Does Honey Have the Characteristics of Natural Cancer Vaccine?

• Main Author: Nor Hayati Othman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2012-10-01
• Series: Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine
• Subjects: Honey; Cancer; Immune booster; Anti-inflammatory; Anti-microbial; Scavengers of toxic free radicals
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2225411016301134

Honey could be considered the most sustainable food produced naturally. It contains sugars, vitamins, minerals and has high anti-oxidant activities. Cancer is on the rise in most countries. Carcinogenesis is a multi-step process and has multi-factorial causes. Among these are low immune status, chronic infection, chronic inflammation, chronic nonhealing ulcers, smoking, obesity etc. Published studies thus far have shown that honey improves immune status, has anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties and promotes healing of chronic ulcers and wounds and scavenge toxic free radicals. Recently honey has been shown to have anti-cancer properties in cell cultures and in animal models. The mechanisms suggested include induction of apoptosis, disruption of mitochondrial membrane potential and cell cycle arrest. Though sugar is predominant in honey which itself is thought to be carcinogenic, it is understandable that its beneficial effect as anti-cancer agent raises skeptics. With increasing number of people seeking therapy from nature, this area of research has recently gained attention.