Buckwheat Honey Helps Relieve Cough

Looking for something natural to help your kid’s coughs and colds? Try a dose of buckwheat honey just before bedtime. According to a study that has been published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine it might work even better than an over-the-counter cough medicine in relieving cough to help your child sleep better.

Ian M. Paul, M.D., M.Sc., Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, and team carried out a study on 105 children – they were aged 2-18, and all were suffering from upper respiratory tract infections. They were ill for up to seven days and experienced symptoms during the night. 35 of them were randomly selected to receive a dose of honey, another 33 were given dextromethorphan, while the other 37 were given nothing – those receiving treatment got it 30 minutes before bedtime. Their parents had to fill in a survey assessing their child’s cough and sleep difficulty twice – once for the night before treatment, and then again for the night with treatment.

The researchers found that honey helped children the most by far, followed by dextromethorphan. Honey helped alleviate the following problems – cough frequency, cough severity, the child’s sleep, and the parents’ sleep.

Worth a try, especially considering that the use of dextromethorphan for children’s cough is a treatment which is not supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, nor the American College of Chest Physicians. Honey, on the other hand, is considered to be safe for use for kids at least 1 year old.

Photo Credit: nkzs