best way. Way to naturally build up your immunity.

There's another study published on allergy elimination using honey. This is a randomized study on 40 people with allergies and they explored the effects of ingesting high doses of raw honey alongside loratadine. This is a common antihistamine in patients with moderate to severe persistent allergies.

Patients who took honey daily experienced greater and more sustained symptom relief than the control group. Improvements were seen in all 4 groups. However, the honey group had the greatest improvement of symptoms even after stopping the medication. You know what I love to do for allergies is pair raw local honey with propolis, another honey compound, if you want to see the biggest benefits.

And in addition to that, I think herbs like quercetin, nettles, bromelain, a lot of these natural histamines, vitamin C, just boosting your immune system over time is helpful. And then spending more time outside. All of these can support getting rid of allergies naturally.

Now, if you have really severe allergies, I like doing a combination of eating raw local honey, a teaspoon every single day, and doing something called SLIT therapy. You can do an immune test to see what environmental allergens you're allergic to and do these drops of what you're actually allergic to every day.

And in anywhere from 3 months to maximum 2 years, it can reverse allergies for a lot of people. Again, you can look up SLIT therapy. I have a friend of mine who's a holistic doctor who's allergic to cats, reversed his allergy to cats. I've had people allergic to dairy, people allergic to pollen, grass, trees, you name it, and they've been able to do it via this natural form of immunization.

But honey can be a great part of that therapy. Number 3 benefit of honey is immune boosting. Honey is rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, including polyphenols. These help regulate the immune system.

Also, many honeys— of course, Manuka is higher, but all honey contains hydrogen peroxide and bee-derived compounds, especially propolis, which studies have shown have antimicrobial effects.

And as I mentioned, Manuka honey is considered one of the most powerful for fighting pathogens such as Streptococcus, Staph, E. coli, H. pylori, So if you have any type of infection— viral, bacterial, parasitic— Manuka honey is the way to go for those specific conditions. But I would also say if you want to boost your immune system, do propolis.

Propolis is that compound in honey with the greatest benefits. You could take a propolis supplement and a Manuka supplement, and that's a really powerful combo. Eat Manuka honey, 1 full teaspoon to a tablespoon a day, and you could do propolis as a supplement, and that's a great 1-2 punch. Boosting and strengthening your immune system. It's even great for autoimmune disease as well.

Lots of benefits there. Number 4, honey offers digestive support. It soothes the gut lining, it helps balance bacteria, and may suppress H. pylori. Now, this is the main bacteria that starts to overgrow, especially in SIBO. Manuka honey in particular is my favorite for SIBO. Okay, if you're looking for a protocol for SIBO— now, with SIBO, here's a few other tips. Eat smaller meals.

Do not eat big meals. If you typically eat 3 meals a day and you still wanna get enough calories, make it 4 and never eat more than you're 70% full, okay? I think white rice is really good with SIBO, lean meat, steamed vegetables, but not overeating, drinking ginger herbal tea. I really love ginger herbal tea and then using a little bit of Manuka honey as your sweetener.

And then soil-based probiotics, digestive enzymes. This is what's really going to move the needle with SIBO. But as a sweetener, Manuka honey, by far the best. Number 5 big benefit of honey is blood sugar regulation. Now, this surprises most people, but unlike processed sugar, honey has a much lower glycemic index.

It has been shown to reduce fasting glucose and improve even your lipid profiles in some people with type 2 diabetes. Diabetes, it's very anti-inflammatory. Additionally, honey can lower something called homocysteine and C-reactive protein in normal and hyperlipidemic patients.

And these effects are likely due to honey's antioxidant properties, which may reduce oxidative stress on the body, which of course helps heal the heart, lower cholesterol levels, and lower inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein, which is probably the biggest indicator Especially high sensitivity C-reactive protein is sort of test for inflammation in your body, even cellular inflammation, and honey helps with it.

Now, I want to go back to a Bible verse that's talked about in Proverbs, and here's what Solomon says. Eat honey, not too much, lest it make you sick. So here's the thing to know about honey. Every other food you eat today should have no added sugar.

