Folk Remedy, Food Spice May Fight Cancer (propolis, turmeric)

FRIDAY, June 10 (HealthDay News) -- Cancer researchers have been given a million-dollar grant to investigate the therapeutic value of the folk medicine propolis and the food spice turmeric.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute grant is earmarked for the study of the two alternative remedies, each of which has shown promise in reducing risks for breast, prostate and colorectal malignancies, and in enhancing cancer treatment.

Propolis and turmeric are rich in plant polyphenolic compounds that exhibit potent antitumor activities, the researchers said.

"A very interesting property of these compounds is that they have been shown to cause cell death in tumor cells but not in normal cells," study lead investigator Costas Koumenis, assistant professor of radiation oncology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, in Winston-Salem, N.C., said in a prepared statement.

Propolis is a resinous substance collected by bees from the bark and leaves of trees and plants. Since ancient times, propolis extracts have been used as antibacterial and anti-inflammatory treatments. The major active ingredient in propolis is caffeic acid phenethyl ester (CAPE). Recent research has found CAPE protecting mice against radiation-induced inflammation and skin damage, and also protecting rats against certain forms of heart muscle damage after they were given chemotherapy drugs.

Turmeric, a spice found in curries, contains the compound curcumin. Previous studies found an association between diets rich in curcumin and greatly reduced rates of colon cancer, the researchers said.

"Based on these interesting properties of CAPE and curcumin and their good safety profile, our lab has carried out studies in cell cultures and experimental animal tumor, showing that the compounds can make tumor cells more susceptible to chemotherapy and radiation, while having little effect or even reducing some of the toxic effects of radiation on normal cells," Koumenis said.

For the next four years, he and his team will study if CAPE and curcumin enhance radiation therapy in deadly brain tumors called gliomas and other tumors in animals. They'll also attempt to learn how the two compounds make tumor cells more sensitive to radiation, while protecting normal cells.

"The differential effects of this class of compounds on normal and tumor cells are well-documented, but still remains a mystery," Koumenis said. "Discovering how they are able to do this may open the way to design drugs with similar properties but are even more potent."

I'll let you all decide what you want to spend your money on, but I will offer you an insight or two from over 30 years of keeping bees...

The company you linked to called 'Really Raw Honey' (RRH) has created its market niche through the general ignorance of the consumer. The key to their hype (and their prices that are nearly twice the going rate for raw honey) is that the public doesn't have a clue as to what raw honey really is.

Simply put, raw honey is any honey that hasn't been heated or put through ultra-filtration equipment. As a general rule, large processors heat their honey to a usual temperature around 150F to facilitate easier handling since the viscosity of the warm honey makes it flow better in handling equipment. Rarely is honey heated to 'pasteurize' it as so many think - but that is another column.

In any event, commercial processors usually run the honey through filters that remove micro crystals of sugars, yeasts, pollens and other microscopic materials. This gives the honey a crystal clear appearance on the shelf and effectively removes the chance of crystallization for as long as several years.

Meanwhile, raw honey is NEVER heated beyond a slight warming of the supers with light bulbs or from being placed in a warm room. The honey is extracted, strained, sometimes allowed to settle and then bottled. The straining is done with sieves about as porous as you kitchen stainer and is done to remove wax flakes, smoker ash, bee legs and other extraneous materials. In no way does this straining affect the taste, nutrition, color or properties of the raw honey.

'Really Raw Honey' OTOH, has taken the public ignorance about raw honey characteristics and implied that a better product is obtained by allowing the beekeeper to extract and bottle directly without removing debris. For this slovenly practice, the woman who run RRH (really just a bottling processor) to create an illusion of health and benefit by giving you what really amounts to crud in your honey.

All of this is fine - if the consumer is fully appraised of the facts. Unfortunately, that is never the case. Buy RRH if you want to at their outrageous prices, but ask any beekeeper you might know to just give you some of his/her cappings and save yourself a bundle. Heck, just eat the cappings, skip the honey, and really get healthy.

BTW, the woman that owns RRH doesn't produce a single drop of honey or even keep bees. She buys her bulk honey from a half dozen or so beekeepers in upstate NY. Of course, they get better than wholesale for their honey and they don't have to do as much labor because their sell it without straining. Good deal for them, good deal for her and you'll have to make up your own minds about whether it's a good deal for you...

