How Can This Ayurvedic Food Make You Feel Great?

AYURVEDIC ANALYSIS

Honey - The Nectar of the Gods

This pure and natural heavenly gift from nature was the first sweetener known to man. Honey's sweet goodness has been an icon of abundance for centuries. It's golden syrup seems to capture the very rays of the sun, reflecting nature in its purest form, and delighting your senses. Honey is a favorite ingredient in food, as a delivery vehicle for medicine, and topically in cosmetics for natural skin beauty.

Many cultures consider honey sacred. Ayurveda, the vital science of life, has appreciated honey's healing qualities for thousands of years. It is honored as an ingredient in an ancient formulation called Panchamrita, literally "The Five Nectars of Immortality". Consuming honey daily as a food is advocated in Ayurveda to promote good health and strength.

Lose Weight with Honey

Bees tirelessly visit flower after flower preparing this natural sweetener from nectar. The secret behind honey's health benefits? Bees actually pre-digest honey, giving it qualities of heat, astringency, and a little dryness, qualities you won't find in any other sweetener. Yet, these qualities are essential to balancing the normally cold, damp weight gaining properties of other simple sugars.

You can experience the warmth of honey as a mild pungency that stimulates your tongue, raises your heart rate, and warms your metabolism and entire body after consumption.

Honey is quickly and efficiently used and absorbed by the body, and tolerated more so than other sweeteners such as sugar / sucrose / glucose used on their own. As it helps stimulate the metabolism, it helps your body burn fat. You can combine honey and lemon juice in luke warm (not hot) water for a quick morning detoxifier. A special cleansing quality of honey also suggests that it helps to lower cholesterol and clear plaque from arteries.

Energizing Tonic

Feeling tired? Try a spoonful of honey to wake you up. For centuries, people have swarmed to honey for its tonic properties. The ancient Greeks used honey to prevent the breakdown of muscles after heavy physical strain, to rebuild strength, virility and to improve endurance.

Honey is often a key ingredient in rejuvenating and re-energizing formulas, as well as to enhance the healing properties of other herbs. The proverbial "land of milk and honey" offers us all things good and is often described as richness, abundance, and joy. Honey has even been used to increase fertility.

For a delicious energy building home remedy, mix one tablespoon coconut butter with 1 tsp honey. Honey is a key ingredient in the famous Ayurveda formula chywanprash. Ayurveda also combines shilajit with honey to combat low energy in the elderly or those with weak constitutions.

Colds & Coughs

Studies have shown that honey is as effective (if not more so) as common over-the-counter cough suppressants. Honey won't produce mucus like other sweeteners that tend to make your congested, especially the morning after consumption. Instead, honey's 'heat' has the ability to liquefy and expectorate mucus, as well as disperse fluids that have collected in your upper respiratory system. It's a time-honored solution for soothing sore throats as it provides a rich coating effect on the back of your throat. One teaspoon of honey taken orally should do the trick. Honey's immune stimulating qualities are appreciated in popular cold and flu formulas like ginger honey, and lemon tea. It is featured in famous lung tonics such as osha and honey.

External Uses for Honey

Honey has anti-bacterial, anti-septic, and anti-fungal properties, which make it a superb healer and protector for skin infections, burns, wounds and even scarring. Spread liberally over wounds to prevent infection, including diabetic ulcers. Honey is a hemostatic that has been used to stop bleeding for both wounds and stomach ulcers.

If your skin and hair is lacking moisture consider using honey to bring back the luster. A small dab of honey may even sooth acne and pimples, as well as speed up the healing process of your skin. Honey was also used in an ancient middle-eastern practice of sugaring hair removal, which is again becoming quite popular.

A spoonful of honey restores rosiness to the cheeks. Honey has been used for allergies, insomnia, constipation and to improve vision.

Contraindications

As sweet as it is, honey is not recommended for infants under a year old as it may hold the risk of botulism, a type of bacterial poisoning. Diabetics or sugar-addicts may like to stay from honey due to its concentrated levels of sweetness that will affect blood sugar levels.