What is the Best Honey Brand in Pakistan & How Much Pakistan Produce Honey? How to Use Honey in Medicine?

Honey is nature’s most precious gift that bees miraculously produce for us. It is loved by all and contains the kind of nutrients and minerals that our bodies need and should be part of our daily diet. Some people like to wash down honey with milk, others use it as an alternative to sugar because it has fewer calories than sugar, and still others prefer to eat honey for breakfast. Honey is included in medicines and is a natural remedy for many ailments. It is estimated that bee flies 500 miles to produce half a teaspoon of honey. How to find the best honey brand in Pakistan? Despite mediocre economic and financial conditions, Pakistan successfully produces large quantities of honey. It produces the highest quality products. Producers use artificial methods to obtain and increase annual honey production.

Considering and appreciating the tireless efforts of honeybees, September is considered and celebrated as a honey month. In September it is harvested and usually accumulated, ensuring that the beekeeping industry flourishes worldwide.

How Much Pakistan Produce Honey?

The honey produced in Pakistan comes from small honeybees, which are considered golden honey of good quality. Pakistan exports only a small amount of honey, and most of it is consumed domestically.

What is the History of Honey & Should we Use Honey in Medicine?

1. The history of honey dates back to 3000 B.C. The Egyptians and Chinese used it as medicine, and the Greeks considered it the food of the gods. For Muslims, the benefits of honey were discovered more than 1,400 years ago. The Holy Qur’an tells us about the healing power of honey.
2. Honey is a natural sweetener, and there is no counterfeiting of it. Bees collect nectar from many plants, including some medicinal plants such as red clover. Therefore, it is assumed that the medicinal properties of such plants are transferred by bees to the honey they produce. On the other hand, sugar (consisting of 99% sucrose) is usually extracted from sugarcane, and this process destroys valuable nutrients such as protein, organic acid, and other enzymes, so honey remains the best natural sweetener with excellent nutritional and medicinal properties.
3. In our study, clover honey was used. It is a complex solution of many sugars, including fructose (38%), glucose (32%), sucrose (2%), maltose (7%), and other sugars, acids, and aromatic compounds (4%).
4. It has been suggested that honey, as a sweetener containing different types of sugars, may have a hyperglycemic exacerbating effect. However, contrary to this, studies in animal models4 and humans with type 1 diabetes5 and impaired insulin tolerance6 have shown hypoglycemic effects of honey. However, the exact mechanism(s) of this hypoglycemic effect remains unknown. Similar studies in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Pakistan were lacking.
5. The purpose of this study was to confirm these findings by comparing the effects of 30 and 75 grams of honey with 75 grams of oral glucose tolerance test (OGT)5. solution on plasma glucose levels in patients with T2DM.

Patients and Methods

1. An open pilot study based on convenience sampling involved 97 adult patients with T2DM who attended the outpatient department of Jinnah Medical College Hospital, Karachi, between March and August 2011.
2. Patients with renal failure, pregnant patients, and those who smoked or took steroids were excluded. All adult patients with T2DM aged 18 years or older with plasma glucose levels <200 mg/dL were selected.
3. The hospital ethics committee approved the study, which conformed to the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki. Informed consent was taken from all participants. The natural honey is used as Sue Bee Honey, which is clover honey of 100% purity.3 After an overnight fast, patients were randomly divided into 3 groups: 39 (40%) patients in group 1 were given 75 grams of pure natural honey; 28 (29%) in group 2 were given 30 grams of pure natural honey, and 30 (31%) in group 3 were given 75 grams of glucose. Each portion was mixed with 250 ml of water and consumed immediately. Blood samples were taken at zero hours (fasting state), then one and two hours after the meal. Patients who had plasma glucose levels >250 mg/dL 2 hours after the test remained for 12 hours in the day hospital for observation. None of the patients had serious complications.
4. The data were analyzed in SPSS version 11. Descriptive values were obtained and averaged for each group were calculated. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the mean between the different groups. Multiple comparisons were made using Tukey’s post hoc test.

Conclusion

Of the 97 patients, 62 (64%) were female and 35 (36%) were male. Patients ranged in age from 25 to 68 years, with an average of 50±9.7 years. Duration of diabetes ranged from 1 to 20 years, mean 5.3±4.9 years. Six (6.2%) patients controlled diet alone, 65 (67%) were taking oral hypoglycemic agents alone, and 26 (26.8%) were taking insulin in combination with metformin and/or a thiazolidinedione (TZD). In groups 1 and 2, blood glucose levels peaked within one hour and then dropped within two hours.