Why Honey Isn't A Cure
By David Colquhoun
Uhuh, here we go again. All over the media we see headlines like “Honey ‘beats cough medicine’.“ Take for example, the Daily Telegraph, where Ben Farmer writes “Honey is better at treating children’s coughs than an ingredient used in many over-the-counter medicines, according to new research”. (Read the press release)That is NOT what the research found. This is what the research paper itself says (DM refers to the standard ‘cough suppressant’ dextromethorphan, which is already known to be ineffective).
| “honey was significantly superior to no treatment for cough frequency’ DM was not better than no treatment for any outcome. Comparison of honey with DM revealed no significant differences.” |
See it? No detectable difference between honey and standard cough medicine.
At first sight, the results seem contradictory; no difference between honey and DM; no difference between DM and ‘no treatment’. So how can honey be better than ‘no treatment’?
What was done?
Three things were compared: (a) buckwheat honey, (b) a standard ‘cough suppressant’, dextromethorphan in a honey-flavoured syrup that was designed to be similar to the honey (DM for short), and (c) no treatment whatsoever.
Thirty-five patients received honey, 33 received DM, and 37 received no treatment.
The good thing is that the treatments were allocated randomly to the children, and that the person doing the assessment didn’t know which treatment each child had received. The children didn’t know whether they were getting honey or DM either, but they DID know when they got ‘no treatment’.
The trial was carried out over two days. On day one nobody got a treatment, but they filled in a survey that asked, for example, “how frequent was your child’s coughing last night”. The parent had to tick one of seven boxes, from ‘not at all’ (score zero) to ‘extremely’ (score 6). They were then given the treatment all