Recently I’ve been fascinated with finding out more about the benefits of HONEY! I’ve always been a fan of the sweet stuff….as in….I really like it on my Mom’s English Muffin Bread. :-) But I had no idea it could be used in SO many OTHER ways, both internally and externally.
Honey has been used all over the world for thousands of years…the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians and even the Romans knew about the benefits of honey. So it’s not surprising there are so many beneficial uses out there!
Here are just SOME that I found:
- Better athletic performance: The glucose found in honey, plus other natural sugars, can provide an all-natural energy boost to athletes.
- Improved sleep and relaxation: Taking a spoonful of honey before bed can help you get restful sleep. The natural sugar in honey raises insulin slightly and allows tryptophan to enter our brains more easily.
- Fewer allergies: Consuming honey daily before allergy season can help your body grow accustomed to the pollen and immunize your body against it.
- Healed cuts and scrapes: Honey has antibacterial properties that prevent infection in minor abrasions. Simply dab a little honey onto your cut and cover with a bandage.
- Immune booster: Honey is chock full of polyphenols, a type of antioxidant that helps to protect cells from free radical damage. It can also contribute to heart health as well as protection against cancer.
And my FAVORITE benefit……….
- Skin moisturizer: Honey is a humectant, which means it attracts and retains moisture on hair and skin.
Even Cleopatra knew about the skincare benefits of honey! She used to bathe herself in milk and honey! And they say she was quite the “looker”! ;-) So if it’s good enough for Cleopatra…I guess it’s good enough for me to at least give it a try.
I decided to whip up a few simple beauty recipes using honey. I made a Honey Bath Soap in honor of Cleo (minus the milk)…and, since my hair is so dry lately, I mixed up a very simple Honey Hair Conditioner.
Honey Foaming Bath Soap
A silky luxurious bath that will moisturize your skin while you soak.
1 cup sweet almond oil (you may substitute a light olive oil)
1/2 cup organic honey
1/2 cup liquid hand soap
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Add all the ingredients to a clean plastic bottle with a squeeze top and shake gently until completely incorporated. Be sure to shake again before using. Squeeze desired amount under running water into a bathtub. Step in and enjoy!
I was initially worried about feeling “sticky” with honey in my bathwater…but you don’t experience anything like that! This was a real treat to soak in! My skin definitely felt nice and soft afterwards. :-)
Honey Hair Conditioner
Add a beautiful shine to your hair.
Mix 1/2 cup honey with
1/4 cup olive oil. (Use 2 tablespoons of oil if you have normal to oily hair.)
Using a small amount at a time, work mixture through hair until it is evenly coated. Cover hair with a shower cap; leave on 30 minutes.
Remove shower cap; shampoo well and rinse. Dry and style as usual.
I can’t believe I’ve never tried this before! It was wonderful! Again, I couldn’t believe my hair wouldn’t feel “sticky” after putting honey in it…but it didn’t at all! Just felt smoother and looked shinier than it has in a LONG time!
These are only two of the DOZENS of beauty recipes I found online. I can’t wait to make more! Two MORE I will definitely be trying are these:
Soothing Skin Clarifier
(for minor acne flare-ups)
Mix 1/2 cup warm water with 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Using a cotton ball, apply directly to blemish. Maintain pressure with cotton ball for several minutes, to soften blemish.
Using a cotton swab, dab honey on blemish; leave on 10 minutes. Rinse and pat dry.
Honey Beauty Mask
This moisturizing mask draws out toxins and impurities to rejuvenate skin.
2 tbsp raw honey
1 tbsp French green clay or rose clay
2 drops lavender or rose otto essential oil (optional)
Water to thin as needed
Wash face and leave slightly damp. Apply mask all over face, avoiding the eye area. Leave on for 15 minutes. Rinse off with warm water. Gently pat dry.
And….if you’re not feeling like making your own beauty products….look for honey in store-bought products or simply add a squeeze of honey to your moisturizer, shampoo or soap at home. Love this idea!
Do you “heart” HONEY??
Just keep in mind that processing honey destroys its enzymes, polyphenols and antibacterial properties. If you are using honey for these reasons be sure to use only raw, unpasterized honey. For allergies try to find LOCAL honey. (The bees will have collected the pollen of the plants that bloom in the area where you live.) Your local farmer’s market is probably your best source. For beauty products any honey will work. I would suggest avoiding the imported honey, especially from China, for ANY purpose. They allow the use of many agriculture chemicals that are on the pollen and remain in the honey even after processing!
