Royal Jelly has been used in traditional medicine since ancient times, especially in Asian and ancient Egyptian bee therapy, it is currently used in the field of pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, and is sold as an over-the-counter functional food (Other common bee products include bee pollen, honey, and propolis)
Various studies have reported the antibacterial effect of royal jelly on bacteria, fungi, and viruses while observing blood pressure lowering, anti-tumor, anti-high cholesterol, and anti-inflammatory effects in animal models.
What are the benefits of royal jelly supplements? Are there any side effects?
Table of Contents
- What is royal jelly?
- What are the components of royal jelly?
- What are the benefits of royal jelly recommended?
- 1. Royal jelly reduces cholesterol
- 2. Royal Jelly promotes health
- 3. Royal jelly is beneficial for blood sugar control
- 4. Royal Jelly is beneficial to systemic lupus erythematosus
- 5. Royal jelly improves premenstrual syndrome
- 6. Royal jelly improves symptoms of menopause
- 7. Royal jelly improves cancer-induced fatigue
- 8. Royal jelly is beneficial for dry eye
- 9. Royal jelly is good for oral mucositis
- 10. Royal jelly improves skin aging
- Are there any side effects of royal jelly?
- How to eat royal jelly? When is the best time to eat?
- Where to buy high-quality royal jelly products (recommended)?
What is royal jelly?
Royal Jelly is a white or light yellow creamy substance secreted by bees’ jaws and hypopharyngeal glands. This is the only food for queen bees in larvae and adulthood.
Compared with worker bees’ food (pollen, nectar, and honey mixture), royal jelly contains less water and four times more sugar, more protein, and different concentrations of mineral salts.
This unique composition of royal jelly leads to changes in gene expression (through an epigenetic mechanism), making queen bees and worker bees very different in lifespan and physical function. For example, queen bees can live to 5 years old (worker bees usually live for 45 days), and daily Can produce 2000-3000 eggs.
What are the components of royal jelly?
From a chemical point of view, royal jelly is a milky substance composed of 67% water, 16% sugar, 12.5% protein and amino acids, and 5% fat. In addition, it contains about 1.5% of mineral salts (mainly copper, zinc, iron, calcium, manganese, potassium, and sodium) and small amounts of flavonoids, polyphenols, and vitamins (biotin, folic acid, inositol, nicotinic acid, Pantothenic acid, riboflavin, thiamine, vitamin E).
What are the benefits of royal jelly recommended?
1. Royal jelly reduces cholesterol
Cholesterol is an important part of cell membranes and steroid hormones. The body can synthesize most of the required cholesterol, and the rest comes from diet.
Because cholesterol is not soluble in blood, it is packaged with proteins and phospholipids to form lipoprotein complexes circulating in the blood, including high-density lipoprotein (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein (LDL-C), and extremely low-Density lipoprotein (VLDL-C) and chylomicrons.
The American Heart Association (AHA) estimates that more than 100 million Americans have high cholesterol levels (>200 mg/dL), and 34 million of them need further treatment.
A randomized, placebo-controlled study (a three-month period involving 40 patients with mild hypercholesterolemia) pointed out that oral administration of royal jelly can significantly reduce serum total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels.
In addition, triglyceride and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels did not change significantly.
*Conclusion: Royal jelly may have a positive effect on regulating cholesterol, but it is limited by the small sample size, and more research is needed to prove it
2. Royal Jelly promotes health
Health, as defined by the World Health Organization, refers to the state of complete physical, social, and mental health, not just the absence of disease or weakness.
And proper nutrition is necessary for growth, development, physical activity, reproduction, lactation, recovery from disease and injury, and maintaining health throughout the life cycle.
A randomized placebo-controlled double-blind trial (6 months, 61 healthy adults) pointed out that compared with non-edible subjects, consumption of royal jelly (daily dose of 100 ml) in addition to promoting mental health (with SF- 36 scales), but also improve red blood cell counts, hematocrit, fasting blood glucose, insulinogenic index, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA-S).
*Conclusion: Ingestion of royal jelly can help improve erythropoiesis, glucose tolerance, and mental health, and maybe potentially helpful for health promotion.
3. Royal jelly is beneficial for blood sugar control
Diabetes is a chronic metabolic syndrome manifested by hyperglycemia. Since there is no mature treatment, it must be treated by regular injection of insulin and related drugs on the basis of careful monitoring of blood glucose levels.
Maintaining blood glucose control is critical to the patient’s quality of life, and can avoid serious secondary complications, such as microvascular and macrovascular changes in diabetic neuropathy, nephropathy, and retinopathy.
A systematic literature review and meta-analysis (including 5 randomized controlled trials with a total of 335 participants) pointed out that although oral royal jelly can reduce fasting plasma glucose and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), the range not statistically significant.
*Conclusion: Oral royal jelly does not significantly help blood sugar control, but it is limited by the methodological issues and potential interference factors of the included studies and more studies are still needed to confirm its clinical benefits.
4. Royal Jelly is beneficial to systemic lupus erythematosus
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that can affect all ages, ethnicities, and genders, but more than 90% of new SLE patients are women of childbearing age.
