Honey cures night cough for children

Instead of reaching for Western medicine when your child coughs at night after a common cold, Israeli scientists suggest trying giving your child honey.

Accordingly, just one or two spoons of honey before bedtime can relieve your baby's upper respiratory tract infection symptoms.

"Upper respiratory tract infections are generally mild, but parents often want to intervene aggressively. This leads to overuse of cough medicines, which can be dangerous if overdosed," said study author Dr. Herman Avner Cohen.

Honey is known for its antioxidant properties, rich in vitamin C and flavonoids, and has antibiotic properties.

To test the healing power of honey, Cohen and his colleagues studied more than 300 children, ages 1 to 5, all diagnosed with upper respiratory infections. They had all visited children’s hospitals in Israel, had been sick for less than seven days, and all had nighttime coughs and runny noses. None had asthma or pneumonia.

Half an hour before bedtime, the children were randomly assigned to one of four treatments: two tablespoons of eucalyptus honey, citrus honey, floral honey, or a solution that tasted and looked like honey but did not contain this ingredient.

The researchers found that although all the babies had improvements in sleep and cough severity, those who took honey recovered significantly faster.

For this reason, "honey may be a more appropriate treatment for cough and sleep problems in children with upper respiratory tract infections. In our study, honey can be considered an effective and safe solution, at least in children over 1 year of age," Cohen said.

Scientists advise that many common medicines that families are using "are not really effective and also cause side effects, while honey for children over 1 year old is both safe and effective."

(According to VnExpress) - NT