《Cracked》Eating honey is good for diabetes! It will not increase blood sugar. Pharmacists act as guinea pigs themselves.

"The truth becomes clearer the more it is debated"! A hot topic that has recently become popular on the Internet, with doctors, nutritionists, and pharmacists all discussing it, is "Eating honey is very good for diabetes! It won't increase blood sugar!" It turns out that recently in the diabetes clinic, diabetic patients have repeatedly said that they have seen a doctor express this on TV, so they thought they could eat honey and drink honey water without worry. In order to "break" this idea, Pharmacist Rong used herself as an experiment. She drank a large bowl of honey water on an empty stomach in the morning and measured her blood sugar 11 times to tell everyone the truth!

When hearing the idea of ​​some diabetic patients eating honey and drinking honey water, Pharmacist Rong thought that this issue must be explored from three levels: Why is honey not good for diabetic patients? This question can be divided into several small questions for discussion. The first question is whether eating honey will affect blood sugar? The second question is whether eating honey for a long time can help improve blood sugar? The third question is whether different honeys have different effects on blood sugar?

In order to solve the problems at these three levels one by one, Pharmacist Rong began to experiment on himself. He did not have diabetes and was a healthy adult with normal blood sugar levels. The principle of the experiment is very simple. After eating honey, you can directly test your blood sugar to find out the answer. The method he conducted is as follows:

Question 1/Will eating honey affect blood sugar?

The honey consumed by Pharmacist Rong is longan honey purchased from a small farmer. The carbohydrate content of this honey is 84.3%, which is equivalent to 75 grams of sugar. He needs to consume 89 grams of honey.

In the next two hours after eating, he tested his blood sugar every 10-15 minutes, and the results were as follows:

After drinking honey water containing 75 grams of sugar, his blood sugar increased rapidly and took about 90 minutes to be completely metabolized. For comparison, he happened to have done a blood sugar test by taking 75 grams of glucose orally before.

Pharmacist Rong said that the results show that the blood sugar level increased by honey is not less than that of glucose, and it is more obvious if the two graphs are looked at together.

Pharmacist Rong is an adult with normal blood sugar metabolism without diabetes. However, her blood sugar still rose very high after eating honey, and the highest value was even higher than that after eating glucose. Moreover, her blood sugar returned to normal after about 70 minutes of eating glucose, but it took 90 minutes of eating honey to return to normal.

For normal adults like me, honey has a greater impact on blood sugar than glucose.

So, for diabetic patients, what is the effect of honey on blood sugar?

A 1985 study tested the effects of glucose, sucrose, and honey on diabetic patients. The results showed that honey increased blood sugar to a lesser extent than glucose and sucrose, but it still increased blood sugar.

The same was true in a 2011 study of children with type 1 diabetes. Although honey increased blood sugar levels slightly less than glucose and sucrose, it still increased blood sugar levels.

★【Conclusion 1】: Although the GI value of honey is lower than that of glucose, eating honey will definitely increase blood sugar.

Question 2/Will eating honey for a long time improve blood sugar?

Blood sugar tests show that eating honey will increase blood sugar, but is it possible that there is some mysterious substance in honey that can improve blood sugar if eaten for a long time?

There are not many studies on this topic. There was a Malaysian mouse experiment that was used to test the liver-protecting effects of a local Malaysian honey called tualang honey.

This study used 24 mice, 6 mice in each group, and 12 of them were given drugs to induce type 1 diabetes. According to the research results, after eating honey for four weeks, the honey did have some effect on the "mice" with type 1 diabetes, and their fasting blood sugar levels were lower. The graph looks beautiful, but the researchers mentioned in the paper that only the blood sugar levels in the fourth week reached a statistically significant difference. In other words, this result may be caused by insufficient number of mouse samples.

Also, this is just a study on mice, which only ate honey every day, so we can't directly apply such results to humans. There are not many similar studies on humans, but there is an Arab study that tested the effects of long-term consumption of honey on normal people.

The research results showed that after normal people drank honey for 15 consecutive days, their average fasting blood sugar dropped from 102.3 to 95.4, but this data did not reach a statistically significant difference, indicating that such a reduction is meaningless. In other words, eating honey for a long time has no blood sugar benefits for normal people.

As for whether it is good for diabetics to eat honey for a long time? I haven't found any research on this, but it makes sense that no one would want to participate in a study that requires diabetics to drink honey to improve their blood sugar.

★Conclusion 2: Eating honey for a long time cannot improve blood sugar in normal people, and the effect on diabetic patients is unclear. However, since honey can increase blood sugar in the short term, it is speculated that it cannot improve blood sugar in diabetic patients in the long term.

Question 3/Do different honeys have different effects on blood sugar?

Pharmacist Rong said that there are many kinds of honey and the prices vary greatly. A bottle of Manuka honey sold in organic stores costs 2,000 to 3,000 yuan, and a bottle of multi-flower honey sold in supermarkets costs 200 to 300 yuan. Some people also emphasize that only natural honey has magical effects, and buying fake honey will not only lose all its effects, but will also be harmful to health.

