Honey beats cough medicine

[Guest guest]

Some sweet news for kids with colds.....

 

from the Minneapolis Star Tribune

 

Note to Mary Poppins: Forget the medicine and go straight for the

sweet stuff. Just as over-the-counter cough and cold products have

been declared off-limits for kids under age 6 by a federal advisory

panel and parents are at a loss for soothing stuffy kids at bedtime,

researchers offer an alternative: A spoonful of honey soothes coughs

just as well or better than cough medicine.

 

A research study published yesterday found that kids who got a dose

of honey coughed less and slept somewhat better than those who got

cough medicine with dextromethorphan (DM), the ingredient in most

over-the- counter products that suppress the urge to cough. Or, honey

is almost as ineffective as cough medicine, depending on how you look

at it.

 

Those cough medicines, which have been marketed to parents at a cost

of about $50 million each year, have been shown to be of little

benefit to kids anyway. But Dr. Ian Paul, a pediatrician and the

researcher who conducted the study on about 100 kids, said that at

least now doctors have an answer for parents who want to do something

for their kids who can't sleep.

 

To read more: http://www.startribune.com/1244/story/1589700.html

or: http://tinyurl.com/2bo98v