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Updated March 26, 2015.

Honey is one of the foods that may help with asthma.

Many patients use honey for a wide variety of ailments including:

• Cough
• Fever
• Infections
• Inflammation

How Is Honey Delivered For Medical Impact

While honey is normally taken by mouth as a food product, some models have demonstrated nebulization as an effective way to use honey as a treatment for asthma in non-human research studies. Taken by mouth, honey is unlikely to be useful in an asthma attack or for acute asthma symptoms since the active ingredients must be absorbed from the digestive system before having an impact.

However, trials of how honey impacts the pathophysiology of asthma or objective measures of asthma control such as FEV1 have not been preformed.

Research Studies For Honey and Asthma

In rabbits that were given asthma experimentally, nebulized honey was found to decrease inflammation and other chronic changes associated with asthma. Inhaled honey was thought to be useful not only in the treatment, but prevention of symptoms after exposure to a trigger. The anti-inflammatory properties ar thought to mediate the effects.

Inhaled honey decreased a number of the cells associated with poor asthma control such as:

• Basophils
• Eosinophils
• Lymphocytes
• Macrophages
• Mast Cells
• Neutrophils
• Monoclonal Antibodies
• IgE

Additionally, one of the problems asthmatics experience is increased production of mucus that makes it more difficult to move air through the lungs. Inhaled honey was found to decrease the production of the cells that produce mucus called goblet cells as well as decrease the production of mucus with an asthma attack.

Oral Honey In Research

Antioxidants have been combined with honey for asthma. Hippocampus kuda and Rhizoma Homalomenae were combined with honey in a pill named BRONAS in one clinical study. A 500 mg pill contained 200 mg of dried extract powder of Hippocampus kuda, 200 mg of dried extract powder of Rhizoma Homalomenae, and 130 mg of honey. The treatment that included honey provided equal treatment results compared to treatment with prednisone. However, this study would not have likely been done in the United States as the care did not include currently acceptable standards of care for asthma and had a number of other problems.

Should I Use Honey For Asthma

I think it is too early to tell whether or not honey is one of the foods that help with asthma. While it seems to have some promising experimental results, I cannot say that honey will help your asthma today or that it is safe to use over lung periods of time in higher quantities. I find the aerosolization an interesting concept that needs further study.

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Sources

1. Kamaruzaman NA et al. Inhalation of honey reduces airway inflammation and histopathological changes in a rabbit model of ovalbumin-induced chronic asthma.. Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2014, 14:176 . Accessed on March 7, 2015.