Honey and Hayfever Relief
Do your little ones seem to be suffering with hayfever this summer? After the lovely warm weather and all this rain helping to make everything grow wildly it looks like it's going to be a bad year for sneezing, runny noses and streaming eyes.
I need to take antihistimines every day all through the summer for my hayfever but I really don't like my children having antihistamine syrup particularly in the day as it makes them so drowsy.
So we are taking action in other ways...
Did you know that eating local honey can build up your immunity to local pollens by desensitizing you to it's effects?
According to The Local Honey Man "Honey contains traces of pollen. However, this is the heavy-grained type of pollen which doesn’t trigger allergies in the human body. This desensitizes the body to local pollen, so that the pollen does not trigger allergic reactions in the patient come hay fever season"*
I have started to eat local Cotswolds honey each day and I've also been adding it into the kids yogurts, smoothies and porridge to help them get desensitized.
The local Honey Man recommends 2 teaspoons of Honey each day. I am having this amount myself but the kids are generally having around 1 teaspoonful. Time will tell if this helps us!
Honey is only safe to eat from 12 months so please don't give to younger babies.
Another benefit of eating honey is that it contains prebiotics which nourish and stimulate the growth of bacteria in our intestines. They also work with probiotics to support balance so combining honey with live yogurt is really good healthy combination.
I also added honey to my diet when I was pregnant as I wasn't allowed to take antihistamines. It did help especially as I hadn't long moved back to the UK from The Netherlands so all the pollens were still very new to me.
Try these ways of adding honey into your little one's daily diet:
- Live Yogurt + Honey
- 1/2 weetabix 1/2 Ready break mix + milk + Honey
- Banana, yogurt and honey smoothie
- Creamy Nectarine dream smoothie
- Healthy Chocolate pudding
Let me know if you have any other ideas for eating honey.
Suzanne
* quote from http://localhoneyman.co.uk/honey-facts/375-2/