A new study found a daily dose of healing honey and “magical” Nigella sativa seeds slashed COVID recovery time, hospital stays, and mortality rates by 4-fold versus placebo or ~75%.
Since the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020, the world has urgently needed safe, effective, accessible treatments beyond vaccines to combat the ongoing crisis.1 But most antiviral drug candidates have proven disappointing so far, with limited efficacies, concerning side effects, and prohibitive costs that restrict global access.2
Due to this problem, researchers have increasingly probed traditional herbal remedies as safe, economical solutions against morbidity and mortality attributed to viral infections like COVID-19. Now, exciting new clinical findings from Pakistan suggest that age-old healing honey combined with the aspiring “magical seeds” of Nigella sativa — known traditionally as the “remedy for everything but death” — dramatically beat placebo at saving COVID lives.3
In this rigorous double-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, 313 COVID-positive adults with moderate or severe disease were provided either a daily mix of natural honey and Nigella sativa or an inactive placebo for 13 days along with standard care.4 The tested black cumin seeds contain thymoquinone, which has performed well on influenza patients in past studies.5 And honey boasts proven broad-spectrum antimicrobial action against respiratory viruses.6
The doses used in the study were:
- Honey: 1 gm per kg body weight per day (e.g. a 150 lb person would consume 4.25 grams a day, or about 2/3rd a teaspoon worth of honey a day)
- Nigella sativa seeds: 80 mg per kg body weight per day (e.g. a 150 lb person would consume 340 milligrams a day)
Compared to placebo, this sweet bee nectar and tiny “magic seed” combo revealed the following key clinical results:
- Alleviation of COVID-19 symptoms occurred around 50% faster with honey + Nigella sativa versus placebo (4 days vs 7 days for moderate cases; 6 days vs 13 days for severe cases)
- Viral clearance was around 4 days faster with honey + Nigella sativa versus placebo based on PCR tests becoming negative
- In moderate cases, 64% resumed normal activities at day 6 with honey + Nigella sativa versus only 11% with placebo
- In severe cases, 50% were discharged from the hospital at day 6 with honey + Nigella sativa versus only 3% with placebo
- Mortality rate was 4 times lower with honey + Nigella sativa versus placebo in severe cases (4% vs 19%)
- No adverse effects were observed with the honey + Nigella sativa combination
This landmark study demonstrates that while rushed mRNA jabs flounder with tremendous pitfalls, nature’s ancient gifts bring safer, cheaper and more effective relief to those suffering.
Even if a safe and effective vaccine existed for COVID-19, for logistcal and financial reasons they would likely still remain out of reach for much of the developing world. In light of this, honey and and Nigella sativa could save thousands more vulnerable lives if research like this was more widely known, competing as it does with pharmaceutical interests.7
Global health authorities should fast-track further gold-standard investigations into these traditional, cost-effective adjuvants against what has been largely billed as humanity’s greatest modern threat.8
When it comes to the supposed aim of international health authorities at defeating COVID-19, honey and “magic seeds” show ancient food-based healing traditions may still remain indispensable in preserving the health and well-being of our species, now, and long into the future.
Learn more about these ancient healing traditions increasingly validated by science by reading REGENERATE: Unlocking Your Body’s Radical Resilience with the New Biology here.
Learn more about the health benefits of Black Seed (Nigella Sativa) on our database on the subject here.
Learn about natural approaches to Coronavirus infection here.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON ‘GERM THEORY’ AND COVID-19: Discussion of COVID-19 and infectious disease often comes with a wide range of unexamined assumptions, including the presumed lethality of viral particles, or even that viruses per se exist as classically defined by virologists. This is not something that should go without discussion and debate, as the topic deserves a much deeper exploration than is presently being conducted by the mainstream media and conventional medical authorities. In order to rectify this conspicuous lacunae, Sayer Ji has presented an alternative perspective which calls into question conventional models of infectious disease and contagion attributed to viruses, replacing it with what he calls the Xenogen Hypothesis. Learn more by watching his two presentations on the topic. 1) Covid-19: is it really about a virus? And 2) A New Biophysical Paradigm: Viruses, Exosomes, & Infection with Sayer Ji.
References
1. World Health Organization. WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19. Published March 11, 2020. Accessed February 26, 2023. https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—11-march-2020
2. Agarwal A, Mukherjee A, Kumar G, Chatterjee P, Bhatnagar T, Malhotra P. Convalescent plasma in the management of moderate COVID-19 in adults in India: open label phase II multicentre randomised controlled trial (PLACID Trial). BMJ. 2020;371:m3939. Published 2020 Oct 22. doi:10.1136/bmj.m3939
3. Ashraf S, Ashraf S, Ashraf M, et al. Efficacy of honey and Nigella sativa against COVID-19: A multi-center, randomized controlled trial. Phytother Res. 2023;37(1):337-345. doi:10.1002/ptr.7444 [download the full study pdf here]
4. Ashraf S, et al 2023.
5. Salem ML, Hossain MS. Protective effect of black seed oil from Nigella sativa against murine cytomegalovirus infection. Int J Immunopharmacol. 2000;22(9):729‐740. doi:10.1016/s0192-0561(00)00036-9
6. Woidtke S, Schüpfer G, Werner S, Haas J, Kramer M, Hagen R, Kleuser B, Bereswill S, Antiviral Activity of Honey Against Common Cold Viruses, Molecules 2021, 26(12), 3628, https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules26123628
7. Ashraf S, et al 2023.
8. Vaughan AM, Preston MD, L recent evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in humans was shaped by negative selection and antigenic drift, eLife 2021, 10, e65828, DOI: 10.7554/eLife.65828