Actually, the idea that local honey helps with allergies is a FALSE claim, and I wish it would stop being spread. This is a widespread idea that is not scientifically accurate. All plants produce either large, heavy pollen granules (created specifically to be spread by insects) or small, lightweight pollen granules (created specifically to be spread by wind/air). Bees collect the heavy pollen – the type that settles in the middle of flowers. Seasonal pollen allergies are almost always to the lightweight, airborne pollen produced by completely different plants. In addition, most people that have seasonal allergies have some allergy to trees, grass, and/or mold – and those have nothing to do with bees or honey. The honey will soothe a sore throat from allergies, and provide some vitamins/minerals – but that’s about as far as this claim can be taken.
Katy, that’s a great point, I had never heard those comments about the different pollens before, but now that I read this it makes perfect sense. I am suspicious of any claims to only use unpasteurized products. I am a scientist in a hospital laboratory, and having extensively studied microbiology, you are not doing any favors by using unpasteurized products. Anything destroyed by the flash process of pasteurization would be as likely destroyed by the acid in our digestive tract. Health benefits come from the vitamins and minerals, which can be absorbed readily from pasteurized honey. As for polyphenols, I don’t believe they are affected by pasteurization, but I haven’t read any specific research on polyphenols in this context.
I just want to put another idea out there for people to consider. I have always consumed store-bought honey and have suffered from major seasonal allergies. After I started using raw, local honey, my allergy symptoms have nearly DISAPPEARED. And many people make the same claim as I am making. Just some food for thought for anyone wanting to try this as an option. I take about a tablespoon a day, unheated (straight or on toast). Science may not be able to explain it, but since it works for me, I’m going to keep on doing what works.
Also, I only wash my face with raw, local honey, morning and night. I spread it on my dry face and leave it on for a few minutes before rinsing with warm water. At night, I also lightly exfoliate with a washcloth. This has cleared up both my t-zone acne AND the eczema on my cheeks. I’m a believer!!
Honey is like a lot of other things. What works for one persom it may not work for someone else.What does a persom have to loose if they try it.
If it’s such a false claim, why are they experimenting with giving minute amounts of peanut butter to people with peanut allergies?
I started eating pollen (not honey, as you can’t find raw honey around here) from local bee keepers, and it definitely helped with my allergies. You can’t placebo not sneezing constantly all day, every day.
Peanuts and pollen are wildly different types of allergies. You can’t compare the two.
And Tina, I’m also a medical lab scientist – small world! :-)
They don’t give peanut butter to people with peanut allergies. At least not anymore. My son has severe peanut allergies & was told to do that by one allergist when he was 2 & was told immediately to stop by another. Even the tiniest amount could cause anaphylaxis. You could eat it a million times & then have anaphylaxis.
As with honey, if have seasonal allergies honey won’t hurt to try, but my son’s allergic to every grass & tree in our area. No flowers, so it wouldn’t help. :-) If you have flower/ pollen allergies go for it.
I do not care if it is scientifically proven or not… I know MANY that it DOES work for. and there are MANY more benefits and for you to say “The honey will soothe a sore throat from allergies, and provide some vitamins/minerals – but that’s about as far as this claim can be taken.” is pure ignorance… and I could care less what you do for a living… I believe I will believe the RESULTS rather than your opinion.
Another hand up here to say LOCAL honey DOES work. My Boxer had terrible allergies (as evidenced by goopy eyes) and it completely cleared up when I started giving him a dollop of LOCAL honey every day during allergy season. Non-local didn’t help a bit.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure my Boxer’s symptoms weren’t psychosomatic ones that magically disappeared because I told him the honey would cure him. He’s smart, but not that smart. :)
Scientific or not it helps my allergies.
Raw honey may not have worked for you, but I can tell you it sure helped me and I personally know others it helped as well. I hope you speak from experience not just from knowledge of pollens. There is an enormous amount of information out there about the benefits of raw honey and the people it has helped. Being a health science major I appreciate the scientific method but also believe science doesn’t explain everything.
Well I have some news for you local honey does help with allergies I’m not sure where you recieved your information but you are incorrect. It has been proven that it does help with allergies because in the honey is some of the pollen from the plants. And also in the honey is propolis which is from different trees and or bushes. Now store bought honey everthing is filtered out under pressure so there is nothing left except I guess you could say a syrup if hasen’t been cut with corn syrup. I am a bee keeper and have been for years so the information you recieved is incorrect.