Right.

You should be eating lots of organic meat, lots of fruit, lots of vegetables, maybe a little bit of whole grains like rice, sweet potatoes, some healthy fats, avocados, extra virgin olive oil, coconut, walnuts. That should be the basis of your diet. But if you're going to add a sweetener in, honey is the best. A teaspoon up to a tablespoon.

Most people do fine, especially if you're doing it around when you're moving, walking, working out. But you don't want to do too much. If you're doing 2, 3, 4 big servings every single day, Of honey, it's going to be too much for most people.

Now, listen, for athletes, if you're a triathlete or a professional athlete or you work out a lot, you could do honey around your workouts and actually do quite a bit. Okay? But if you're very inactive, just use a little bit, a teaspoon at a time, 2 teaspoons at a time max, if you're going to use honey, and it will still be medicine.

But remember this old saying, the dose determines the medicine or the poison.

Yeah.

Right? Honey, it's medicine. 1 Teaspoon, 2 teaspoons. If you're very active, you can do a little bit more than that. But if you're not, you don't want to do more than that 1 to 2 teaspoons, because if you do a lot more, it becomes poison, like anything, too much of anything. Number 6, honey has antiviral and antibacterial properties.

In lab studies, Manuka honey is effective in helping kill dangerous pathogens like MRSA, E. coli, and even has antiviral properties. And Manuka's MGO compound enhances this effect. MGO, as I mentioned earlier, methylglyoxal, disrupts cellular function of harmful microbes, making it harder for bacteria to spread and grow, which is part of the reason it works.

Also, you know, a lot of people— so often today, people will go and take these antibiotics and then it kills off the good bacteria in their gut. It weakens their immune system long-term. When you use honey-based products, especially Manuka honey and propolis, those are so powerful. If you feel like you have a sore throat coming on, the only sweetener you should use at all is Manuka honey.

You should also take high doses of propolis 3 times a day. You can also do lots of echinacea. You can do lots of thyme, drink that as an herbal tea. Drink mostly Chicken vegetable soup, get sunshine, all of those things. But Manuka honey can be part of that protocol for preventing strep from coming on to keep you from getting sicker. But those are some things you should think about.

Number 7 big benefit of honey is skin health and acne. Topical honey reduces inflammation, promotes healing, and hydrates the skin. Honey masks can help with acne, eczema, and wound healing. One medical journal said this: First, honey prevents a prolonged inflammatory response by suppressing the production and propagation of inflammatory cells at the wound site.

Second, it stimulates the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, allowing normal healing to occur and stimulating the proliferation of epithelial cells. So it actually both kills bad bacteria, and helps nourish the area with the right level of moisture to help tissue regeneration and healing.

So Manuka, if you know anyone with acne scarring, like one of the things I have my patients do is I will actually have them take Manuka honey and do a face mask with that at night and rinse it off. Or oftentimes if they have too much heat as well, I love doing a blend of Manuka honey with aloe vera gel. Okay. That combination, and sometimes you can add silver to it.

You could even add a little bit of essential oils like lavender, or if the acne is really severe, a little bit of tea tree oil mixed in there. But it's really powerful using honey and aloe together and silver as sort of that anti-acne. And here's the other big thing. It's the best thing to do on the skin topically because it also prevents scarring the most and helps heal scarring the most.

So it's a great natural remedy. Now, obviously acne, there's a lot of things going internally as well. Stress will make it worse, excess estrogen in young girls. So having those girls eat, and boys eat, more steamed cruciferous vegetables, that's going to help detoxify the body.

So more vegetables, more lean meat that's organic, more omega-3 fatty acids like fish oil, high doses of probiotics, more antioxidants from berries and pomegranates. That's really going to help clear acne too, is the diet of the kids, keeping the stress moderate as well.

Okay.

