Honey, dangerous for babies under one year

Main Question is that is It Safe To Give Honey to Infants To Relieve Cough? Here's The Answer

It may seem harmless because it is a natural product, but it is on the list of foods forbidden to infants.

Do not add a teaspoon to the porridge, yogurt or fruit, nor do you feel tempted to put it in the pacifier or give it a little to relieve the cough because honey is dangerous for babies less than one year of age.

Why is it dangerous?

• Honey can contain spores of a bacterium called Clostridium that reach the baby's intestine and release a toxin that paralyzes the muscles.
• In older children and adults is harmless because we contain microorganisms that prevent it, but in the immature intestine of the baby the opportunistic bacteria can lodge and trigger the disease.
• The symptoms of botulism are drooping eyelids, difficulty sucking and swallowing, muscle weakness, constipation, weak crying and poor muscle tone and difficulty breathing.
• Besides the risk of botulism, honey is a food with a high content of sugar that is not healthy for a baby and predisposes to the appearance of decay and obesity in the long term.
• In the case of prepared cereals containing honey, it is treated at high temperatures and therefore the spores are eliminated, but it is not an essential food either, therefore for greater security it is possible to wait until the baby reaches the year to offer them.
• Children, by the mere fact of being children, immature little people with a developing immune system, tend to catch a lot of colds and colds; it is common for parents to discuss, from time to time, what is the remedy that it works better.

How they did the study.

• These children were given the honey or the placebo on two consecutive days, first on the night of the day on which the symptoms had appeared, without they had already taken medication and then the next night.
• The dose was equal in quantity for all, 10 grams before going to sleep, and neither the researchers who delivered the remedy, nor the parents nor the children knew what each one was taking.
• After each night we measured the frequency with which each child coughed, the severity of the cough, how was the cough (dry, laryngeal, productive ...) and how the quality of sleep of children and parents was.

Why they concluded that honey is a great remedy for cough

• The results were that all remedies, including placebo, significantly improved the children overnight. However, children who took honey improved even more than those in the placebo group.
• Putting it in figures, a combination of all the symptoms in a table showed that all the children, the first night, suffered practically the same symptoms. All the groups had a score between 18.2 and 18.6 (which serves as a reference to see what happened the second night).