I love all your useful tips and insights – just a quick comment that I have really enjoyed making many of your products with great results! Hair conditioner is definitely on this weeks list! (Loving my home made laundry detergent that I made last weekend and the household cleaner with Lavendar essense in it – mmm!). Cleaning has actually become more fun to do! Anyway, just wanted to say THANKS!!
On July 9th, you had a post using honey I love for my dry skin. It’s made with yogurt, honey, cinnamon and nutmeg. Works great on more mature skin. Thank you!
I love honey! I use it a lot when I can’t sleep at night. I pour milk in a coffee mug, adding about a Tablespoon or so of honey, and heat in the microwave just until warm. It is so good! And best of all, I get some calcium from the milk, and I get a good night’s sleep.
I do know that honey is a great antiseptic. I have used it on cuts and scrapes. They seem to heal faster when I use the honey. Nature’s antibiotic! =) I love natural things. ALL things! Especially what I put into and on my body.
One more thing . . . if you take honey for allergies, be sure to get local honey. See where it comes from, and get as close to where you live as you possibly can. I do have allergies! (All year long allergies!) This helps me when I can find local honey.
Not true – see my reply above.
Whoa. If she says it is helping her allergies, who are you to say that’s not true? Just because a link between honey (unprocessed) and reduced allergies hasn’t been scientifically proven yet doesn’t mean there is no link at all.
I agree that what works for one may not work for another. Science is theory.
Deborah is living, breathing proof that it works FOR HER. Regardless of a proven link how is it not true, just because you say so? Why not just accept that while there might not be a ‘proven’ link it doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t one, it’s obviously helping some people. Why go around raining on their parades?
Yesterday, I found another recipe for acne-prone skin that I tried–1/2 lemon (d0esn’t matter if some of the juice has already been squeezed out) and a few drops of honey on top. Swirl it around your face for a minute; let sit on face for 5 minutes and then rinse. My skin is clearer and brighter today, but don’t want to do too often as lemon is a lightener. Thanks Jillee for trying all these and passing on the great results!
Honey also helps take the sting out of bee and wasp bites and reduces the swelling.
My grandma’s “go to” recipe for sleeplessness was a teaspoon of honey disolved in a cup of warm milk. Works like a good knockout punch for me. I’ve stepped it up a notch and put turmeric in it too (for inflamation).
This is awesome. I’ve been wondering about the benefits of honey myself lately because of all the mainstream hair and beauty producers coming out with honey-infused products (i.e. Herbal Essences Honey I’m Strong shampoo and conditioner). I’m looking for something new for my fiancee. He has incredibly bad dandruff lately that he hasn’t been able to kick even with a combo of Head & Shoulders and T-Gel. He also has eczema of the scalp and since the poor thing is losing his hair, it doesn’t help that he scratches it all the time! I hope maybe I can find a natural solution for him.
I’m also hoping I can make something we can both use. I dye my hair red from time to time, and I want a natural shampoo that will protect my color the way my Garnier Fructis Color Shield does. But, as it stands now, I feel guilty using the stuff because my hair has no color on it. However, I don’t really want to go out and buy another bottle of shampoo.
I might try the conditioner…but are you supposed to apply it to wet or dry hair, or does it matter? 30 minutes is kind of long to wait, especially for people with short hair, like me…I kind of think I’d do it before I got in the shower, and then just hop in and shampoo it.
I read about vinegar for dandruff…..sorry I cannot remember exactly how to use it, but I am sure that it can be googled! Good luck with your search.
Use coconut oil for dandruff! Have him massage it into his scalp and let it sit for a few minutes. Then shampoo or rinse it out in the shower. It works wonders!
Yes, The coconut oil really helped my daughter with flakey dandruf and psoriasis.
Apple cider vinegar can help with dandruff. I mix a dash of it with some warm water and pour it over my scalp and hair instead of conditioner. I haven’t had to use a dandruff shampoo in years (not that the shampoos ever worked for me anyways)
For all those other Mommies out there, honey heals severe diaper rash.