Systemic lupus erythematosus is characterized by multi-system microvascular inflammation, which produces a large number of autoantibodies, especially antinuclear antibodies (ANA). Common symptoms include fever, discomfort, joint pain, myalgia, headache, appetite, and weight loss, which can cause severe Nephritis, nervous system problems, anemia, and thrombocytopenia.
An open-label study (12-week period, targeting 20 children with systemic lupus erythematosus) pointed out that oral fresh royal jelly (daily dose 2 g) can not only improve the systemic lupus erythematosus disease activity score (SLEDAI), but also help To increase CD4+ and CD8+ regulatory T cells, and reduce the number of apoptotic CD4 T lymphocytes.
*CD4+ and CD8+ regulatory T cells are related to peripheral immune tolerance. If too low, they may cause autoimmune diseases.
* Increased lymphocyte apoptosis is also one of the causes of SLE.
*Conclusion: Oral royal jelly can help improve clinical severity scores and related disease biomarkers and may have a positive effect on disease control, but it is limited to small samples and more large-scale randomized controlled studies are needed to confirm clinical benefits.
5. Royal jelly improves premenstrual syndrome
Premenstrual syndrome is a common disease of women of childbearing age, characterized by a series of physical and psychological discomfort beginning in the premenstrual period (the incidence rate is between 30% and 80%)
Common symptoms include swelling of the limbs, gastrointestinal problems (loss of appetite), headache, anxiety, depression, fatigue, edema, arthralgia, muscle pain, back pain, breast tenderness, etc. These symptoms also often vary greatly depending on the person or time. It even affects family, social, or work.
The causes of premenstrual syndrome are still widely divided, but the biggest factor is attributed to hormonal fluctuations. Others such as neurotransmitters, prostaglandins, stress, age, diet, drugs, marital status, and lifestyle also have an impact, so symptomatic treatment There is a certain degree of difficulty.
A randomized, three-blind placebo-controlled trial (a 2-month period involving 110 female college students with premenstrual syndrome and no reproductive system disease or use of painkillers) found that oral royal jelly (daily dose of 1000 mg) had Helped to improve the premenstrual syndrome score (premenstrual score, average change value reached 11.75 points), compared with 1.20 points in the placebo group, and there were no side effects.
*Conclusion: Oral royal jelly capsules can help reduce the severity of the premenstrual syndrome, but it is limited by the small sample size and the execution period is too short, and further large-scale, high-quality tests are needed to corroborate.
6. Royal jelly improves symptoms of menopause
Menopause refers to the period when the menstrual cycle stops gradually. It occurs between the ages of 40 and 50. It is mainly caused by changes in estrogen and progesterone. It is roughly divided into three stages, perimenopause (a period before complete menopause), menopause (complete menopause), postmenopause (after menopause).
Most of the main symptoms of menopause appear 8 to 10 years before menopause. Common symptoms include hot flashes, night sweats, difficulty falling asleep, memory disorders, vaginal dryness, headache, palpitations, joint stiffness, and urinary incontinence.
It is estimated that up to 85% of women have experienced menopausal symptoms throughout their lives.
A double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial (12 weeks, 42 healthy postmenopausal women, suffering from menopausal symptoms, and not receiving any menopausal drug treatment pointed out.
Oral queen bee milk capsules (daily dose 800 mg) can help improve anxiety, back pain, and low back pain (as measured by the menopausal symptoms questionnaire).
The underlying mechanism may be related to the fatty acid contained in royal jelly (such as decanoic acid 10HDA and 10HDAA) that have estrogen receptor β regulating properties, promote serotonin production and increase blood flow.
*Conclusion: Orally administered royal jelly may help relieve the symptoms of menopause discomfort, especially the improvement of anxiety, back pain, and low back pain, but it is limited by the small sample size, and more studies are still needed to further verify.
7. Royal jelly improves cancer-induced fatigue
Cancer-Related Fatigue is mainly defined as a sustained, subjective sense of fatigue associated with cancer or cancer treatment, disproportionate to recent activities, and interferes with normal functions (including radiation therapy, chemotherapy, hormones) Treatment or biological treatment).
In most studies, 30%-60% of patients have reported moderate to severe fatigue during treatment, which in some cases may lead to interruption of treatment, and some may continue to feel for 10 years after being diagnosed with cancer Fatigue has a negative impact on work, social relations, emotions, and daily activities.
A randomized double-blind controlled trial (a 4-week, 52 cancer patients receiving hormone therapy, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy) pointed out that compared with the control group using only honey, royal jelly and honey can significantly improve cancer fatigue (Measured by visual analogue fatigue scale/fatigue severity scale).
The underlying mechanism may be related to the royal jelly’s antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, and immunomodulatory properties.
*Conclusion: For fatigue caused by cancer treatment, oral administration of royal jelly and honey may bring relief effect, but it is limited by the small sample size and short intervention period, which still needs further verification by long-term large-scale trials.
