Honey, the Best for the Treatment of Chronic Cough with No Side Effects

By Kyle J. Norton

Scientists may have found a natural alternative for the treatment of chronic cough, according to studies.

Cough is a natural human reflex that clears the throat of mucus or foreign irritants.
Although it is not common, coughing also is used to clear foreign substances and irritants infrequently associated with a certain lung infection.

Unlike an acute cough, chronic cough is a cough that lasts more than eight weeks. The most common causes of a chronic cough are a postnasal drip, asthma, and acid reflux.

Believe or not, postnasal drip, asthma, and acid reflux are found in 90% of patients with a chronic cough.

According to the statistic, approximately, 2.% of the US adults suffer from a chronic cough, and the risk chronic cough of current smokers is substaintial higher compared to non-smokers.

Besides smoking, people with chronic lung diseases such as asthma, bronchiectasis, COPD, and previous lung infections with scars are also at increased risk of developing a chronic cough.

Some researchers suggested that obese children may also be at risk of the chronic condition.

Dr. S Deane, the lead scientist in the assessment of the obese risk of a chronic cough in children said, "Obese children have more respiratory symptoms than their normal-weight peers and respiratory-related pathology increases with increasing weight"

And, "Some will need specialist assessment (box 1). Obesity produces mechanical effects on respiratory system performance. Breathlessness, wheeze, and cough are not related to increased airway responsiveness and may respond more to weight loss than bronchodilator therapy. A significant number of obese children have signs and symptoms of obstructive sleep apnoea largely related to the effect of obesity on upper airway dimensions".

These results strongly suggested that the increased weight of obese children is the major risk factor on the development of chronic cough.

Honey is the miraculous product made by bees using nectar from flowers.

The rich golden liquid is considered one of healthy sweet food for replacing the use of white sugar and artificial sweetener by many people.

Scientists on searching a natural remedy for the treatment of a chronic cough without inducing adverse effects compared the effects of a single nocturnal dose of 3 honey products (eucalyptus honey, citrus honey, or labiatae honey) to placebo (silan date extract) on nocturnal cough associated with childhood upper respiratory tract infections (URIs).

The study included 300 children aged 1 to 5 years with URIs, nocturnal cough, and illness duration of ≤ 7 days from 6 general pediatric community clinics. Eligible children received a single dose of 10 g of eucalyptus honey, citrus honey, Labiatae honey, or placebo administered 30 minutes before bedtime.

According to the results from 2 consecutive days, there was a significant improvement from the night before treatment to the night of treatment in the treatment group compared to the placebo.

Furthermore, according to the parents' review, the honey exhibited a higher than the silan date extract for symptomatic relief for their children's nocturnal cough and sleep difficulty.

In order to reveal more information about honey against chronic cough in children, researchers examined the honey effect in the persistent post-infectious cough (PPC) that lasts more than three weeks or perhaps for many months.

The double-blind randomized controlled trial conducted from 2008 to 2011 at the Baqiyatallah University Hospital, Tehran, Iran. included 97 adults experienced PPC for more than three weeks randomly distributed into three groups. 

Participants were given either a jam-like paste included honey plus coffee for the first group ('HC'), orprednisolone for the second group (steroid, 'S'), or and guaifenesin for the third group (control, 'C').

All participants were told to dissolve a specified amount of their product in warm water and drink the solution every eight hours for one week.

The mean (+/- SD) cough scores pre- and post-treatment were: HC group 2.9 (0.3) pre-treatment and 0.2 (0.5) post-treatment (p < 0.001), and steroid ('S') group 3.0 (0.0) pre-treatment and 2.4 (0.6) post-treatment (p < 0.05)

The control ('C') group exerted mean (+/- SD) cough scores of 2.8 (0.4) pre-treatment and 2.7 (0.5) post-treatment (p > 0.05).

By Analysing  the variance, researchers found that there is  a significant difference between the mean cough frequency before and after treatment in the HC group, compared to the S group

Honey plus coffee was found to be the most effective modality for PPC, compared to other groups.

Taken altogether, honey may be considered an alternative remedy for the prevntion and treatment of  chronic coughs in children and adults, pending to the condirmation of large sample size and multicenter human study.

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Author Biography
Kyle J. Norton (Scholar, Master of Nutrition, All right reserved)
Health article writer and researcher; Over 10.000 articles and research papers have been written and published online, including worldwide health, ezine articles, article base, health blogs, self-growth, best before it's news, the karate GB daily, etc.,.
Named TOP 50 MEDICAL ESSAYS FOR ARTISTS & AUTHORS TO READ by Disilgold.com Named 50 of the best health Tweeters Canada - Huffington Post
Nominated for shorty award over last 4 years
Some articles have been used as references in medical research, such as international journal Pharma ISSN 0975-6299.

Sources
(1) Effect of honey on nocturnal cough and sleep quality: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study by Cohen HA1, Rozen J, Kristal H, Laks Y, Berkovitch M, Uziel Y, Kozer E, Pomeranz A, Efrat H. (PubMed)
(2) Honey plus coffee versus systemic steroid in the treatment of persistent post-infectious cough: a randomised controlled trial by Raeessi MA1, Aslani J, Raeessi N, Gharaie H, Karimi Zarchi AA, Raeessi F. (PubMed)
(3) Obesity and the pulmonologist by S Deane and A Thomson. (PMC)