Can consuming too much bee pollen lead to problems later? Promoters say this natural substance is safe but the facts say otherwise. Read on and discover the truth in the last part of our series on pollen claims and facts.
CLAIM: Bee pollen has a very high concentration of RNA and DNA.
FACT: Fancy words like "a supplier of nucleic acids, RNA and DNA" make people think that pollen is that important. But these words mean it's dangerous.
DNA and RNA are acronyms of deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid respectively. These are part of all living cells but are not needed in the diet because we already have more than enough in the body.
"Furthermore, it is dangerous to consume too much. This has become an important public health problem over the past 20 or 30 years with the development of yeasts, algae, moulds and even bacteria as food," explained Arnold Bender in Health or Hoax?
The problem lies in the fact that too much DNA and RNA end up as uric acid - a threat to anyone's health.
"The potential dangers are so great that the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization have spent a great deal of time over the past 20 years in developing methods of reducing the levels of DNA and RNA in yeasts and algae," Bender added.
Yet pollen promoters insist we need these substances to make us look younger and reverse the aging process.
Perhaps, they're correct. After all, people can't grow old if they die young, right?
If the claims for pollen are wildly exaggerated, could those for royal jelly be far behind? Apparently not for this is another "magical" substance that carries a lot of wild claims.
Promoters of royal jelly said extensive studies on its efficacy have been conducted by scientists in China, Russia, the United States and Japan among others. Again, this is not true.
To date, no one has seen these fictitious studies. Neither will royal jelly make you gain weight, stop falling hair, cure hepatitis and ulcer or improve your memory.
What is royal jelly in the first place? It's the substance that changes the larva of the worker bee into a queen bee. Because of this, it is said to have rejuvenating properties.
While that may be true for bees, it certainly doesn't apply to humans. Bender said for humans to possibly benefit from royal jelly, we would have to eat 700,000 times as much as the bee larva does.
"The wild claims made for its rejuvenating properties are completely without foundation. It does contain vitamin B6 and another vitamin, pantothenic acid, but since both of these are plentifully supplied in ordinary foods, there can be no virtue in buying the jelly," he said.
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