Homeopathic help
Sorting through the good, the meh and the useless of home remedies for battling cold and flu symptoms
In the land of three rivers and those who bleed black and gold, it seems the peak of flu season may be in the rearview mirror, but tell that to the more than 7,800 Allegheny County residents with positive flu tests in the first week of February.
And never mind the ongoing wrath of coughs, colds, cases of strep throat and ear infections that make school nurses wonder if their office doors should be swapped for turnstiles.
Cozy blankets and Netflix might soothe the mental woes of seasonal illnesses, but when it comes to effective remedies for run-of-the-mill viral symptoms, the advice seems to shift as often as traffic patterns on Route 51.
In September, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel unanimously concluded phenylephrine, an over-the-counter decongestant found in products such as DayQuil, Sudafed PE and versions of Sinex, is ineffective.
In response, some experts point their patients to antihistamines — older versions such as Benadryl or newer ones such as Zyrtec or Claritin — to help tamp down the unpleasantness of coughs and colds. However, an analysis of 18 papers and over 4,300 adult participants with the common cold noted only a short-term benefit of antihistamines.
There has to be another way. Viruses are more than three billion years old. Modern humans are around 300,000 years old. Benadryl and cough suppressant dextromethorphan, by contrast, weren’t invented until the 1940s.
Our ancestors certainly didn’t wait for “pharmaceuticals” before treating their own stuffy noses and coughs.
Some of those homeopathic remedies are proven-effective additions to medicine cabinets. Others are wives’ tales. And some make physicians flatout cringe.
“When people are sick you hear, ‘Oh, give them ginger ale and saltines and popsicles.’ I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s so much sugar and chemicals and junk,” said Mary Davis, a functional medicine physician, who is also board certified in internal and emergency medicine and founder of SuMa Medicine in Highland Park. “How about some ginger tea with a little bit of local honey and lemon?”
Here are two remedies that can provide real relief, two fake fixes and one strategy that’s worth a shot to help leave cold symptoms behind.
Real relief: Honey
Humans’ relationship with honey began about 8,000 years ago, with
Greeks, Egyptians, Mayans, Babylonians and more using the beeand nectar-derived syrup for nutritional and medicinal purposes. Those benefits don’t come from just any bear-shaped squeeze bottle, however.
Some products masquerading as pure honey actually contain corn syrup or other additives. According to testing done by Food Safety News in 2011, 76% of honey sold on shelves didn’t contain pollen, which calls its authenticity into question, researchers say.
The honey’s origin also plays a role, especially for those seeking hyper-local honey for potential relief of seasonal allergies.
It’s tricky business. Just another set of details to monitor in modern lives flooded with tasks. But the effort may also be worth it for a host of health benefits, including cough calming and an illness-fighting boost.
Looking at coughing children ages 2 through 18, researchers analyzed survey results of parents who offered buckwheat honey, honeyflavored dextromethorphan or no treatment to their children. When it came to cough frequency, severity, its bothersome nature and child and parent sleep quality, the honey group consistently scored most favorably.
Another study showed an improved cough frequency score for children ages 2 through 5 after consuming a 2.5 mL (or a half-teaspoon) evening dose of honey.
And looking at Wisconsin buckwheat honey in a laboratory setting, the substance exhibited antimicrobial effects on bacterial heavy hitters such as Clostridium difficile (or “C. diff,” known for miserable, if not life-threatening, bouts of diarrhea) and antibioticresistant bugs such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and VRE (vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus).
Much of the evidence for honey’s use for coughs applies to children, likely because available over-thecounter remedies for tots are fewer. But depending on the FDA’s upcoming decision on whether phenylephrine products should remain on shelves, that same issue may soonconfront adults.
In fact, since most over-thecounter, multi-symptom cold medications contain phenylephrine, a decision to ban the product could cause a supply chain issue for consumers seeking viral symptom care, a concern voiced by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers earlier this month in a research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Fear not. The reasons why honey may slay cold-related coughs are universal.
“Honey is probably the homeopathic remedy with the most evidence to support its use to reduce cough in both children and adults,” Gregory Ferenchak, a family medicine physician at Allegheny Health Network, said. “The antioxidants in honey increase cytokine release and other factors that stoke the immune system to fight whatever infection you have going on,” plus throat-coating-effects that soothe coughs.
There are two sours to this sweet remedy, however.
Children under 1 year of age cannot safely consume honey due to the possibility of botulism spores contained therein. If contracted, botulism attacks the body’s nerves, leading to serious complications like muscle paralysis and, as a result, difficulty breathing.
Also, it’s thick and sticky, which can be a choking hazard. Swallow small amounts at a time, and consider thinning it with room-temperature water.
Fake fix: Pineapple
A perfectly ripe pineapple feels like an offering of good will from Mother Earth to the human race. The explosion of sweetness and pineapple-y scents and flavors send the senses whirling. Mentally dissect them, though, and you’ll realize something fascinating: Sensing pineapple with our mouths is not only a gustatory experience, but a tactile one.
