 Last Pesach, Dr. Heime Geffen had to be carried to the seder. After he was diagnosed in October 2006 with acute myelocytic leukemia, his doctors abandoned chemotherapy because his white blood cell counts were perilously low. By March 2007, his family was looking into palliative home care.
Cathy Mallove and her father-in-law, Dr. Heime Geffen.
But less than three months later, after taking two teaspoons a day of a special honey from Israel, he was able to play nine holes of golf.
After seeing the remarkable turnaround of her father-in-law, verified by his blood count, Cathy Mallove of Toronto decided to import the honey to Canada to make it available to others in similar situations.
The honey, called Life Mel, which has an Israeli hechsher approved by the Canadian Kashruth Council of Canada (COR), was developed by a Russian-Israeli doctor and is produced in Israel. It is made by bees that feed on nectar derived from therapeutic herbs and medicinal plants combined with a selection of natural bioactive materials such as iron, proteins, enzymes and vitamins. The final product produced by the bees is honey that contains the properties of the herbs and plants and can have the effect of stimulating the immune system. The honey goes directly from the hive to the bottle and is not treated with any added ingredients or processing.
Geffen, who is in his 70s and what his daughter-in-law describes as a “traditional, very conservative family practitioner from small-town Ontario” was quite skeptical about any kind of honey remedy and only agreed to try it because he had nothing left to lose.
“I was quite moribund with illness, needed a wheelchair to go to the bathroom, had my meals in bed,” says Geffen, who lives in St. Catharines, Ont. “My wife and sons insisted I take it. Much against my judgment and training as a traditional doctor, I yielded to their pressure.”
Mallove says: “There are a lot of quacky things out there, so I think the fact that it was from Israel and that it was honey – we thought, well, what could the downside be?
“My father-in-law was very sick, his mouth was full of sores and he couldn’t eat anything because it hurt to swallow. We were making him soup and tea, and smoothies… and he couldn’t swallow any of it. So there was also the fact that it was easy for him and pleasant and sweet.”
Geffen says that he is still skeptical. “I still do not know to this very day if it was solely the honey that did it, or good luck, or a combination,” he says. “We need more time for research.
“All I can say is that I was about to die, and within 10 days to two weeks of taking the honey, I had abandoned the wheelchair and was sitting with my family at the table. Within two weeks I was taking out the garbage, within a month I was going for walks and within two months I was playing golf.”
He still takes two teaspoons of the honey every day.
The family heard about Life Mel when Geffen’s daughter and son-in-law had a chance conversation with an oncologist in Israel who had just participated in a small clinical study that sought to explore Life Mel’s effects after doctors heard so many positive anecdotal reports from their patients. The two-year clinical trial yielded promising results, published in the medical journal Medical Oncology (vol. 23, no. 4).
After Geffen’s own immediate positive experience, the family looked further into the product and found it had been on the market in Israel for several years. Geffen’s daughter decided to bring Life Mel to the United Kingdom, where she lives, and Mallove was inspired to bring it to Canada.
Mallove began selling the product in Canada in late 2007 and launched the website www.lifemel.ca in January. “A lot of people are intrigued by it, trying a jar or two to start,” she says. “Most people do feel a difference with the first jar or two – it seems that if it’s going to work for you, it works right away.” She said she’s starting to see repeat orders from customers to supply them for the duration of their chemotherapy or longer term to support whatever underlying condition they have. Mallove, unfortunately, has extensive experience supporting people with cancer. Her father died of cancer, her mother is a lymphoma survivor and a close friend just went through treatment for breast cancer. The mother of two children, the younger of whom has developmental delays, she spends a lot of time in the special needs world and with education advocacy but says that she was looking to do something different from her work as an independent communications and organizational development consultant. She describes the experience so far of bringing Life Mel into Canada – “speaking with people every day with cancer or people who have someone they love who’s sick” – as both gratifying and very emotional.
“One thing I hear a lot of, and which is exactly what we felt with my father-in-law is, ‘you know what, it’s only honey.’ It can’t hurt, it’s sweet, it’s given with love, and it makes many people feel like they actually have control over something. We’re not under any illusions that this is a miracle cure.
“My father-in-law is 79 years old, and he’s very sick. But if it’s something that can give people a better quality of life and help their families support them, why wouldn’t anybody want to try it? It’s not a cure for cancer, but hopefully it’s something that can help people be and feel stronger when they’re going through something very difficult,” Mallove says.
Hana Snir, a Toronto woman whose mother has Hodgkin’s lymphoma and originally bought Life Mel in Israel, ordered more jars from Mallove based on her mother’s initial positive reaction while undergoing a round of chemotherapy recently. She says that usually after two weeks of chemo, her mother would need a blood transfusion and that by four weeks her hemoglobin levels would have gone down by 10 points or more, but that this time she has not needed a transfusion and her hemoglobin levels have remained steady.
“It’s only been four weeks and I don’t know if it’s the honey or the type of chemo she’s on, but we won’t be stopping the honey,” says Snir. “We’re at the point where we had nothing to lose – we’ve been going through this for two years already. Nothing else was helping her, and it’s only a matter of time before things get worse. It’s not like it’s invasive or anything that can hurt or even a bad taste – at worst, it’s just honey.”
A portion of all sales of Life Mel will go toward cancer-related charities. It is also currently being imported into the United States.
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