Some Honey with Your ‘Cough’ee?

What makes news news? Reporters, news writers, newspaper editors and assignment editors go through a number of considerations to determine this, including assessing a story’s impact, relevance, prominence and novelty. But one of the most significant considerations in determining what news is is in assessing a story’s timeliness; how relevant the story is to what’s going on in the world right now.

This said, what I’m about to report to you doesn’t meet the timeliness standard, so please file the following away for future use. You’ll see what I mean…

This past winter I wrote about a study revealing the dangers of cough medicine for infants, and how ineffective they were for both children and adults. Sadly, I didn’t have any alternative treatments or medicines to recommend other than plenty of rest and fluids. Five months later, I think I’ve found it.

According to a study conducted by a team of researchers at Penn State University (Go Nittany Lions!) and their College of Medicine, bees’ nectar is more effective in the treatment of coughs than cough medicine. Yes, honey!

Published in the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, researchers studied approximately 100 participants between the ages of 2 and 18, all of whom experiencing symptoms associated with the common cold and all with coughs so bad that they were losing sleep as a result. The 100 participants were given different treatments to see which one might serve as the better antidote: a spoonful of honey, a spoonful of honey-flavored dextromethorpan – the primary ingredient found in most over-the-counter cough suppressants – or a spoonful of nothing.

Not surprisingly, the spoonful of nothing didn’t offer much in the way of relieving cough symptoms. What you may find surprising, though, is that the spoonful of buckwheat honey relieved the participants’ cough symptoms better than the cough medicine itself.

Now, to people like you and me who try and stay abreast of what’s happening in the world of health, this isn’t much of a finding. After all, as the study’s lead researcher Ian Paul mentioned, reputable institutions like the World Health Organization (WHO) has cited honey as a treatment for upper respiratory symptoms like coughing. But it is studies like these that lend further scientific evidence to natural health remedies that a lot of people remain skeptical about. Therefore, the more studies done like these the better, as they can help persuade the timid among us to be bolder in informing our friends and neighbors of the natural elixirs available to them.

If you’ve read my past articles on honey, you know that all honeys aren’t the same. There are many varieties of honey – probably the majority of honey options on your local supermarket’s shelves, in fact – loaded with high fructose corn syrup and other artificial fillers. These kinds of honey are not the kind I suggest you buy, nor do they apply to the Penn State study’s findings. The Penn State study only analyzed the dark honey that comes from buckwheat. And for good reason. A 1998 study done by researchers from the University of Chicago found that the dark honey derived from buckwheat had approximately 20 times more antioxidant content than the more common light honey derived from clover. Other light, monofloral (i.e. one source) honey sources include acacia, basswood and orange blossom.

So when searching for honey – whether it’s meant for coating a sore throat after coughing all night or for coating a loaf of whole wheat bread meant for eating all night (kidding!) – be sure that you’re getting the right kind, i.e. the dark kind.