Getting kids to take their medicine isn’t always easy, unless it happens to be a spoonful of chocolate. Your kids will think you’re Mary Poppins when you bust out the chocolate as a cough remedy and, according to experts, it can do more good for their throat than codeine.
Professor Alyn Morice is the head of cardiovascular and respiratory studies at the University of Hull and a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Cough. In a recent column for the Daily Mail, Morice says when a cough strikes, ditch the cough drops and honey in favor of chocolate instead.
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Morice noted that a real-world study of an over-the-counter medicine containing cocoa has proven that the substance works better than a cough syrup with codeine. The cocoa is “stickier and more viscose than standard cough medicines, so it forms a coating which protects nerve endings in the throat which trigger the urge to cough,” Morice explained.
Unfortunately this over-the-counter remedy, named Unicough, is currently only available in the United Kingdom, but the next time a cough comes on and your tots refuse to take their medicine, it certainly couldn’t hurt to try a square of Hershey’s.
—Shahrzad Warkentin
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