Nature's Perfect Nutritional Supplement, an srticle on Bee Pollen by TFX
This was written for an issue of The Healthy Bulldog back in 2002 or 2003.
NATURE’S PERFECT NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENT
BY TFX
In this issue of The Healthy Bulldog, I wish to share with the readers another health promoting substance that I have used for many years with both the dogs, and myself.
Ancient text from virtually every corner of the world, praise the virtues of what is often called “nature’s perfect food”, Honey Bee Pollen. Ancient Egyptian, Asian, American writings, and even Holy Writ such as The Bible, leads one to understand that bees and the products of the hive have long been revered as important staples in the human diet. I submit to the readers, that the health benefits of this substance are also directly applicable to our beloved working canines as well.
Pollen from plants is the male seed of flowers. Pollen is essential for the fertilization of these plants. Every variety of flowers on earth put forth a dusting of pollen. In addition to flowers, many fruit orchards and other food crops do as well.
Bee Pollen is the food of young bees, and is comprised of about 40% protein. It is considered one of nature’s most complete foods. Roughly one half of the protein in bee pollen is in the form of free amino acids that are easily assimilated by the body. While most of us who enjoy dogs as a hobby think of meats as the best method of giving our dogs quality protein, bee pollen contains more protein than any animal source. It also contains more amino acids than eggs, beef, or cheese.
The gathering of this pollen by bees is a difficult task. Once a honeybee arrives at a flower, she settles herself in, and scrapes the dusty pollen with her jaws and legs, dampening it with a small amount of honey brought from the hive. The bee’s legs have thick bristles called pollen combs, used to brush the gold powder from their coat and legs when in flight. By moving the auricle she pushes this gathered substance into her baskets. Her pollen baskets are simply concave areas located on the outside of her tibias. When the baskets are fully loaded, the microscopic golden colored dust has been tamped down into a single granule. It’s interesting to note that a single teaspoon takes a honeybee one-month of 8-hour days to gather. Also of interest is that each pollen granule contains two million pollen grains, and a single teaspoon full contains over 2.5 billion grains of flower pollen. That statistic almost makes me feel guilty, as I casually throw out about 3 or 4 teaspoons full on top of a dog’s food for a maintenance dose. As bees go from plant to plant collecting this pollen, they also work to pollinate up to 80% of all plants. We can see that bees play an important role in the balance of nature.
Unlike the Germanium substance that I shared with the readers in the last issue of The Healthy Bulldog, honeybee pollen cannot be synthesized in a laboratory. Any attempts at laboratory-synthesized pollen have failed to sustain bees, even though most of the nutrients are present in the manmade concoctions. There are however, some elements present in bee pollen that cannot yet be identified. Perhaps it is these unknown substances; in addition to being packed with other known health promoting nutrients that enables bee pollen to work wonders in keeping us, and our dogs healthy and strong.
Bee pollen contains all the essential components of life. That’s right, you and I can exist solely on bee pollen and water. (It would probably be a much healthier diet than what many of us consume on a regular basis!) The nutritional value of bee pollen exceeds that of brewers yeast or wheat germ, which are also known to have great nutritional benefits. Pollen works well to correct or balance diets that are nutritionally deficient.
Some of the reasons people use pollen is to increase endurance, aid recovery from chronic illness, reduce addiction cravings, regulate the intestines, and fight mild illness such as cold and flu. The excellent nutritional value of bee pollen is said by many to have an effect against cancer, to purify and build new blood, and to extend longevity. Indeed, in a small village in Russia where people were found to have amazing life spans; many of them up to 125 years of age and still physically active, it was discovered that they were bee keepers, who consumed products from the beehive including pollen and raw honey.
In addition to all of the nutritional benefits, researchers have demonstrated that bee pollen also has an antibiotic factor effective against salmonella, and some strains of bacteria. Laboratory tests also confirm a considerable and simultaneous increase of both red and white blood cells respectively. It is also reported that bee pollen in the diet works to normalize cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood. While taking bee pollen, the HDL (good cholesterol) is found to increase, while the LDL (bad cholesterol) decreases. The cholesterol regulation in the body is likely helped in large part by the high percentage of lecithin in bee pollen. Bee pollen has also been found in laboratory studies to increase levels of blood lymphocytes, gamma globulins, and proteins as compared with subjects who were not given the bee pollen. The largest difference between the two groups was in lymphocytes, which are an integral part of the immune system.
Our government usually works against most natural remedies through the FDA. However, some of the strongest evidence of bee pollen as a health promoting substance comes from the USDA, in a report entitled “Delay in the Appearance of Palpable Mammary Tumors in C3H Mice Following the Ingestion of Pollenized Food”, by Dr. William Robinson of the Bureau of Entomology, Agriculture Research Administration. This report was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in October 1948. In a nutshell, a strain of mice was used that all showed development of tumors at an average of 33 weeks of age. Cancer was actually bred into these mice, and they died on average at week 33. In a very scant 1 to 10,000 ratio of bee pollen to mice chow, the onset of tumors was delayed an average of 9 weeks. Are we beginning to see how this substance can help with cancers in our dogs, not to mention in ourselves? Yes, bee pollen truly is an exciting substance.