Long story short, my 2 month old had such a severe diaper rash he started weeping blood. The hospital gave us a thick desitin and powder treatment that didn’t work. Desperate, my parents suggested honey and I tried it. I put so much on him my husband was quoted saying, “You’re going to start attracting bears!” However, it worked. I used it after every diaper change. I could tell the difference within the first 2-3 changes. Within 24 hours, he was completely healed.
Wow, thanks for that bit of information, I have found with my son that sometimes those diaper rash creams seem to make it worse, I have been using plain vaseline, but it’s nice to know that there’s another alternative.
I just had to comment on this.
A few years ago one of my dogs got attacked by a wild animal. As a result he had to have one square foot of skin surgically removed from around his neck. It was about a finger width deep. Whatever got a hold of him picked him up and shook him hard enough to separate skin from muscle, the skin died and had to be removed.
In his treatment and recovery we used honey on the wound (And nothing else, just honey). We would spread the honey on large gauze bandages and pat it gently into place, army gauze, cotton gauze, vet wrap and a t-shirt kept the wound safe from his scratching as the wound healed.
It took about 4 months to heal completely. However he has NO/ZERO/ZILCH/NOTA single scar from this attack. You can’t even tell he was injured at all. The skin grew back without rolling, stitch it self back together perfectly and the hair has grown back completely.
I wish we had taken picture of the process, but it was very gruesome to even dress, I can’t imagine showing anyone else his poor wounds.
BTW My dog is 17 years old. He is a saint in dogs clothing, somehow he managed to survive this attack. it was so bad the Vet was giving him a 20% chance that he would live and even less of a chance he would ever walk again as he had severe damage to the arteries in his under legs were the blood and nerve endings are to tell the legs to move. He also weighs at least 100 pounds. We think a cougar got him.
I just wanted to share my story about honey with you guys. It truly is a miracle.
That is truly amazing Kandie! Thanks for sharing!
Wow, that’s s great story.
One thing that i do regularly in autumn when my skin starts to dry from the cold weather is I mix equal amounts of honey and whole fat milk (about 1 tbls each) add a few drops of lemon. I then spread a thin layer of the liquidy mixture on my face in the morning, have my morning coffee, and then rinse it off. you will be amazed at how soft, clear and glowing your skin becomes just after 10 days of continuous use.
As for olive oil for hair conditioning, i come from the middle east where rubbing olive oil on your hair an hour before bathing is very common. However, I have discovered that for my dry hair, olive oil makes it drier and brittle so i switched to rubbing coconut oil. i am going to try mixing the coconut oil with honey next time!
I love the face mask idea! I am definitely going to try that this winter! Thank you Seta!
Using very dilute honey as a final rinse on your hair after conditioning adds shine. The above honey conditioner may lighten darker hair. The bleaching potential is neutralizes by boiling the honey for a couple of minutes.
I try to be vegan, but honey is just the miracle product…. I use the OCM, and when I have a hard time getting off all of the oil, I just do a quick honey rinse.
One thing about using honey as a conditioner: it can be drying and make your ends crunchy. I have used honey for hair lightening and they warn about that side effect.
Oooh, loving it. Especially the first recipe! Do you know what makes it foam? I’m definitely trying this, I might use in in a foot bath, my feet are really dry and flaky lately. There’s this great honey face wash you can do where you apply the honey to you face and pat your skin for like 15 minutes, it will exfoliate and pull out all kinds of gunk. Can be a bit hard on really sensitive skin though.
If you are looking for RAW, LOCAL (Central Utah) Delicious Honey, look no further. You can find us at the Pioneer Park, Gardner Village & Spanish Forks Saturday farmers market. Also the Thanksgiving Point market on Friday evening. I learn more every week of the benefits of honey from people who use it. If you would like some honey I would be happy to help you. shelley@abeezhoney.com Also if you are interested in having your own bees and/or need equipment feel free to contact my son riley@abeezhoney.com
I will have to go back to using honey as a sweetener for my tea. Recently, I also read an article on the miraculous health benefits of honey and cinammon.
Hi ladies, I use honey to make a great inexpensive sugar scrub. I take a cup of sugar, 3 to 4 tbsp of honey, and about 1 to 2 tsp of water and mix with a spoon. Go to the shower rinse myself off turn off the water and get to scrubbing. Always scrub lightly cause you could potentially hurt yourself if rubbing to hard. Then rinse off and I follow with my normal body wash my skin is always super soft afterwards. Truly amazing. I have also found when using this on my face (rubbing very gently of course) that it seems to remove black heads and great to soothes acne when placing just a dab of the honey and sugar on problem areas. Much cheaper then those microderm abrasion kits that have lord knows what in them. I have also tried using olive oil instead of the water which worked well but made me feel a little oily so i stick with water myself. Hope this helps it’s great during winter with dry skin.
