Proper rest

Lack of sleep is a major problem

You will spend roughly a third of your life sleeping. Sleeping is an absolutely critical necessity to living. Lack of sleep has been associated with obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, ADHD, mood disorders, and lowered immunity.

Sleep is primarily a state of mental suspension and cellular restoration. During sleep your cells rebuild and repair their numbers, while your brain sorts through the sensory input of the day.

Sleep is energy-intensive

Contrary to popular perception sleep is energy intensive, causing only a 5-10% reduction from your waking metabolic rate. Fuel necessary for the restoration of your kidneys, brain, and blood cells is sourced primarily from your liver’s production of glycogen.

Refuel your liver to sleep better

While there are other factors contributing to poor sleep, an under-fueled liver will cause the release of stress hormones during the night and thus reduce the quality and quantity of your sleep.

Getting proper rest is essential to your health and well-being but proper rest cannot be attained without sufficient, quality fuel (glycogen) from your liver.

Understanding glucose

Poor food quality = poor performance

The overconsumption of fuel can precipitate a myriad of health issues including fatigue, obesity, and diseases such as diabetes. Dirty burning fuels can result in excessive cellular storage and toxicity, i.e. they can make you fat and sick.

Glucose is the body’s primary fuel

Glucose is the key fuel source for your body. It provides crucial energy to your muscles and cells, and is the only source of fuel for your brain.

Glucose is a simple sugar broken down from carbohydrates found in grains, breads, rice, cereals, pastas, fruits, vegetables, most dairy products, refined sugars and honey.

Your blood glucose, or blood sugar level, changes throughout the day depending on your diet and metabolism. Your body must maintain its blood sugar levels within a certain range.

Dangerous blood sugar levels

Too little blood sugar and you become hypoglycemic, where in mild cases you feel mentally foggy, numb and can experience shakiness. In severe cases of hypoglycemia you can pass out, have a seizure, go into a coma or even die.

Too much blood sugar and you become hyperglycemic where your glucose levels shoot up and insulin from your pancreas pushes the excess sugar into your cells as fat. Extended or constantly high blood sugar levels can lead to obesity and diabetes, where your pancreas no longer produces sufficient insulin and you must supplement with insulin injections.

Make all-natural foods a part of your diet

There are a lot of diets and suggested consumption guidelines available today, and each one must be counter-balanced by your own metabolism, but to keep your blood sugar levels steady, you must watch what and how many carbohydrates you eat.

A moderate diet containing natural, minimally processed carbohydrates will provide the best, most efficient glucose for your body.

Restoring your health

Tip #1: Sleep soundly by taking honey before bed

How: Take one to two tablespoons of raw honey within the hour before bed to properly fuel your liver and get a better night’s sleep.

Why: Honey's fructose assists in a smooth, efficient refueling of your liver's glycogen stores. By keeping your liver's glycogen properly topped off, you reduce your brain's production of stress hormones thereby promoting better, more restorative sleep. Consuming a tablespoon of honey within the hour before bed reduces metabolic stress during the night and allows you to wake up refreshed and restored.

Lower Your Blood Sugar by eating honey

Replace the recommended 10% of your diet sourced from simple sugars with honey and watch your blood sugar (HbA1c) levels lower by 2% or more.
(A highly unique aspect of honey currently under research, is its containment of H.I.S.S., or hepatic insulin sensitizing substances, such as zinc-oxide and glutathione. H.I.S.S. help absorb glucose into your bones, thereby naturally helping your body control its blood sugar levels.)

Run Faster & bike farther with honey as your fuel

For better athletic performance and endurance, replace drinks and energy supplements containing processed sugars such sucrose (table sugar), sucrose-dextrose syrups, high fructose corn syrup and crystalline fructose with those containing only all-natural, raw honey.
(The 1-1 ratio of fructose to glucose found in honey work together to quickly supply glycogen and glucokinase to your muscles and brain without the enzymatic hydrolysis required by straight sucrose or the gastric distress caused by straight fructose.)

How is honey made?

Sweet nectar is transported & transformed by female worker bees

Honey is transformed flower and plant nectar. The transformation is a multi-stage process that begins when a female worker bee collects nectar from sources around her hive. The bee has two stomachs and sucks the nectar into her honey stomach for transportation back to the hive.

Once her honey stomach is full the worker bee returns to the hive where she is greeted by other worker bees ready to help. The bees chew and pass the nectar between them while injecting enzymes into the mixture. Nectar straight from the source is roughly 80% water and 20% complex sugars. The enzymes in the bees’ stomachs break down the nectar into a fructose-glucose mixture and siphon off excess water.

Buzzing is heard from the hive as thousands of wings dry the honey

After about a half-hour of chewing and regurgitating the nectar, it is placed into a honeycomb cell for further drying. The hive maintains a roughly 95 F degree temperature and the bees coordinate flapping their wings to dry the honey to a 16-18% humidity. Once the proper humidity is achieved, the bees seal the honeycomb cell with a wax cap.

Honey is high-octane fuel allowing bees to do the impossible

The honey is used as fuel for the hive and is mixed with pollen to feed newborn bees.

2 million flowers = 1lb of honey

To produce one pound of honey, bees may fly over 55,000 miles and visit roughly two million flowers. Commercially a single hive can produce anywhere from 35-100 lbs of honey during a season. If a moisture content of roughly 17% or less is maintained, honey has an indefinite shelf-life.

The greenest footprint

Natural foods benefit their environment

Most naturally occurring foods provide some benefit to their environment, either as a food source to local insects and animals, by providing companion benefits to other plants and/or providing nutrients back to the soil during its decomposition.

Commercial agriculture has significant environmental costs

Most commercially produced foods require significant nutrients, processing and energy to make it from the farm to your table. Most commercially produced carbohydrates require significant watering, soil supplements and human or machine labor to plant, grow, harvest and process them for consumption.

Beekeeping supports healthy eco-systems & creates bio-diversity

Honey as a commercial food has one of the lowest environment footprints of all. In its simplest form. nectar sourcing and honey production requires no machines and no human intervention. The natural action of the bees’ cross-pollination promote healthy eco-systems and increased biodiversity around the hives.

Honey’s environmental footprint is light

During commercial beekeeping the energy and resources needed to bring the honey to market are generally confined to simple mechanical honey extracting machines and fuel costs for visiting hives and transporting the honey to stores near you.

Few food sources can claim improved eco-system health and biodiversity, along with such naturally low resource costs. Honey is by its nature one of the world’s greenest superfoods.