How many of us have now, or have owned in the past an excellent specimen of the breed, which had problems that prevented them from producing offspring for us? I know I have. One of the other benefits of bee pollen is that it stimulates ovarian function. As with the tests mentioned above by the USDA, the ration of bee pollen that was used in testing to significantly stimulate ovarian function was extremely small. Even in brood bitches that may not have fertility problems per se, by using pollen we can effectively increase the percentage of eggs available for reproduction. I would highly recommend bee pollen to anyone who cares about getting a large litter pups, as the bee pollen also increases the egg’s ability to withstand the incubation period.
Bee Pollen is also very effective in treating allergies of all kinds. In fact, one Doctor found that allergy patients who diligently used the pollen over the span of three years, were cured of all previous allergies. Personally I like to use locally produced bee pollen. However, another school of though promotes the use of blended pollen from all over the USA to give a wider spectrum of nutrients. Regardless, good common sense tells us that if we are allergic to something such as pollen from trees, this same pollen gathered by bees is basically giving us small doses of these allergens, and we then build up a resistance to them. This is similar to giving injections to build immunity to serious illness in both humans and animals, except the pollen is nature’s way of keeping us and our dogs allergy free.
Bee pollen has been touted as a performance-enhancing supplement for many years. It really came to the forefront of the sports world with the dominating performance of the 1972 Olympic Track team from Finland. In 1968, the Finnish team was ranked about 27th in the world. By 1972, they were ranked 5th in the world! According to their coach Antii Lananaki, the only thing they changed in their training was that most of his athletes were taking bee pollen. In other sports related studies, pollen was found to cause a definite decrease in pulse rate. Hello bulldog conditioners! Those who are familiar with Millmaker’s keep for example, understand the importance of heart rate in performance dogs.
I could go on and on about the benefits of bee pollen. Suffice it to say the benefits are many. It is a totally natural supplement, and quite cost effective allowing for its liberal use. Most people; including those in the medical and veterinary communities, prefer to be reactive and treat external symptoms of illness as they crop up. Bee pollen works to treat the body internally, keeping the body in a state of health so as to resist disease or illness of any kind proactively.
When you do have sudden illness hit your yard of dogs, bee pollen is a wonderful way to get them back on their feet. I recently had a pup that showed all of the symptoms of parvovirus. Those familiar with parvo know of the retched odor usually associated with this virus, so I am quite sure that is what the pup was stricken with. I forced her to eat some pollen, and the next morning she was acting spry and very much desirous to eat and drink, whereas she was vomiting and had projectile liquid diarrhea only 10 hours prior. I only forced a little bit of the pollen into her mouth. The following day I had another in the same pen show similar symptoms. She was in much worse shape, with a lot of muscle wasting already taking place and very dehydrated. She in fact was basically lying in the corner to waiting to die, and when I got her on her feet was curled up, stiff, and in very bad shape. My cure for her was to force her to eat about ½ teaspoon of the pollen, and I gave her a very brisk massage, as her body was extremely tense from the profuse vomiting and loose bowels. The next morning, she too was out of the house at the feed pan eagerly waiting for the morning feeding. This is but one instance where it’s worked for me most recently. I’ve also used it on dogs I worked for shows as part of their feed regimen. Like the Ge132 I wrote about in the last issue, in retrospect I have not used this substance nearly enough in the dog yard over the years. Bee pollen is so affordable that there is no excuse not to use it regularly for maintenance. The dogs enjoy it also. When sprinkled on their food it is the first thing they choose to eat. For those with overweight dogs, bee pollen will help the dogs lose weight. Pollen contains a natural occurring amino acid called Phenylanaline. Over the counter weight loss aids contain a synthetic version of this substance called Phenylpropanolamine. Phenylanaline helps regulate ones appetite and maintain correct body weight by acting on the body’s appestat, the center in the body that controls hunger and fullness.
My first preference in obtaining bee pollen as I mentioned previously is local pollen. Whether local or shipped from elsewhere, make sure it is not cheap imported pollen that is heat processed and dehydrated for long shelf life. When you find pollen in your health food store, you will find good fresh pollen in the refrigerator if the health food store is worth its salt. The reason for this is bee pollen is a food, containing lipids and enzymes, and it will spoil. While dehydrated pollen may last longer and be more convenient, it will not contain all of the nutritional benefits of fresh pollen. You will notice that fresh pollen is somewhat moist. For sheer affordability, I would recommend Winners Bee Pollen for horses if the $12 to $15 per lb. for local pollen makes it cost prohibitive for you. Winners Be Pollen can be purchased for about $3.50 per lb. if purchased in bulk. Most of the famous racehorse trainers use bee pollen regularly, and have witnessed performance gains while using it. As Mr. Whittingham once said “it’s like bringing the pasture to the barn”. Horses obviously forage for their feed much more than dogs do, but it’s not all that unusual to see a dog chewing on grasses and plants, which I always believed meant that he was searching for something that was deficient in his diet.
Use caution when introducing bee pollen into either a dog’s diet or your own. It’s a food that is packed with nutrition, and can sometimes; albeit rare, cause an allergic reaction. Always build up slowly to the desired dose when using any product from the hive. I hope that all that try the bee pollen find it as beneficial as I have over the years, and as countless laboratory experiments have also proven it to be.
