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Innovation in Sports Nutrition:
Ingredients/ Bee Pollen |
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Custom Sports Drinks
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Bee PollenBee pollen is the food of the young bee and it is approximately 40% protein. Bee pollen is often referred to as nature's most complete food. Human consumption of bee pollen is praised in the Bible, other religious books, and ancient Chinese and Egyptian texts. It has long been prescribed by traditional health practitioners-including the fathers of Western medicine Hippocrates, Pliny the Elder, and Pythagoras-for its healing properties.Bee pollen rejuvenates your body, stimulates organs and glands, enhances vitality, and brings about a longer life span. Bee pollen's ability to consistently and noticeably increase energy levels makes it a favorite substance among many world class athletes and those interested in sustaining and enhancing quality performance. Bee pollen contains most of the known nutrients, including all of those necessary for human survival. When compared to any other food, it contains a higher percentage of all necessary nutrients. Bee pollen is approximately 25% complete protein containing at least 18 amino acids. In addition, bee pollen provides more than a dozen vitamins, 28 minerals, 11 enzymes or co-enzymes, 14 beneficial fatty acids, 11 carbohydrates, and is rich in minerals, the full spectrum of vitamins, and hormones. It is low in calories. Bee pollen provides anti-oxidants that scavenge free radicals caused by exposure to radiation, chemical pollutants, and other intense physical or emotional stressors. Radiation and chemical pollutants are known as the two most severe stressors to your immune system. According to the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency, the two premier health monitoring organizations in the world, this year you will be exposed to over 200 different forms of radioactive toxins and over 60,000 different chemical toxins. Gathering pollen is not as easy as it sounds. Once a honeybee arrives at a flower, she settles herself in and nimbly scrapes off the powdery loose pollen from the stamen with her jaws and front legs, moistening it with a dab of the honey she brought with her from the hive. The enlarged and broadened tarsal segments of her legs have a thick trimming of bristles, called pollen combs. The bee uses these combs to brush the gold powder from her coat and legs in mid-flight. With a skillful pressing movement of her auricle, which is used as a hammer, she pushes the gathered gold into her baskets. Her pollen baskets, surrounded by a fringe of long hairs, are simply concave areas located on the outside of her tibias. When the bee's baskets are fully loaded, the microscopic golden dust has been tamped down into a single golden grain, or granule. One of the most interesting facts about bee pollen is that it cannot be synthesized in a laboratory. When researchers take away a bee's pollen-filled comb and feed her manmade pollen, the bee dies even though all the known nutrients are present in the lab-produced synthesized food. Many thousands of chemical analyses of bee pollen have been made with the very latest diagnostic equipment, but there are still some elements present in bee pollen that science cannot identify. The bees add some mysterious "extra" of their own. These unidentifiable elements may very well be the reason bee pollen works so spectacularly against so many diverse conditions of ill health. |