I read in a supermarket magazine about honey being used to treat burn wounds, even in hospital settings. It said that honey killed way more germs/bacteria than the currently used prescription meds. After picking up a burning stick in a yard fire, I cleaned the wound, and put honey on along with a loose band-aid. I went about mowing the yard. I put on honey a couple more times between that evening and the next day. It quickly took the sting out, and the burn healed without a scar.
Honey is a skin lifesaver for me in the winter! I keep a bottle in the bathroom and apply it to dry areas after I was my face, rinse, and apply lotion as normal. Works so well!
I just finished reading, “Honey, Nature’s Golden Healer” by Gloria Havenhand that I checked out at the library. It contained beautiful pictures as well as a wealth of information about raw honey, from a beekeeper and Biologist herself. The claims being made above about honey are true and scientific, though maybe not widely publicized anymore. They are treatments that have been used for thousands of years with great success. Raw honey is an amazing product!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE using honey as a face wash!! It’s so amazing for my breakouts. I went through a spell of really bad skin (horrible pimples and blackheads everywhere for weeks and weeks and just wouldn’t go away). I smeared honey on my face and left for five minutes or so. I did that three days in a row and I could already see a huge difference in my skin! The breakouts were quickly starting to clear up.
I now use honey as a daily face wash (or every second day; sometimes I’m lazy and just use a wipe to clean my face). Using raw honey is best but I usually use plain store bought honey.
The pollen that bees COLLECT in the little “carriers” on their hind legs is the large kind that has evolved to be used by them. However while they are flying around and gathering that kind they ALSO pick up the finer kind from both the plants they visit for nectar and pollen and just as a consequence of flying and walking about. So chances are that your local produced honey HAS both kinds in it. Also the air that the bees ventilate the hives with—bees gather at the hive entrance and flap their wings to aerate the hive—Bee Air Conditioning!!!—will have the pollen grains in it from what ever is blooming.
Keep in mind that bees are absolutely NEEDED to pollinate MOST crops humans use for FOOD. IF we lose bees we LOSE the food they help with. Bee hive loss is not just a problem for the beekeepers and a reason for higher honey prices it is ESSENTIAL to farming. Don’t want to be all AL Gore on ya but if we don’t seriously find out WHY bees are having such a hard time humans may be the next species having a hard time.
If you drive around and happen to see a place with hives in your area stop and knock at the door. Chances are that either the owner can sell you local honey or knows who can.
Bees are also being used to treat arthritis by being used as a sacrificial “sting” to get the beneficial toxins to work on human bodies. This has been used forever by farmers and is now a main stream treatment. This has also been used as a “down n dirty” way to treat bee sting allergies altho it can lead to problems.
And yes I DO know about this I have TWO anaphylactically allergic adult kids and one ditto husband. And before “Colony Collapse Disorder” and the Varacoa mites we had several hives. Now our area (upstate NY) seems to be somewhat recovering from these afflictions I am going to try hives again. Too important not to.
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My grandmother has hives on her farm, so I get a TON of raw honey. I love to use it as a facial scrub/masque in the shower. The honey is very granular, so I pipe it into a squeeze container with a very large opening, and massage it into my face and back in the shower. I leave it on for the duration of the shower (like a masque) and rinse off before I get out of the shower. No more acne for me! Just soft smooth skin. A for free (well, for me of course). I love my grandma :-)
Honey is my favorite face wash! It’s pretty much the only thing I use now. Normally, every winter I have to deal with extremely dry skin and eczema-like patches on my face, but I haven’t had a single problem this winter so far! It’s extremely moisturizing and sometimes I leave it on for 20 minutes as a mask.
Now I have to try the conditioner. It sounds wonderful!
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I have horrible acne, I’m in my late 20′s now and its been awful since I was 12. I did round after round of prescription drugs- including accutane. Scary stuff- and that shows you how desperate I was to look “normal.”
I do a mix of honey and baking soda as a mask and its helped dramatically. I also alternate that with just an egg yolk for a mask. That does wonders for the oils/ance and gives a really nice glow.
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