But, but, but topically, nothing is better than Manuka honey. As a doctor and a dad, I'm always looking for simple, natural habits to keep my family healthy. And one of my favorites is Manukora Manuka honey. And it's not just any honey. This is the real deal. It's raw, it's never processed, and the jar I use has an MGO rating of 850+, the highest I've ever seen.

That means it's packed with unique compounds, antioxidants, and prebiotics that help support the gut, the immune system, and even give you a boost of natural energy. Every single batch is third-party tested, certified glyphosate-free. Now you can scan the QR code on the jar and see exactly which beekeeper in New Zealand it came from. As a doctor, I absolutely love this transparency.

And the taste, it's thick, it's creamy, it's almost caramel-like. My kids eat it straight off the spoon, and I'll stir it into tea. We add it to smoothies. I take it around my workouts for energy or just enjoy it as a little afternoon reset. So if you're looking for a delicious, nourishing way to support your health and your family's health, this is one of my favorite go-tos.

And honestly, it feels a little like a ritual of self-care. Go to manukora.com. Go to manukora.com/Axe to get 31% off plus $25 worth of free gifts. You'll get a jar of their high-potency MGO 850+ Manuka honey, 5 honey sticks, a wooden spoon, and a guidebook on how to use it. Go to manukora.com/Axe to get 31% off plus free gifts with your Manukora starter kit today.

Number 8 health benefit of honey is around energy and brain health. You know, doing a spoonful of honey around your workouts is the perfect fuel. I remember I used to I used to do triathlons many years ago, and I would, as my natural gel pack, I would do honey, local honey with some sea salt, and that was like my natural gel pack. I would actually take this amino acid powder too.

So amino acids, honey, a little bit of salt, and that's what I would do. And then I would do like coconut or watermelon water with a bunch of sea salt in there as well, and that's what I would use for hydration. And you can do the very, very same thing.

So it's amazing for energy, can be great as part of a hydration beverage, great for brain Sleep and brain health as well, it's actually rich in tryptophan precursors, so may support more melatonin production when you're looking at some of the benefits of honey.

And findings suggest that honey with its unique composition and soothing effects offers a promising avenue for enhancing sleep patterns without relying on pharmaceutical drugs. So it can be good for sleep as well. And again, now I do want to throw this out there.

If you're just taking loads and loads of honey, and then also you're doing maple syrup and you're doing coconut sugar and cane sugar, and you're just adding it to more of the sugar load, it's not going to be quite as beneficial. It's the best of all of those by far.

What you want to do is take all the other sweeteners in your diet, get rid of them, and use some of those lower-calorie natural sweeteners like monk fruit, maybe a little bit of stevia here and there, but have honey be your dominant sweetener.

When I am making pancakes at our house, like I made this past weekend for, or I guess this past Sunday for my daughters, we'll take this discard of sourdough that my wife has. So we'll take some of the sourdough starter, we'll use some sort of flour. It just depends on what we're doing, but we'll do some sort of whole flour from oats typically, or rice or something like that.

And we'll do pasture-raised eggs. We use coconut oil, but the sweetener I am using when I'm making my pancakes is honey. You know, there was a review done on 48 different trials of honey, and this was a review in the journal Nutrients, and it included 3,600 people, including those people that had cancer, coughs, and insulin resistance.

And they found that honey lowered triglycerides, lowered LDL cholesterol, lowered total cholesterol, all while raising HDL cholesterol. In this same study on over 3,000 people, everyone who did it saw an improvement in their insulin secretion and sensitivity.

It does this by stimulating nitric oxide production, reducing prostaglandins that inhibit insulin, and increasing antioxidant enzymatic activity.

It also can improve your antioxidant status in your body, helping you to age more slowly, and also provide support for cancer patients with leukemia head and neck cancer, according to the study, including reducing mucus levels, which tend to happen, and promote weight loss and immune function.

Also, it's been shown in this same study to reduce cough in cold time, improve sleep quality, accelerate the healing of diabetes ulcers and wounds, also improved insulin sensitivity. Again, this was a trial where they took 48 different studies on honey. And those were all of the benefits they found. Absolutely incredible.

