PPC is a cough that remains after a common cold or an upper respiratory tract infection for more than three weeks, and in some cases as long as several months. Conventional treatment may involve any number of powerful drugs, many of which have serious side effects, including codeine and dextromethorphan (so-called centrally acting antitussives), antihistamines, narcotics, and bronchodilators.
- A jam like paste was prepared which consisted of 20.8 grams of honey plus 2.9 grams of instant coffee for the first group (‘HC’).
- 13.3 mg of prednisolone for the second group (steroid, ‘S’).
- 25 mg of guaifenesin for the third group (control, ‘C’).
“The participants were told to dissolve a specified amount of their product in warm water and to drink the solution every eight hours for one week. All the participants were evaluated before treatment and one week after completion of treatment to measure the severity of their cough. The main outcome measure was the mean cough frequency before and after one week’s treatment calculated by a validated visual analogue cough questionnaire score.”The results of the study are summarized in the following table: As you can see by the table above, the honey-coffee group saw their degree of cough frequency decrease from 2.9 before treatment to .2 after treatment, whereas the prednisolone group decreased only from 3.0 before treatment to 2.4 after treatment.
“RESULTS: There were 97 adult patients (55 men) enrolled in this study with the mean of age of 40.1 years. 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); steroid ('S') group 3.0 (0.0) pre-treatment and 2.4 (0.6) post-treatment (p < 0.05); control ('C') group 2.8 (0.4) pre-treatment and 2.7 (0.5) post-treatment (p > 0.05). Analysis of variance showed a significant difference between the mean cough frequency before and after treatment in the HC group versus the S group (p< 0.001). Honey plus coffee was found to be the most effective treatment modality for PPC. “[emphasis added]The researchers reflected on the implications of their findings:
“Each year, billions of dollars are spent on controlling and trying to cure cough while the real effect of cough medicines is not quite reliable.1,45 Even though PPC is reported to account for only 11–25% of all cases of chronic cough8 and it is not associated with disability and mortality, it can cause morbidity and is responsible for medical costs...13
Prednisone is a semi-synthetic hormone with a broad range of side effects, some of which are life threatening. Given the relative safety and superior effectiveness of honey plus coffee versus prednisolone, this study adds to a growing body of biomedical research indicating that natural substances, including spices, vitamins and foods, are often superior in efficacy to synthetic drugs while often maintaining far higher levels of safety relative to them.
This article was originally published on GreenMedInfo.com