The Best Cure for a Cough
We’ve all heard that honey and lemon can help soothe a cough.
Now, however, a leading expert in cough and respiratory medicine believes chocolate is even better.
Here, Professor Alyn Morice, head of cardiovascular and respiratory studies at the University of Hull, and a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Cough, claims there is research to prove it…
Chocolate can calm coughs.
I know that might sound like something out of Mary Poppins, but as an independent clinician who has spent years researching the mechanism of cough, I can assure you the evidence is actually as solid a bar of Fruit and Nut.
We have just seen the results of the largest real-world study of an over-the-counter cough remedy ever undertaken in Europe.
This proves that a new medicine which contains cocoa is better than a standard linctus.
The head-to-head comparison found that patients taking the chocolate-based medicine had a significant improvement in symptoms within two days.
ROCOCO, as it was called, was a well-designed study, a randomised controlled trial involving 163 patients, and the results will be published in a journal within the next 12 months.
However this wasn’t the first study to show that chocolate can calm coughs.
Previously, researchers at Imperial College in London found that theobromine, an alkaloid in cocoa, is better at suppressing the urge to cough than codeine — an established ingredient in cough medicines.
This new trial medicine, which has since been licensed under the brand name Unicough, was shown to reduce both cough frequency and sleep disruption within two days.
And twice as many patients taking it were able to stop treatment early because their cough had cleared.
The idea that chocolate could cure a cough might sound a bit mad, but the ROCOCO researchers believe the benefits are primarily down to the demulcent properties of cocoa.
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