Honey for Cough

Using honey for cough due to cold is not an old wives tale. Many people make the mistake of thinking that it is just a legend that honey is a real, valid natural treatment for coughing, but it’s been proven.

Chronic, long-term cough which does not respond to normal treatments may indicate a serious health problem which should only be treated by a physician. Also, any cough accompanied by a high fever should be treated by a doctor.

But everyone gets the common cold or cough due to hay fever allergies from time to time. Coughing repeatedly can irritate an already inflamed throat, causing more pain and lengthening the recovery time. Coughing due to cold or a flu virus normally clears up completely within two weeks.

All too often, people suffering from coughing turn to non-prescription medications that are easily obtained. Some are formulated to suppress cough while others are formulated to thin mucus and make it easier for the cough to remove phlegm from the respiratory tract. These can be expensive and, if the wrong formula is taken, can actually inhibit improvement and recovery. Other people turn to hot broth, tea, or fruit juice, thinking this will stop their cough. Some people know and turn to the natural treatment of using honey for cough.

One way to effectively use honey for treating cough is to simply take a teaspoon of honey and allow it to trickle down the throat, delivering the soothing, healing properties. Other people, especially those who dislike the extreme sweetness of honey, like to mix the juice of one lemon with an equal amount of honey and take doses of that mixture orally.

Honey should not be heated or added to any heated beverage in order to preserve the healing properties. Most of the antibiotic and anti-inflammatory components in honey are destroyed when exposed to direct light or heat, so keeping the honey in its natural form is important. Also, raw honey which has not been mixed with any other ingredients is as close to the hive as you can get and contains the most benefits for healing.

If it important to know that due to a risk of infant botulism, a child younger than one year of age should never be given honey. This is a serious form of food poisoning and, while infant botulism is reasonable rare, this precaution is important to heed.