Is honey a useful sedative?

Paradox74

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While reading through an old book about homemade remedies, I saw a bit about honey being able to calm your nerves which can help with someone who has insomnia. I'm not too sure if honey has any effect on the nervous system but is there any truth to this?

Thanks in advance.
 
Honey is sugar, and carbohydrates can trigger the release of serotonin, which is calming. This is no doubt one of the reasons honey is an old wives' remedy for helping babies to sleep. (Important: We now know that honey contains botulism spores, which can be very dangerous for children under 2. Never give honey to a baby.)

Honey is good for sore throats, has some antibiotic properties, and is a good cough suppressant, but I don't think I'd rely on it to cure insomnia.
 
rightbrain said:
Honey is sugar, and carbohydrates can trigger the release of serotonin, which is calming. This is no doubt one of the reasons honey is an old wives' remedy for helping babies to sleep. (Important: We now know that honey contains botulism spores, which can be very dangerous for children under 2. Never give honey to a baby.)

Honey is good for sore throats, has some antibiotic properties, and is a good cough suppressant, but I don't think I'd rely on it to cure insomnia.
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The recommendation is one year, not two years, and it's a pretty rare event. No sense getting people in a panic.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/444370_3
 
rightbrain said:
Honey is good for sore throats, has some antibiotic properties, and is a good cough suppressant, but I don't think I'd rely on it to cure insomnia.
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I don't think I'd rely on it to cure a sore throat either. In fact if a choice had to be made I'd rather rely on it to cure insomnia, as failure is much less likely to be fatal. (Unless you're Michael Jackson)
 
A good rule of thumb is that the number of home remedies for a given ailment is inversely proportional to their effectiveness. Think about it. If holding your breath or drinking a glass of water really stopped the hiccups, would we need 237 more cures? Who's sitting around going, "Holding your breath? Forget that! Let's see if putting my face in a bowl of ice water or balancing a spoon on my nose works."
 
Paradox74 said:
While reading through an old book about homemade remedies, I saw a bit about honey being able to calm your nerves which can help with someone who has insomnia. I'm not too sure if honey has any effect on the nervous system but is there any truth to this?

Thanks in advance.
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First, look at the make up of honey and then determine if any ingredient has a sedative effect and why.

honey actually has slightly more carbohydrates and more calories per teaspoon than does granulated sugar
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http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes/AN00425

Honey is mostly glucose and fructose: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf00099a009
The rest is other carbs.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja01240a005

Honey is classified as a simple carb, along with table sugar.
http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview?LPid=1264
SIMPLE CARBOHYDRATE:
Sugar - fruit, fruit juice, table sugar, honey, soft drinks, and other sweets
​
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Other information because of the chemical makeup of honey:
In addition, as honey is diluted with water, a chemical reaction between glucose, water, and oxygen produces small amounts of hydrogen peroxide and gluconic acid. The slow release of hydrogen peroxide makes honey a mild antiseptic. The acidity of honey also reduces the number of organisms that can live in it.
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http://sci-toys.com/ingredients/honey.html

No special nutrients as claimed by altie BS sites, and the properties are well understood chemically.

Nothing there to make it a sedative, unless you eat too much and cause your body to release a bunch of insulin... resulting in a reduction of blood sugar overall and causing some sense of fatigue. This is why eating sensibly is key, when it comes to any carb. You want a controlled release of sugars into the blood to cause a steady supply of energy for your body. Glucose is your brain's main fuel, and breaking down complex carbs for a steady but not too high a supply to the blood is best. Eating lots of simple carbs all day will cause highs and lows that will mess with this system.
 