Is there a type of honey that is particularly good for improving blood sugar?

Germany conducted a study to sort out the sugar content, blood sugar-raising effect, and insulin-raising effect of eight types of honey in Germany.

The eight types of honey do have their own characteristics. Some have a GI value as low as 49.2, which is similar to carrots; some have a GI value as high as 88.6, which is higher than sucrose. But no matter what kind of honey it is, blood sugar will rise after eating it.

★Conclusion three: All honeys will increase blood sugar, and there is no magical honey that can lower blood sugar when eaten.

Honey is also a kind of sugar, so of course it will increase blood sugar!

Pharmacist Rong said that although different types of honey may be slightly different, honey is essentially sugar. Diabetics can eat honey, but they must regard honey as a substitute for sugar. The amount of honey they eat is equivalent to the amount of sugar they eat. People with diabetes wouldn't want to drink sugar water to treat diabetes, so they shouldn't drink honey to treat diabetes.

Nutritionist: Honey still raises blood sugar levels

In addition to pharmacist Rong doing the experiment on herself, nutritionist You Weiming also cited the experimental results to tell everyone: "Honey will increase blood sugar." The following is the experimental process and results of the effects of honey and glucose on the changes in blood sugar after fasting.

The glycemic response of 100% honey and glucose to T2 diabetes was tested. A total of 97 subjects, all of whom were type 2 diabetics, were randomly divided into 3 groups:

The subjects included: 62 women and 35 men, aged between 25 and 68 years old, of whom some were on diet control (6), some were using oral hypoglycemic drugs (65), and some were using insulin and oral hypoglycemic drugs (26).

Experimental conditions: After measuring blood sugar levels on an empty stomach, Group 1 was given 75g of honey, Group 2 was given 30g of honey, and Group 3 was given 75g of glucose. Blood sugar levels were measured and compared after 1 hour and 2 hours.

result:

A. Group 1 (75g honey), Group 2 (30g honey)

Blood sugar levels peak in the first hour and then drop in the second hour.

B. Group 3 (75g glucose)

Blood glucose levels continued to rise at 1 hour and 2 hours.

C. Overall, the average blood sugar rise in the second hour

Group 1: 85 mg/dl, Group 2: 30 mg/dl, Group 3: 170 mg/dl.

D. If the fasting blood sugar of each group is used as the baseline, the blood sugar value measured in the second hour is compared

Blood sugar increased ≤ 50 mg/dl

Group 1: 28%, Group 2: 68%, Group 3: 0%

Blood sugar increased ≥ 200 mg/dl

Group 1: 2%, Group 2: 0%, Group 3: 13.3%

Blood sugar did not increase, but decreased

Group 1 0%, Group 2 10.7%, Group 3 0%

Nutritionist’s conclusion:

1. After eating honey, blood sugar levels will still increase.

2. For the same weight of honey and glucose, honey increases blood sugar less than glucose.

3. In the second group, 10.7% of the subjects ate 30g of honey on an empty stomach, and their blood sugar actually decreased. If diabetic patients are taking medication or insulin supplements, they must take in enough sugar to maintain blood sugar balance and avoid hypoglycemia symptoms.

Nutritionist’s words:

Nutritionist You Weiming said that honey is nectar collected from many medicinal plants. Its nutrients include monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, organic acids, protein enzymes, phytochemicals and natural flavor compounds. Its high nutritional value is self-evident. It is definitely better than refined sugar on the market. Diabetic patients who use honey instead of refined sugar will have a smaller increase in blood sugar, so it is an excellent source of nutritional sweeteners. However, don’t forget that the World Health Organization recommends that people’s “refined sugar intake should be less than 5% of total daily calories.”

A friendly reminder: 100% honey in Taiwan costs about NT$200 per catty. If it is too cheap, be careful as it may be "fake honey". It may be mixed with high fructose syrup, spices, pigments, thickeners, flavors, etc. to make it look real. If diabetics accidentally eat it, it will be terrible.

References provided by pharmacist Rong:

Samanta, A., AC Burden, and AR Jones. “Plasma glucose responses to glucose, sucrose, and honey in patients with diabetes mellitus: an analysis of glycaemic and peak incremental indices.” Diabetic medicine 2.5 (1985): 371-373.

Abdulrhman, Mamdouh, et al. “The glycemic and peak incremental indices of honey, sucrose and glucose in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus: effects on C-peptide level—a pilot study.” Acta Diabetologica 48.2 (2011): 89-94.

Erejuwa, OO, et al. “Hepatoprotective effect of tualang honey supplementation in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.” International Journal of Applied Research in Natural Products 4.4 (2012): 37-41.

Al-Waili, Noori S. "Natural honey lowers plasma glucose, C-reactive protein, homocysteine, and blood lipids in healthy, diabetic, and hyperlipidemic subjects: comparison with dextrose and sucrose." Journal of medicinal food 7.1 (2004): 100-107.

Deibert, P., et al. “Glycaemic and insulinaemic properties of some German honey varieties.” European journal of clinical nutrition 64.7 (2010): 762-764.