Beekeepers have been raising bees to produce honey since at least 700 BC. Back then, this sweet, natural sweetener was a rarity used in religious ceremonies and for medicinal and cosmetic purposes.
Typically, the only people who could afford honey for eating were the very wealthy.

Nowadays, you can find honey in a variety of colors, flavors and textures (not to mention qualities) in just about every supermarket.

What Exactly IS Honey?

Everyone knows the sticky, sweet honey that kids of all ages love to lick from their fingers. But do you know how it’s actually created?

Bees use honey as food, and they make it by collecting nectar from flowers. This nectar mixes with their saliva, which is full of just the right enzymes to create honey. The nectar-saliva mixture is then brought back to their beehive, where their wings fan it into just the right consistency.

The flavor and texture of honey varies depending on the type of flower from which the nectar came.

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What do learning disabilities, homelessness and alcoholism have in common? They may all be related to a long-ago head injury, according to emerging research.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that over 5 million Americans have a mental or physical disability due to such a brain injury, however this estimate is based only on hospital admissions — and does not take into account the countless others who did not seek medical attention.

“Unidentified traumatic brain injury is an unrecognized major source of social and vocational failure,” says Wayne A. Gordon, director of the Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York in The Wall Street Journal.

According to research from Mount Sinai, about 7-8 percent of the U.S. population has some form of traumatic brain injury — mild, moderate, or severe. Some of these head injuries may have happened long ago, and even be completely forgotten, yet could still be impacting your life.

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For years grocery shoppers have been buying and eating genetically modified foods whether they knew it or not. At first even people who did know they were eating genetically modified food didn’t worry about it because they saw no reason to. But as more information from scientific studies has reached consumers, more people are beginning to wonder if some medical problems might be linked to the consumption of these foods.

For any scientific endeavor to be in the best interest of society, the benefits must outweigh the disadvantages. There are supposed advantages with genetically modified food, but some research is suggesting the disadvantages may win out in the long run.

The Basic Principles of Genetic Modification

Broadly speaking, there are two ways that a food crop can be genetically modified. The first method has been around since our ancestors first began to actually grow food instead of just foraging for it.

That method is usually called cross-breeding. You find the individuals of a specific plant that have more of a characteristic that is desirable — say, more and bigger berries. Take the seeds from those plants and grow them close together so that the pollen from one fertilizes others. Pick the individuals from that group of plants that have the biggest and most berries and plant only the seeds from them.

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A new article has recently been published that shows that a gluten-free diet reduces fat, inflammation and insulin resistance. This study was done in mice and the conclusion of the authors was “Our data support the beneficial effects of a gluten–free diet in reducing adiposity gain (fat), inflammation and insulin resistance. The data suggest that diet gluten exclusion should be tested as a new dietary approach to prevent the development of obesity and metabolic disorders (diabetes).”

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the “Wheat belly” syndrome and to try to understand if it is true. In addition, very importantly they wanted to understand the biochemistry that underlies the development of these other health issues from gluten. They were able to evaluate intermediate molecules with names like PPAR, and HSL, and found through this, how gluten contributes biochemically to weight gain, inflammation, and insulin resistance.

This is especially relevant because both groups of mice were fed high-fat diets. The gluten-free mice however lost weight.

Sayer Ji of GreenmedInfo.com proposed this analysis: “… the weight gain associated with wheat consumption has little to do with caloric content per se; rather, the gluten proteins … disrupt endocrine and exocrine processes within the body, as well as directly modulating nuclear gene expression … to alter mammalian metabolism in the direction of weight gain.”

I already mentioned to you in previous newsletters, that we have a new blood test for non-celiac gluten sensitivity. I have been running this test for about the last six months. In patients with gluten sensitivity, I have seen revolutionary changes in their health when they stop all gluten.

If you or a family member is having trouble losing weight, or controlling your diabetes, you do not need to do this blood test. You can simply eliminate gluten from your diet for 6 to 8 weeks, and see if you begin to lose weight, and your diabetes begins to get under better control.

As more and more people in our country are going gluten-free, health food stores and even regular grocery stores are creating “Gluten-free Departments”. Please always read the labels of these products very carefully. Often they use sugars and artificial ingredients, to try to compensate for the absence of gluten. In addition a lot of these products use corn to replace gluten. A large percentage of the corn in our country is from Genetically Modified crops. Therefore you may want to avoid this type of corn as well. (Please see the most informative article on GMO’s, in this newsletter!)
If you do try this experiment, please drop me a note and let me know if it works for you!

J Nutr Biochem. 2012 Dec 17. Epub 2012 Dec 17

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Since 1950, the average house in the United States has more than doubled in size to reach an average of 2,349 square feet. No longer — if they can help it — will families share a bathroom as they often did in the ’50s, nor will three or four kids share a bedroom.

Americans buy big homes for many different reasons. For space, for status, for tax breaks, for the neighborhood (and schools), and for a feeling of security. But is a bigger home really a better investment than a medium size or smaller one?

A big home will generally appreciate in value, which means that whenever you decide to sell, you stand to reap a profit, but there are many other things to consider.

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