Cold medicine should not be taken with honey
Core tip: Many people drink honey to relieve cough symptoms when they have a cold. In fact, this is not advisable because acetaminophen forms a complex when it encounters honey, which affects the body's absorption rate and thus weakens the fever-reducing effect.
When you have a cold, you are likely to cough, and honey has a cough-relieving effect. Therefore, many people drink honey to relieve cough symptoms when they catch a cold. Here we would like to remind everyone that cold medicine should not be taken with honey.
Honey has the effect of moistening the lungs and relieving coughs, and is suitable for dry coughs due to lung dryness. If you have a cough with little phlegm, or phlegm is scanty and sticky, or a dry cough with no phlegm, you can drink it mixed with honey. However, if you are taking fever-reducing medicine or cold medicine containing fever-reducing ingredients, you should not take honey at the same time.
Many cold medicines, such as Tylenol, Fastcrant, Ganlik, and Ganmaoqing, contain the antipyretic and analgesic drug acetaminophen. It forms a complex when it encounters honey, which affects the body's absorption rate and thus weakens the fever-reducing effect.
Similarly, any Chinese patent medicines containing honey, such as cough syrups and Chuanbei Pipa Gao, should not be taken with the above-mentioned cold medicines. In addition, honey mainly achieves the effect of relieving coughs by moistening the lungs. Coughs caused by colds are mostly due to external pathogens and are not suitable for nourishment, so it is best not to drink honey.