12/27/2025
Controlling a cough: salt water and honey
If your sore throat is compounded by a cough, gargling with salt water may be helpful. Mix about half a teaspoon of salt in a full glass of warm water and swish it around your mouth and the back of your throat for a few seconds before spitting it out. Any type of salt you have at home can work.
Doctors often recommend salt water gargling as a way to ease pain in your mouth or the back of your throat and improve overall oral health. Gargling helps loosen thick mucus and can also remove irritants like bacteria, viruses and allergens from your throat. Using a salt solution provides the additional benefit of drawing excess fluid from inflamed tissues and coating them with warm water instead, Dr. Talbot said, an associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Adding honey to your gargling solution, or to any tea or warm drink, can have a similarly soothing effect. Honey acts as a demulcent, meaning it calms down irritated tissues by coating them.
Many cultures have their own variation of a soothing honey drink. And some research shows the remedy works in reducing the frequency of coughs. In fact, one study of children between 1 and 5 found that taking two teaspoons of honey at bedtime was just as effective in reducing nighttime coughs and improving the quality of sleep as the drug dextromethorphan found in common over-the-counter cough syrups. (Honey should not be given to children younger than a year old, though, because of the risk of a rare type of food poisoning known as infant botulism.)
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