8. Royal jelly is beneficial for dry eye
Dry eye syndrome is a multi-factor of tears and ocular surface diseases. It is related to a lack of tears or excessive evaporation, which can cause burning, photophobia, tearing, and a sense of gravel. Although this condition rarely causes vision loss, it may reduce the quality of life when symptoms appear.
In epidemiological research, according to the definition and diagnosis of the disease, as well as the surveyed population, geographical location, climate, and other conditions, the prevalence is between 7.4% and 33.7%.
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study (for 8 weeks, for 43 patients with dry eye) pointed out that oral queen bee milk tablets (daily dose of 1200 mg x6) can improve tear secretion, especially with the Schirmer baseline Objects with a Schirmer value ≤10 mm are the most significant.
The underlying mechanism may be related to the royal jelly’s antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, increased ATP, mitochondrial function, and AMPK phosphorylation.
*Conclusion: For patients with dry eye, ingestion of royal jelly can help increase the number of tears secreted, which is positively helpful for the improvement of the condition, but more large-scale trials are still needed for further verification
9. Royal jelly is good for oral mucositis
Oral mucositis is one of the most common side effects of patients with head and neck cancer (such as oral cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer and esophageal cancer) after undergoing chemoradiation. Chemotherapy patients have an incidence of about 15-40%, while radiation therapy Approaching 100%.
The main symptoms of oral mucositis are mucosal tissue ulcers, which cause pain, dysphagia, speech disorders, and even cause bacterial infections in severe cases, leading to serious complications such as sepsis.
A study (13 people) found that preventive use of royal jelly helps reduce the incidence of oral mucositis caused by cancer radiation and chemotherapy.
After radiotherapy, Grade 3 mucositis was only observed in 71.4% of royal jelly users, compared with 100% in the control group.
10. Royal jelly improves skin aging
90% of human skin is composed of collagen, which can maintain skin elasticity and fullness, but generally after 25 years of age, collagen will gradually lose, and symptoms of early age will appear.
And when women reach menopause, the lack of estrogen will cause skin aging to increase, wrinkles dryness and loss of elasticity, and other skin problems.
Although estrogen replacement therapy can significantly improve skin aging problems, its long-term use of cancer risks are often prohibitive.
An animal study (the subject is an experimental rat lacking estrogen after ovariectomy) found that royal jelly helps to increase the collagen production capacity of skin cells, and may be used as a natural ingredient (with beauty effects) to fight skin aging.
Are there any side effects of royal jelly?
For most people, taking royal jelly in moderation is very safe, but some side effects or adverse reactions have been reported, most of which are related to allergies to bee-related products, including asthma, contact dermatitis, gastrointestinal discomfort, and systemic allergies. Reactions, etc., may even cause death from shock.
Side effects
1. Patients with asthma or those who have been allergic to pollen, honey, propolis, and other bee-related products (may cause severe allergic reactions, royal jelly proteins MRJP-1 and MRJP-2 are considered to be the main allergens).
2. People with allergies are best to try a small amount (about 0.1 g) before use. If you find symptoms such as itching of the oropharynx, digestive disorders, difficulty breathing, excessive mucus secretion, rash, etc., please stop using it immediately.
3. Do not use for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and those with poor liver and kidney function (the relevant safety is still unknown).
4. May have blood pressure lowering effects (please be careful for patients with low blood pressure or those taking related blood pressure-lowering drugs).
5. May interfere with the metabolism of anticoagulant drugs and make the drug effect worse, so do not take them together.
6. Animal and in vitro studies indicate that the medium-chain fatty acids (decenoic acid and sebacic acid) in royal jelly have estrogen activity and can regulate estrogen signaling, followed by activation of endogenous gene expression (although not yet in humans Found the same effect), but for safety, it is still recommended not to use in patients with diseases related to estrogen sensitivity. The 10 related symptoms are as follows.
- Breast fibroids
- Breast cancer
- Endometrial cancer
- Uterine fibroids
- Endometriosis
- Endometrial hyperplasia
- Colorectal cancer
- Ovarian cancer
- Gynecomastia
- Precocious puberty in girls
- Excessive menstruation
7. Do not use in pre-pubertal children and young children, royal jelly may have a hormonal effect, which may lead to early appearance of sexual characteristics or stunting
How to eat royal jelly? When is the best time to eat?
According to the current research, the optimal dosage of royal jelly depends on the situation. Generally, the recommended dosage is 1 to 5 grams per day, and it should be used continuously for 30-90 days, followed by 10-30 days of rest.
Royal jelly can be taken once a day, preferably after waking up in the morning, on an empty stomach, or at least 15 minutes before eating.
It is not recommended to eat royal jelly at night because it will increase energy in the body and cause insomnia.
Where to buy high quality royal jelly products (recommended)?
In recent years, food safety problems in various countries have exploded, and it is not healthy but black-hearted products that everyone spends on. Therefore, European and American products with relatively strict quality control have become popular products.
And iHerb.com is a large-scale medical cosmetics e-commerce company in the United States. It has a high satisfaction rate of 97% in the evaluation of Google customers. It provides global home delivery so that you can buy it without risking buying fakes through purchasing high-quality health products.