Now, I want to dive into a few of these individual products that are not honey, but that are products of bees. Now, you will find microdoses of many of these things in honey, but oftentimes we want to do much higher levels of these to use as a form of medicine. And the first one is bee pollen. This is a nutrient-dense mixture of flower pollen, enzymes, vitamins, and antioxidants collected by bees.

It can help improve energy, support liver detoxification and immunity. This is one of the best things to take for seasonal allergies. If you have major seasonal allergies, you want to do 1 teaspoon a day of local honey and 1 tablespoon a day of local bee pollen. Again, local. Bee pollen was also shown to increase antioxidant capacity, reduce inflammation in athletes.

So if you're an athlete and you need things for recovery, honey-based products, bee-based products, bee pollen, honey are great. Next one up here is royal jelly. This is a milky secretion fed to the queen bee. Do you know queen bees live approximately 40 times longer than other bees? And part of it is, is royal jelly is the main part of their diet.

Royal jelly is high in B vitamins, high in peptides and unique fatty acids. In fact, there are unique peptides found in royal jelly that in Chinese medicine are known to be yin tonics. This would be especially good for women that are in perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause. It supports estrogen, it supports progesterone.

Again, think about the queen bee, the importance of fertility, that's supporting fertility. And so again, loads and loads of benefits. And also, and it's very yin-building, means it's very hydrating and moistening to your body, it's hormone balancing. So if you are in perimenopause, menopause, post, royal jelly is one of the absolute top supplements you could take for female longevity.

And then there is an ancient therapy called apitherapy or bee venom therapy. Now, bee venom is a natural substance produced by bees that contains beneficial compounds like melittin and apimin. And I remember back years ago, I bought a house. Chelsea and I lived part-time in Puerto Rico for a while, and the person we bought the home was into extreme sports.

And so, he did car racing, skydiving, all kinds of things. He was always injuring himself. And he had this container where— with bees. And anytime he had an injury, he would go and take the bee and he would go and sting himself in the area. And it's amazing to look at the studies around this. It's like the first regenerative medicine therapy.

If you've heard of PRP or prolotherapy or stem cell therapy or Prolozone, This is where you go and take compounds from your blood or bone marrow or other compounds, and you start to— you try and recreate the healing process. Because what happens oftentimes when we get injuries, especially as we age, is our body goes through a healing process.

But rather than getting the tissue back to 100% of what it was, it might only get it back to 50% of what it was.

So from there on out, if you overdo it on an area, you've got joint pain, discomfort, What a lot of these therapies try to do, including bee venom therapy or PRP, as an example, you go and you sort of reinjure the area, but at the same time, you're introducing compounds that help foster more complete healing of that injured area. That's what's happening with these— with regenerative medicine.

But bee venom therapy is the oldest form of regenerative medicine in actually doing this, and it does have these compounds. That supports healing those areas. Now, this can be used as injections. Actually, there's creams for this as well that have bee venom in them that you can use for arthritis, MS, chronic pain issues. So it's been used for quite a long time for healing and its benefits.

Recent studies have found that bee venom, particularly its main compound called melittin, show powerful anti-cancer effects. It's been shown to kill cancer cells in the breast. Breast, lung, liver, pancreas, colon, cervix, brain, and skin cancers by triggering apoptosis, which is known as programming cancer cells for death by disrupting the mitochondria of cancer cells.

Bee venom also slows tumor growth by blocking the cell cycle and reducing metastasis. Importantly, at the right doses, it damages cancer cells much more than healthy cells. So it's amazing what we're seeing, this research around cancer and the therapies in the future. And then bee venom has also been shown to be effective against arthritis and joint pain.

Recent studies of bee and wasp venom show measurable anti-arthritic effects in labs and animal models. Bee venom has been found to reduce joint pain, swelling, and inflammation, also protect bone and cartilage from damage, and sharply lower activity pathways known to drive arthritis. Now, this last bee-based product is one of my absolute favorites.

