Honey: Sweet news for those who need antibiotics – new research published in the FASEB Journal confirms the antimicrobial property of honey and explains for the first time how it kills bacteria. “We’ve known for millennia that honey can be good for what ails us, but we haven’t known how it works,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the journal. The study shows that bees make a protein that they add to the honey, called defensin-1, which could one day be used to treat burns and skin infections, as well as potentially help combat synthetic antibiotic-resistant infections. The protein is part of the honey bee immune system and is added by the bees to the honey in the process of making it. Read More…
We often hear that an alkaline body is a healthy body and an acidic body is a disease-promoting environment. But do you know what this means? Being aware of the delicate pH balance of our bodies is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. This is directly affected by the foods we eat. Let’s explore how.
When it comes to the body and nutrition, it’s really all about the cell. The cell has to do a job, which is to keep us alive by providing us with energy to do what we need to do. The thing is, in this energy-generating process, the cell also creates waste byproducts. This is where pH comes in. The natural pH of blood is 7.365, but cellular byproducts are lower than that, what we would call acidic. Refreshing our memories from chem lab in school: The pH scale goes from 1-14, with 1 being the most acidic and 14 the most alkaline or “basic”. A pH of 7 is considered neutral. At 7.365, the healthy pH of our blood is slightly alkaline, while cellular byproducts are the opposite. Here is where our role in helping balance this out comes in – and the importance of food in this process. Read More…
Green: Harvesting…electrons? Yes. In an electrifying first, Stanford scientists have tapped the power of plants, as researchers looking for alternate sources of electricity experimented with plugging in to algae cells and succeeded in harnessing a tiny electric current. They found it at the very source of energy production – photosynthesis, a plant’s process of converting sunlight to chemical energy. This may be the first step toward generating high efficiency bioelectricity that doesn’t give off carbon dioxide as a byproduct. In the experiment the researchers intercepted the electrons (using gold electrodes) just after they had been excited by the light and were at their highest energy levels. “We believe we are the first to extract electrons out of living plant cells. This is potentially one of the cleanest energy sources for energy generation,” said WonHyoung Ryu, lead author of the paper published in Nano Letters. Read More…
