When I was 16, I spent three weeks of my summer vacation in Poland. I was there with a small group of teenagers from the Unitarian Church in which I grew up, helping teach English at a summer camp. While I was there, I came down with a nasty cold. There was a doctor on staff at the camp, and she recommended to me that I try taking a spoonful of honey three times a day to help with the cough and sore throat that accompanied my cold. I leaped at the suggestion, as I had always enjoyed eating honey straight. Thankfully, it also helped with the coughing (my roommate also appreciated it's cough suppressant effects).
Once I returned to the world of easily accessible cough syrups and drops, I mostly forgot about this natural remedy. Yesterday afternoon, I caught a report on NPR's Day to Day program in which they were discussing a recent study that has shown that honey does work as a cough suppressant in children and is an effective alternative if you don't want to give your kids the over the counter medicines. It brought that trip to Poland flooding back and made me wish I had remembered honey when I was in the midst of a nasty cold last week. So next time you start to feel cruddy, reach for your honey bear instead of your bottle of cough syrup.
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