Cough: honey and 7 more French grandmother home remedies

A cough is annoying, and it is also useful. It is how the body clears what should not be in the airways, which is why the goal here is to make it easier to live with rather than to switch it off.

Most coughs arrive attached to something else, and if yours came with a runny nose and a scratchy throat it is almost certainly a cold, where the nasal rinse does more than any syrup.

The first thing French grandmothers did was sort the cough. A dry cough scratches, keeps you awake and produces nothing. A chesty cough brings something up. They are not soothed by the same things, and picking the wrong one is why a remedy sometimes seems to do nothing at all.

Here are eight of them, sorted that way, with the ages they suit.

Honey, and it is the one worth starting with

Take a teaspoon of honey on its own, or stir it into a warm drink once the drink has cooled to about 104°F (40°C). Adding honey to water that is still very hot is a waste of good honey. Repeat as often as the cough demands, including at bedtime.

This is the remedy on this page with genuine evidence behind it. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that honey outperformed store-bought cough syrup at reducing how often and how badly children coughed at night, and suggests 2 to 5 mL for children 1 year and older.

Never give honey to a child under 1 year, in a drink or off a spoon. It will not help, and it can cause infant botulism.

And a second age limit that matters just as much. MedlinePlus is plain about over-the-counter cough medicine: “Children under four should not have cough medicine.” Honey is not a workaround for that rule, it is what French grandmothers had instead of it. The same honey does the same job on a raw throat, which is why it turns up again in our sore throat remedies.

The thyme infusion, for a dry cough

Pour 1 cup (250 ml) of just-simmering water over 1 level teaspoon (2 g) of dried thyme. Cover, steep 10 minutes, strain, and drink lukewarm, 2 to 3 times a day, ideally between meals.

If you do not like the taste, lemon thyme (Thymus citriodorus) makes a gentler cup.

What we can and cannot say about thyme. It is one of the oldest cough plants in the French kitchen, and it has been used that way for centuries. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, which is where we go for what the science says about a plant, has no thyme page at all. So we will leave this one where it belongs: a warm, traditional drink, not a treatment.

The onion and honey syrup

This is the one that makes American visitors raise an eyebrow, and it is a fixture in French households.

You need

• 1 medium onion
• 3 tablespoons (45 ml) liquid honey, more if needed to cover

How to make it

1. Slice the onion. Peel a medium onion and slice it finely. The thinner the slices, the more surface the honey has to work on.
2. Cover with honey. Put the slices in a bowl and pour the honey over them, enough to cover them well.
3. Let it macerate. Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature for 12 hours. The onion gives up its juice and the honey turns into a thin syrup.
4. Strain. Strain off the liquid and keep it. Take 1 teaspoon, 3 times a day.

Makes about 4 tablespoons of syrup · 10 minutes of preparation, 12 hours of macerating.

Skip it if you have acid reflux or a sensitive stomach. Raw onion and a spoonful of syrup on an empty stomach is a bad combination for some people, and the honey is doing most of the work anyway.

The under-1 rule applies here too, because this syrup is mostly honey.

Eucalyptus steam, for a chesty cough

Boil 1 quart (1 liter) of water and pour it into a large heat-proof bowl. Let it stand 2 minutes so it is no longer boiling, about 176°F (80°C). Add 3 drops of Eucalyptus radiata essential oil, lean over the bowl with a towel over your head, and breathe deeply for 10 minutes, twice a day.

Adults only, and there are two separate reasons. A bowl of near-boiling water at face height is a scald risk, and essential oils are not for young children’s airways. Traditional practice also keeps eucalyptus away from pregnant and nursing women, children under 6, people with asthma and people with epilepsy. As with thyme, NCCIH has no eucalyptus page, so we are passing on the tradition’s own cautions rather than a scientific ruling.

Do not improvise this one around children. If steam is what you want and there are children in the house, a hot shower does the same job with none of the risk.

