Honey Cough Cure

For nearly two decades now, I have had a recurrent cough. By that, I mean that I would sometimes go for a week or so without it, but I have had it more often than not. It seemed to be related to heavy mucus production.

Yes, that has been one of the things that I have brought to my past three doctors. It's not lung cancer or COPD; those are a couple of things that they wanted to rule out, and did. One doctor went through a series of anti-allergy medications, some prescription, others over-the-counter. A couple of them seemed to help a little, but then they would lose their effectiveness. I don't have a history of allergies so I wasn't sure about that diagnosis. My doctor wasn't very interested in my cough, anyhow. He was devoted to putting me on Lipitor - so much so that I could probably walk into his office with a knife in my chest and he'd drone on about cholesterol. He actually told me once that everyone over the age of fifty should be taking a statin drug. I called him Dr. Lipitor. I tried Lipitor but it gave me restless leg syndrome and leg cramping and, overall, just made me feel unhealthy.

I moved to another doctor who was also more interested in cholesterol than in anything that was actually going on. I've seen the numbers and my cholesterol was on the low side of borderline high - almost in the normal range. Finally, I did try another statin drug - Crestor. It didn't give me restless leg syndrome but I didn't feel good while taking Crestor, and when I read that statin drugs can cause memory problems, I started wondering whether I was forgetting words because I'm old or because I was taking Crestor.

I quit taking it, and this doctor accepted that and didn't nag me about it anymore, except in areas where diet can affect cholesterol levels. But she didn't have a clue about why I had a cough. She wanted to repeat the tests relating to lung cancer but I have had more than enough radiation in my life and since my cough wasn't a sign of cancer before, it didn't seem likely that it was the cause of my cough then. I don't want to subject myself to more radiation just so that a doctor can check a mark off on a list. She had me try a string of OTC anti-mucus medications. They seemed to help a little but if I kept spraying that crap into my nose, it would dry my nose out to the point where it hurt.

That doctor left, and my new doctor obsessed over the cholesterol again. She prescribed a drug that she said was one of two non-statin drugs that are effective against bad cholesterol. However, when I looked at the generic form of that drug, I found that it was indeed a statin. Either she was lying to me, or she didn't know that it was a statin drug, or what the pharmacy told me was the generic form of the drug wasn't really.

But what does that have to do with my cough? That's the question I had been asking all along.

I tried an anti-cough remedy that I found on Amazon.com that turned out to have honey as its main ingredient. They seemed to work but they were awfully expensive. Reading various things about using honey for a cough, I found that some people recommended buying honey that was produced as close to wherever you live as possible. I'm not sure why that would make a difference but I'm not opposed to supporting local businesses, so I bought some Maine honey.

I started drinking tea with honey. I'm not big on sweeteners but honey is a better sweetener than anything else that I've tried. I found some cheaper honey lozenges that I also used from time to time, but mostly I drank a bunch of tea with honey, and I would sometimes just eat a spoonful of honey.

My cough went away. I don't mean that it got a little better. It went away completely. Since I prefer coffee to tea and hate using any kind of sweetener in coffee, even honey, I quit taking honey a little more than a week ago. I still don't have a cough.

There have been times when I had gone a week without a cough before, so I'm not fully convinced that the honey cured my cough, but I am hopeful. I might try another regimen of honey for a week or so before stopping, to see if I am still free of it.

 

By the way, this is not a thread for discussing statin drugs. I only mentioned it in the context of my doctors being more interested in that than in problems that I was actually having. We have another thread to discuss statin drugs here.

 

When I went to bed, I would have it but my wife says I don't cough during the night. Once I fell asleep, I wouldn't wake up with it.

 

We have a farmer’s market here in Huntsville , and they often sell local honey. We do not use much honey, but that is where I try to buy it when I do get some, because it is raw and unfiltered for the most part.
Honey is really expensive, and ours os probably around the $15 price also. When I buy it, I remember the days when it was more like $5 for a gallon, and we used to get a 5 gallon pail for about $35, and then put it in jars as needed each year.

 

As a follow-up, it's been more than three weeks now and the cough has not returned. I do make a point of having a couple of cups of tea with honey every day, but I have not had to use the large amount of it that it took to get rid of the cough. Honey seems to have done the trick, after at least a half-dozen prescription or OTC drugs failed.

 

I think my cough began after I was treated for a strangulated hernia, and ended up in the hospital for six or seven weeks with a drug-resistant bacterial infection. An endotracheal tube was in place for much of that time. I assumed that the cough was the result of aggravation from such a long time with an ETT, except that it didn't go away after a reasonable amount of time.

 

As a follow up, I have found that by drinking a spoonful of honey in tea, with a couple of cups in the morning and another one sometime before bed, my cough goes away completely. After finding that it was gone, I would have a cup of tea with honey at least once a day for a while, and then I forgot. While I don't hate honey-sweetened tea, I prefer coffee to tea, and I prefer not to use a sweetener, so after a while, I forgot to do it. I remained cough-free for months after I quit using honey-tea, but then it came back a few weeks ago. I went through the honey thing again, and the cough disappeared. So I am thinking that I must be allergic to something because that seems to be the way that honey works. In fact, when I first read about it, the article suggested local honey over generic honey. That's not a problem because we have local honey in the stores.