You're most welcome. The funny thing about bees is the mythical properties attached to them and their products. I like bees just fine and their products are good to certainly good to use, but I do not endorse snake oil, juju, mysticism, fancy, hype or ignorance in the sales or promotion of the same. I am pretty hardnose about such things and I like to think that this has won me thinking customers over the years. If I wanted easy money, I'd promote the myth that beekeepers don't get cancer and live over a hundred years. One recent manufacturer of bee pollen products used to boast that he would actually live to be a thousand, yes, a thousand years old. He also died recently.

Thanks for the info on the honey, I actually like the one that is more fluid, thanks for letting me know that it is just as raw as the one that solidifies.

Well, I didn't want to ask you for your site, because I figured you may not want to identify yourself. But if you do sell honey, propolis and royal jelly, you can either post it here, or send me a private FReepmail.

What I was interested in from the RRH was the propolis pieces. I noticed that buying propolis drops seem to cost a fortune, so I figured I can buy the pieces, put them in high proof alcohol, which presumably dissolves it and make my own "Propolis tincture" or whatever it's called. Some time ago, a friend brought me back from Europe a small bottle of alcohol, with propolis dissolved in it, it was from private bee keepers, not a store. At that time I ignored it for years, but now I thought of trying something like that again.

http://www.reallyrawhoney.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=RRH&Product_Code=4OPP&Category_Code=OBO

Since you are so helpful, maybe you can also enlighten me about the raw Royal Jelly, where some sites were offering 1 kilo ( I presume that's 1 kg, as in 2.2. lbs) for $129 -- shipped frozen 2nd day air.

I was considering the same principle, small amounts of Royal Jelly seem to be expensive, so I figured I can buy a larger amount and keep it in the refrigerator.

Your opinion?

One other note on raw honey - ANY raw honey sold WILL crystallize. In fact, one of the characteristics of raw honey is that it is slightly cloudy even after extraction. This is due to light refraction from materials like pollen and micro crystals in the saturated solution. Left alone for a while, especially at cooler temperatures, it WILL solidify and become opaque. The speed of the phase change varies with the kinds of nectar used to make the honey. Some, like Aster and Goldenrod, seem to go very fast. Others, like Basswood, take forever. In any event, the crystallized honey is what I prefer. The lattice structure of the solid honey can be broken up fairly easily (table knife) and the honey is easily spread. This process is refined a bit to produce the familiar creamed, or spun honey, that you may be familiar with. I try to educate consumers about this form of honey all the time since it is the primary way that most of the world consumes their honey and, I think, it tastes a little better. Unfortunately, the packers have done a fine job of training consumers to think of honey as crystal clear stuff that stays liquid for eternity and tastes like, well, nothing. The important point is that RRH does NOT have an exclusive market corner with a solid product - any raw honey will do this.

Regarding other hive products...I regret to say I don't have a web page. I sell strictly through my market outlets and then, only in smaller volumes since I am only a sideliner.

Royal jelly is very labor intensive to produce and collect. My source is through swarm cells that I manage to reduce since their presence is a precursor to the colony dividing and leaving the hive I have maintained. It will also mean the loss of a productive colony for a season. So, I actually work against the production of royal jelly (RJ) and for the production of liquid honey. In Asia and particularly in China, some of their production centers on promoting conditions optimal for the production of this substance, but it is still labor intensive and yields per queen cell are probably well below a gram. So you can see why it is so prohibitively expensive. A kilo is 1,000 grams so your quoted price works out to be about 0.13 cents per gram. In my local co-op, their 500 mg caps/90 per bottle is about $10.00, so they want 0.22 cents per gram. Your bulk buy is a good deal. The only problem I would thing about is spoilage. Most of the time the stuff is processed in some way and preservatives are added. This might be something like alcohol or benzoin, but the very nutritional qualities that consumers desire also make it a product that would be attractive to certain microbes. Frankly, I'd freeze it and use it in small quantities mixed with something else. The stuff is kind of funky straight - a little on the sour side.

All of my by product RJ is used in various formulas and preparations that go in my local markets. The same for the propolis. As I said before, this year I am going to implement some changes in my management that I think will yield greater amounts of the basic material and thus yield greater production for a refined product. At this time, I am in the early stages of producing a manual on production and refining a higher grade of propolis for consumer use aimed primarily at the beekeeper. At this time, I am unaware of any operations at my level that produce propolis of the quality or concentration that I do except from commercial sources.

Hope this helps some.

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