The responses to this topic says a lot if you look at it dispassionately and try and keep your agenda locked up.

There has been a study on this, actually two by the same scientist. The first was without controls and mostly 
anecdotal and seemed to show that there was a positive effect of honey on allergies, and is the one mostly 
reported to show it works. The second, with controls, showed that there was not. You do not hear too much about it.

So far the posts that say it has helped indicate that if it is not used then problems occur. But others state 
that if certain pollens are present, they have severe allergic reactions to the honey.

All the allergy treatments I know of are sensitization types that build tolerance up over a long period of 
acclimating the body to the allergen. After time, you can handle the allergen. But with honey, you have to keep 
taking it or you suffer from the allergen. That does not track with how to get rid of allergic reactions.

In fact, one would think that adding allergens to honey would elicit the exact response noted by several who 
immediately suffered a reaction.

There is one thing that we have overlooked in all this and it has little to do with what is in the honey but the 
honey itself. There is nothing to discount the effect of honey, by itself, in helping someone through potential 
allergies, since it does sooth the throat, certainly kills most anything it comes in contact with and may flush 
out some of the bad guys that cause problems. If I recall correctly, that was the assumption of the researcher.

There are just too many contradictions in even anecdotal evidence to conclude that pollen in it works to combat 
allergies to that pollen, and too much that says you will have an allergic reaction if the pollen is truly 
present. Add that it is very difficult to determine just what pollen is in the honey. It may not have any pollen 
in it that you are trying to combat.

Something may be happening, but I would give the credit to the honey, which makes me feel good even in the dead 
of winter, with no pollen present.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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