You have me dying to go out an try pollen, though I know for a fact I’m allergic already lol. Hay fever and spring allergies leave me a.mess but darn it if I don’t want to go an eat pollen now!
Comment on meat honey
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 8 hours agoIt totally is! I’m allergic to several types of pollen, also I live in the middle of the forest and am a beekeeper. My stomach hurts when I eat that stuff. Nothing of this stops me; I also love Spring. I feel quite sick now, too (well, cold weather came back and it’s a bit easier than 2 days ago). Good that I have mild allergy, I’d be dead by now if I had it hard. When birch flowers unusually hard, I sometimes have a symptom that feels like how people describe asthma.
Maybe some day I’ll get desensibilized enough, after eating this stuff regularly. Maybe I’ll die trying.
My neighbor doctor - also a beekeeper - says that many people who perceive honey as slightly spicy actually get allergic reaction from traces of pollen in it. He also thinks my strategy of eating pollen to overcome allergy should eventually work; I think I just like the taste too much to stop.
The trick with pollen I’ve discovered is that as soon as it is extracted from the honeycomb, it starts quickly degrading; whenever it’s sold, it’s bleak tasteless flavorless powder, not even close to explosion of flavor that happens when you chew on a fresh blob right from the honeycomb (usually with the honeycomb, who cares, it’s edible too. Almost everything inside the nest is edible, apart form the frames and other human-made nonsense). Apparently you can get the stuff only from an actual beekeeper (or by raiding wild bees nest probably, I think it’s not a good idea though), and I only figured it out when I started keeping bees!
Zoot@reddthat.com 8 hours ago
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 8 hours ago
Mind you, as far as I understand, bees convert it a bit too, so it might be somewhat slightly less aggressive than just flying particles in the air or sniffing a flower. Kind of “allergic vaccine” if that mechanism works, which, again, I’m not certain about.
crazycraw@crazypeople.online 8 hours ago
the thing is, eating the honey from the local area where you have allergies, helps your system build a tolerance to inflammation when encountering it.
i can only anecdotally claim “it helped me!” but it’s not like a universal allergy relief.
i would have thought you would have observed a difference to -something by now.
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 8 hours ago
I guess it’s getting a bit easier by the year; but I mean, until it’s gone completely, I couldn’t really tell. I’m basing my “strategy” on same anecdotic knowledge you mentioned, although I’ve never seen it proven right or wrong in a methodical research; I don’t really care, it’s not that if I know it for certain anything will change, I’ll just keep living here and eat the stuff.
crazycraw@crazypeople.online 7 hours ago
I went to look for a paper or other reputable source for my assertion, and to my surprise it is largely regarded as myth as the bees don’t consume the right vegetation to produce the right honey to counter things like tree pollen or grass.
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
What? I literally can see them collecting alder pollen in huge quantities, carrying it on their hind legs like cavalry pants and forming into highly nutritional tubes, it’s possible to trace them from tree to hive - well, it’s not that there is any other pollen source here now anyway. And when I collect honey, quite some amount of this stuff falls down into the tank, not mentioning cross contamination in “pollen is processed at the same facility” honey manufacturing business bees are running. At least that part of the story is certainly true, that gives some basis to disregarding the conclusions of the meta-research you found.