Plantain infusion, for a dry cough

Steep about 1 teaspoon of dried ribwort plantain leaves (Plantago lanceolata) in 1 cup (250 ml) of just-simmering water for 10 minutes, covered, then strain. One to three cups a day, between meals.

Plantain is the flat-leaved weed in the lawn, not the banana-like fruit. It is worth knowing on sight, because the same leaves get crushed and laid on mosquito bites all summer for the same soothing reason.

The expectorant herbal blend

Mix 0.5 oz (15 g) mullein flowers, 0.5 oz (15 g) mallow leaves, 0.35 oz (10 g) dried thyme and 0.35 oz (10 g) chopped licorice root. Steep 1 teaspoon of the mix in 1 cup (250 ml) of just-simmering water for 10 minutes, strain, and drink 2 cups a day. The dry mix keeps 6 months away from light.

Two weeks maximum, and not for everyone. Because of the licorice, this blend is off the table during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and for anyone with high blood pressure, insulin-dependent diabetes or kidney problems. Licorice is the reason for every one of those lines: it is the strong ingredient in an otherwise gentle mix.

Humidify the room

Dry air makes every kind of cough worse. Aim for something between 40 and 60% humidity in the bedroom, with a humidifier or simply a bowl of water near a heat source.

MedlinePlus makes the same point in one sentence: water helps a cough, whether you drink it or put it into the air with a steamy shower or a vaporizer. It is the least glamorous item on this page and one of the most reliable.

Sleep with your head raised

Raise your head and torso with two extra pillows, or put blocks 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm) high under the feet at the head of the bed. Sleeping on your side rather than your back helps too.

This is aimed squarely at the fits that break up the night, and it is the reason a cough often seems worse the moment you lie down. If the coughing has also left you with a pounding head by morning, that has its own remedies, and rest in a dark room is the first of our headache remedies for a reason.

When to see a doctor

A cough is one of those symptoms that is usually nothing and occasionally the visible part of something else.

The duration is the clearest signal. MedlinePlus draws the line plainly: an acute cough begins suddenly and “usually last no more than 2 to 3 weeks”, while a chronic cough lasts longer than that. A cough still going after 2 to 3 weeks is worth a call, whatever it feels like.

Call sooner if there is shortness of breath, chest pain, blood in what you cough up, a high or persistent fever, or if the cough follows choking on food or an object.

In a child, add the age rules above to the list: no cough medicine before 4, no honey before 1, and a call rather than an experiment if you are unsure which side of those lines you are on.

MedlinePlus also lists what sits behind a cough that will not quit: chronic bronchitis, asthma, allergies, COPD, acid reflux, smoking, throat disorders such as croup in young children, and some medicines. None of those is treated by an infusion, and every one of them is treatable once named.

The winter part nobody mentions

A cough that runs for a fortnight in January does not arrive on its own. It comes with dark mornings, a shorter fuse and less appetite for going out, and for some people that combination is more than just a bad month. If the season itself is what is flattening you, that has a name and it has remedies too: we wrote about them in seasonal affective disorder.

Hiccups are the other thing that gets blamed on a cold and is really the diaphragm being irritated, and coughing hard for a week is one of the things that sets them off. The hiccup remedies work on the same muscle.

FAQ

Which remedy for a dry cough, and which for a chesty one?

Dry cough: honey, thyme, plantain, and raising the head of the bed. Chesty cough: eucalyptus steam for adults, the onion and honey syrup, the expectorant blend, and humidified air. Honey and humidity are the two that suit both.

Can I give the onion syrup to my child?

Not under 1 year, because it is mostly honey. Above that age it is a spoonful of sweet syrup and children usually take it without a fight, which is more than can be said for most of this page.

Why do French grandmothers put onion in cough syrup?

Because it was in every kitchen, all year, and honey drew the juice out of it overnight without any equipment. It is a preparation built around what was already in the house, which is true of nearly everything on this page.