Chocolate as a cough suppressant? January 6, 2008
Candy Blog has an interesting piece on the use of chocolate as a cough suppressant. Apparently, theobromine, the chemical in chocolate that is poisonous to dogs, suppresses coughs in humans. Not sure how effective it is, but it sounds like a good excuse for eating chocolate when you have a cold!
It does work! I’ve had a persistent cough for days that had gotten so bad it had become constant, even causing vomiting. I’d tried every remedy I could think of, other than codeine, and was going to get a prescription for that when I found the article on chocolate.
I tried it last night with strong, dark hot chocolate and after about a half hour, the coughing just stopped! I was amazed. Unfortunately, the effects only lasted about as long as long as they do with cough medicine, several hours or so.
So today I’m going to try eating some 70% dark chocolate (poor me!!) through the day to see if I can get the effects to last longer.
But if this works, I will be VERY happy, not just because it’s chocolate, but because I can stop this horrible coughing on my own and not have to take a standard medicine do do it!!
By the way, the test was conducted in Great Britain in 2004 and the article on it is in the BBC news for November 25, 2004, website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4032585.stm