Honey - Study shows that honey can help a child's cough

I thought the following summary provided by the Scout Report (http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/Current/) was interesting.

Study shows that honey can help a child's cough Study shows that honey can help a child's cough Honey 'is better for children's coughs'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/04/ncough104.xml

Study: Honey better than drugs for kids' coughs
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5348425.html

Honey Gives Kids Sweet Relief From Coughs
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdFlu/story?id=3947988&page=1

National Honey Board: Recipes
http://www.honey.com/consumers/recipes/recipes.asp

Guide to Bee-Friendly Gardens
http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/index.html

Humanity to Honey-bees
http://books.google.com/books?id=pefYHVqs7TAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=honey&as_brr=1&ie=ISO-8859-1

Honey has been used for millennia for both medicinal purposes and as a foodstuff. This week, researchers at the Penn State College of Medicine published findings that seem to indicate that small doses of honey may in fact be more effective at treating children's coughs than a chemical ingredient commonly found in several popular cough medicines. Lead researcher Dr. Ian Paul noted that darker honeys may be more effective as a form a treatment, and he also noted that the use of honey seems to have none of the side effects commonly associated with over-the-counter cough treatments. Pediatrician Dr. Ari Brown commented on the findings by affirming the potential benefits of such a treatment and also stating, "The authors admit that the improvement in symptoms may simply be attributable to the length of time a child has symptoms of cough and that the common cold will improve over time anyway." Finally, other medical professionals noted that honey should not be given to children under the age of one due to the potential of botulism spores that may be present.

The first link will take interested parties to a piece about this recent discovery from this Tuesday's Telegraph. The second link will whisk users away to another related article from this Tuesday's Houston Chronicle. Moving on, the third link leads to a good piece from ABC News about the recent honey-related research and the uses of honey throughout history. The fourth link leads to some rather delicious-sounding recipes from the National Honey Board. If you were thinking about making honey carrot soup or apricot honey bread, this site has recipes for those two items and many more. The fifth link leads to a site on creating a bee-friendly garden from the College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley. The final link leads to a digitized version of Thomas Nutt's 1832 tome, "Humanity to Honey-bees", in which he offers up a very detailed "humane plan by which the lives of bees may be preserved, and abundance of honey of a superior quality may be obtained."

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2007. http://scout.wisc.edu/