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Eos that's like claiming all you are is a bag of water and few minerals....:rolleyes:
Honey has hundreds of active biological compounds

Here is one well researched one...

http://bio.waikato.ac.nz/honey/special.shtml

and more

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/85/8506sci3.html

and still more

Honey flavonoids as protection agents against oxidative damage to human red blood cells
Manuela Blasaa, Manila Candiraccia, Augusto Accorsia, Maria Piera Piacentinia and Elena Piatti, a,

Received 1 February 2006;
revised 24 January 2007;
accepted 7 March 2007.
Available online 16 March 2007.
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http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=d0dc537b6d0776ecd805d3783e5b890f

Just sugar and water right?? :rolleyes:
 
macdoc said:
Eos that's like claiming all you are is a bag of water and few minerals....:rolleyes:
Honey has hundreds of active biological compounds

Here is one well researched one...

http://bio.waikato.ac.nz/honey/special.shtml

and more

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/85/8506sci3.html

and still more

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=d0dc537b6d0776ecd805d3783e5b890f

Just sugar and water right?? :rolleyes:
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A. That's not what I wrote.
B. Your links indicate:


All honeys have an antibacterial activity, due primarily to hydrogen peroxide formed in a "slow-release" manner by the enzyme glucose oxidase present in honey, which can vary widely in potency...
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Other claims are VAGUE:
It is now known that this non-peroxide activity is due to the combined action of methylglyoxal (MGO) and an unidentified synergistic component.
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What components don't involve carbs at that link?

Your other link addresses things like flavenoids, which are not major components of honey, but only exist in honey in teeny tiny amounts not proven to have the effects they claim when EATEN. How much honey must be eaten before enough flavenoids are ingested to have any protective effect against oxidation at the cellular level?

How does that relate to a sedative effect?
 
UncaYimmy said:
A good rule of thumb is that the number of home remedies for a given ailment is inversely proportional to their effectiveness. Think about it. If holding your breath or drinking a glass of water really stopped the hiccups, would we need 237 more cures? Who's sitting around going, "Holding your breath? Forget that! Let's see if putting my face in a bowl of ice water or balancing a spoon on my nose works."
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That's a pretty brilliant rule of thumb, I must say. Although you'd probably have to add the prevalence and ease of treatment of the condition as variables. Headaches and insomnia will have lots of cures because they are so common and mild in nature so the grandma will try to treat it before the doctor, stuff like pain, MS, IBS respond really well to placebo cures and so you'd expect that quite a few lines of non-biomedical treatments that work well. The rule above works beautifully in a world without that pesky placebo phenomenon.

P.S. Next time you have hiccups, please try my crazy cure and tell me how it goes. Visualize yourself taking the hiccups out of your chest and throwing them far away. No ****, this has worked every time for my friend and I. I wonder if there's been any placebo studies on hiccups...
 
AaronAlexander said:
P.S. Next time you have hiccups, please try my crazy cure and tell me how it goes. Visualize yourself taking the hiccups out of your chest and throwing them far away. No ****, this has worked every time for my friend and I. I wonder if there's been any placebo studies on hiccups...
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I'm not up for looking up the source, but I recall reading that hiccups are one of those things where they either go for a relatively short duration (say a dozen or a couple of minutes) or last for much, much longer with the former being far more common. Your cure reminds me of how my dog believe barking scares people away from the house. It works on the mailman every day and all those other people who show up when we're not home.
 
UncaYimmy said:
I'm not up for looking up the source, but I recall reading that hiccups are one of those things where they either go for a relatively short duration (say a dozen or a couple of minutes) or last for much, much longer with the former being far more common. Your cure reminds me of how my dog believe barking scares people away from the house. It works on the mailman every day and all those other people who show up when we're not home.
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Well I've taken that much into account during my not-so-stringent trials. Since I pretty consistently get hiccups with certain types of alcohol I've had a repeatable phenomena to test it with. I'm imagining that it's just like how people who visualize being stuck to the floor are harder to push over without actually knowing that they are holding themselves differently while visualizing. I'm not ready to post my $1 million claim, it's just a fun thing to try, and it feels totally ridiculous when it works.

Also, barking at people really does make them go away. Not when dogs do it though, because everyone expects that. Try it next time you get some witnessers.
 
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