It's something I continually recommend to patients. I use myself. I have my daughter using it as well on a regular basis, and it is propolis. Now, propolis is a natural substance that honeybees make by mixing tree and plant resins with beeswax and their own enzymes. So think about also that there's a lot of resin out there that we benefit from.

In fact, did you know that Frankincense and myrrh that are talked about in the Bible that we make essential oils out of today, that comes from the resin of those trees. So what bees are doing is they're taking the resin like a frankincense, okay, that resin, and then they are using that to make this propolis compound.

So we know frankincense and myrrh are major— have major benefits for the immune system. And a lot of this resin, it's like the the lifeblood of the tree. It's the blood of the tree, the resin that seeps out. And what bees do is they use it inside the hive as a kind of bee glue to seal cracks, protect against bacteria, viruses, funguses, and to keep the hive sterile.

Now, because it's rich in so many amazing compounds as well, like phenolic acids and other bioactive compounds, propolis has been used as medicine for a really long time. And today we're seeing loads of studies coming out on propolis.

In fact, there was a review done that looked at over 63 studies on propolis and they found some of the main benefits include its benefits to reduce oxidative stress, right? So act as an antioxidant and be highly anti-inflammatory and also be an immune modulator. Okay? So this is why in certain cases when I have patients with autoimmune disease, I'll recommend propolis.

I always recommend if somebody has a cold or flu, propolis is a powerful immune booster, has anti-cancer properties as well. So propolis should be taken to boost the immune system. Or to help balance out the immune system. There are other herbs that have some of these properties like astragalus. It's more of an immune balancer in a similar way propolis is.

So I love using those in particular for things like autoimmune disease or immune overactivity or for things like allergies. Loads and loads of benefits there. All right, let me talk to you about how to use honey. Number 1, when you are buying honey, choose raw and local honey. Or Manuka honey. I use both on a regular basis.

I mentioned before I use Manukora, but you want to get a good quality Manuka honey brand and have some good raw local honey on brand at home. And I just go to my local farmer's market for my raw local honey. Also, of course, avoid the commercially pasteurized honeys that are out there that are ultra-filtered. Just stay away from those. It's— you might as well just eat sugar.

Also, I want to encourage you, take 1 to 2 teaspoons daily. You can do it with a little bit of herbal tea. You can do it by itself. You can do it around workouts. I did cream of rice earlier this week and I added a little bit of honey to that. You can add it to your meals in that way. Again, honey tea by itself, workouts, all those ways are great ways to use it. And you can use it topically.

Have it on hand if your child gets a scrape, if you get a scrape, if you get a burn. Manuka honey. Okay, regular honey on the area is great. It's also great for face masks, for fighting acne, loads of benefits there as well. And if you're baking and making food, rather than using cane sugar or even coconut sugar or any other sweetener, honey is the best.

It has the greatest health benefits of all of those by far. And finally, I want to thank Manukora Honey for sponsoring this episode and allowing me to share all of this There's important information on local honey, Manuka honey, royal jelly, bee pollen, propolis, bee venom, and so much more.

And if you want to check out their incredible products, you can go to manukora.com/Axe and use the code Axe, A-X-E, at checkout and you'll get a special discount on their Manuka honey. I want to say thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show.

Remember, each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level. Don't forget to subscribe. By the way, that's the number one thing you can do to support this channel is subscribe.

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So, so, um, make sure to follow that. And we've got so many great episodes coming up. I recently interviewed— I've interviewed Barbara O'Neill, Gary Breck, and we've got Mark Hyman coming up in the future, RFK Jr., a number of people. And if you're not subscribed, you might miss out. So make sure to subscribe. We think— thanks for the support.

Also, some of you guys have been flooding in leaving us reviews on, on, on Apple. Thanks so much for leaving those reviews on Apple and Spotify. So grateful for that. Thanks for sharing this. A lot of people don't know that honey is medicine, and it's the greatest sweetener out there. And so, I hope you've enjoyed this episode as well.

So, thanks so much for watching and listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.