Thank the enzyme bromelain. With its ability to break down mucus,it also breaks down saliva, allowing pineapple’s acids to irritate the mouth’s lining and create a slight burning,or tingling, sensation.
A Google search might suggest that pineapple’s mucus-busting ability could confer benefits to those fighting a cough — and what a delight that would be compared to the unpleasant flavor of traditional cough syrups — but research tells another story.
Published in Revistra Paulista de Pediatria in 2016, children ages 2 to 15 who used either honey or honey with bromelain extract experienced similar improvement in coughing episodes, meaning the cough-fightingpower belongs entirely to honey.
While bromelain extract is associated with many health-boosting properties — fighting circulation issues, osteoarthritis and cancer cells, to name a few — Davis advises not to interpret those outcomes as an excuse to consume excessive amounts of pineapple.
“One of the reasons I try to stay away from something like pineapple is even if it has mucolytic properties, they’re very high in sugar,” she said. “If you give yourself a big bowl of sugar, even if it’s fructose, it can suppress your immune system for the next five hours.”
Real relief: Grandma’s chicken noodle soup
Depending on the source, it’s said thatbetween 70% and 95% of “taste” is actually the sense of smell, which doesn’t bode well for meals when nasalpassages are stuffed.
But no matter how congested the person, or nonexistent the appetite, there’s something about soup.
Science agrees, so long as it’s made in a particular way.
This isn’t the time for a can of chicken and stars or a quick soup made that afternoon. The method that douses the body with amino acids, minerals, collagen and protein requires pounds of animal bones and other parts simmered for around 24 hours.
Buzz-worthy Paleo diets are credited with popularizing these bone broths, but that’s like saying Stanleytumblers popularized water.
A variety of sources credit the ancient Chinese and Egyptians, as well as Native Americans, for creating broth in this way, which means maybe — just maybe — grandma’s soup-making methods reflect this age-old practice.
If not, consider resurrecting it on your own. Talk to a butcher to see which odds and ends might be available for this purpose and simmer away the day. After straining, be sure to throw in other feel-good foods tohelp feed your body back to health.
“Bone broth offers protein and great minerals you need during that time,” Davis said. “I’d suggest making it into a soup where you can throw in ginger [for antioxidants and nausea relief] and garlic [for antibiotic qualities], oregano and thyme [for antiviral and antioxidant properties] and some vegetables like cabbage and broccoli [to potentially help fight the virus.]”
Fake fix: Orange juice
“It’s good for you,” well-meaning caregivers might say, probably because someone said the same to them. If pressed, they might say the vitamin C in orange juice is what makes it a necessary sip between sneezes.
They’re drawing on beliefs from the 1930s, when vitamin C was first isolated, but are they right?
Nope, at least not when talking about an occasional glass of OJ.
“It’s an antioxidant, and antioxidants are great at helping our bodies fight infections, but taking more vitamin C isn’t necessarily
going to improve symptoms,” Ferenchak said.
The “yeah, but” might come in for folks familiar with the arachidonic acid cascade — a game of Plinko the body plays to regulate inflammation — knowing that vitamin C is an important player in that pathway.
“That’s true from a mechanistic standpoint,” Ferenchak said. “But when you put it into a study with appropriate controls and adequate power, the symptom improvement just isn’t that impressive.”
A 2013 Cochrane Library review of 31 studies showed just that, after considering nearly 9,800 episodes of illness treated with 0.2 g of vitamin C or more. In addition, vitamin C was not observed to significantly affect the duration or severity of colds forthose who are already sick.
Among those who regularly supplement with vitamin C, however, there’s hope. That consistent practice was shown to shorten cold duration by 8% in adults and 14% in children, and it decreased the severity of symptoms.
Worth a shot: Zinc
The trouble with “proving” the effectiveness, or not, of natural remedies is motivation.
“There’s very little money in having someone study a zinc tab, for instance, to discover whether it’s going to be useful for most people,” Ferenchak said. “People just aren’t very eager to study this kind of stuff.”
When they do, the studies are often small, meaning their results are given less weight. That’s one reason researchers might choose to conduct a meta-analysis, carefully smashing together select studies of the same type to reach a more significant conclusion.
A 2012 meta-analysis found that zinc lozenges shortened the length of viral symptoms by nearly two days on average for adults, with no significant benefit observed for children.
A 2017 meta-analysis found that when consuming at least 75 mg per day worth of zinc lozenges — or about 6 Cold-EEZE lozenges, for example — patients enjoyed a 33% shorter duration of symptoms on average.
But some studies found no benefit to consuming zinc. Some note side effects, mostly gastrointestinal ones, that might make a few additional days of sniffles seem like a minor inconvenience.
If products like Cold-EEZE or Zicam Cold Remedy zinc lozenges seem worth a try, Ferenchak recommends using the product for the first 24 hours or until symptom improvement,but not longer than one week.
And as always, check with your medical provider.
“If you’re medically complicated, you should probably be talking to your doctor before pulling anything off the shelf or deciding you’re going to try something from a homeopathic standpoint,” said Ferenchak. “For the average person who doesn’t have risk factors, I think trying things like that is reasonable to see what works for you.”