Introduction: Health, both individually and collectively, is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of human life and is a necessary condition for playing social roles, and all human beings can be fully active if they feel healthy and society considers them healthy.
Women's health depends on complex interactions between individual biology, health behavior, and the historical, social, economic, and political context of women's lives. Although health issues and problems are important in both sexes, but it is more important to pay attention to the health of women and girls, because girls in particular have special conditions in terms of their gender and, consequently, the responsibility and role expected by society.Consumption of natural honey for eight weeks reduces the weight of overweight and obese diabetics, without having a negative effect on blood sugar.Given that traditional medicine, complementary medicine, nutrition, therapy and the use of pragmatic foods have a special place in maintaining health and prevention and treatment of diseases, and since women's health plays an important role in family and community health, this study aims to investigate The effect of honey on women's reproductive health was assessed.
Methods: This study is a review study that was conducted to investigate the effect of honey on women's reproductive health in English and Persian articles between 2005 and 2020.
To access related articles, a search was conducted on the scientific databases of ISID, Medline, Pabmod, Embass, Kochran, Google Scholar, ISI, Scopus, and Medlib. This search was conducted with the keywords Honey and Reproductive Health, Pregnancy, Postpartum, Child Labor, BreastFeeding, women Health and the Persian keywords honey and women's health, reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum.
Criteria for selecting articles were: Articles found in 2020, which are qualitative and quantitative and related to the last 15 years (since 2000), Persian and English language articles published in domestic and foreign scientific journals related to women's reproductive health. With honey, the full text of which was available, and due to the limited studies conducted in the field of women's reproductive health and honey, in this review article only the effect of honey on menstrual pain, childbirth, episiotomy, candidiasis vaginitis is discussed.
Exclusion criteria were: articles in languages other than Persian and English, articles with incomplete and unrelated data and review studies, articles that had an unknown sample size, articles in which the implementation method was not well defined.Episiotomy and cesarean section wounds
Honey is one of the oldest known medicines. Its use dates back to four thousand years ago and is used in the treatment of wounds, sunburn, eye infections. Its antibacterial, tissue repair, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects have been identified.
Research shows that topical consumption of honey is effective in healing infectious wounds, cesarean section wounds, episiotomy wounds (perineal incisions) and burns.
Results: In the search performed in the mentioned databases and according to the inclusion criteria, a total of 76 articles were obtained, of which 45 articles (2.59%) were in Persian and 31 articles (7.40%) were in English. By removing duplicate and overlapping articles in databases, in the first stage, 25 articles remained, and finally, after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, thirteen articles were researched.Seifi et al., In a study that examined the effect of honey vaginal gel and clotrimazole vaginal cream on the natural vaginal flora of women with candidal vaginitis, concluded that the amount of lactobacilli in the honey group increased after completing the treatment period and improving clinical symptoms. There was a significant difference before treatment
Conclusion: A review of the literature showed that honey can be effective in healing cesarean section and episiotomy . Honey is a natural disinfectant. Because honey contains antibacterial substances, it can heal wounds well. Honey, with its many properties, accelerates wound healing.
The healing effect of honey wound is due to four reasons: first: antibacterial activity, second: acidity of honey: the pH of honey is between 2.3 to 4.5 and this acidity is low enough to prevent the growth of most microorganisms, third: the osmotic effect and Fourth: Contains antioxidants and hydrogen peroxide. The presence of various antioxidants in honey includes flavonoids, monofenolics, polyphenols and vitamin C. The anti-inflammatory properties of honey may be related to the antioxidant content of honey
Keywords: Honey, vitamin C, inflammatory, clinical, women's health