by Julie Fidler, Natural Society:

If you’re dealing with a nasty cough, forget about codeine and even honey and lemon (ok, maybe not honey). One of the easiest and undeniably tastiest way to quiet that hack is by eating chocolate, according to a Hull University professor.

Professor Alyn Morice, head of cardiovascular and respiratory studies at Hull, said there’s a lot of truth to a new study that tested the efficacy of a chocolate-based cough medicine. The study will be published later this year.

Morice was not involved in the study, but he is “an international authority on cough and the mechanism of cough.” He is also a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Cough.

The study, ROCOCO, involved 163 patients who were randomly given either linctus (a cough medicine in syrup form) or a chocolate-based cough syrup called Unicough.

Participants’ cold and cough symptoms improved dramatically after just two days of using Unicough. The study also found that Unicough worked better than conventional cough medications. Twice as many patients were able to stop treatment early because their cough had improved so much. [1]

The power of the cocoa-based concoction seems to lie in the demulcent properties of cocoa. The texture of chocolate makes it more viscous than traditional cough medicines, which allows it to coat the throat and soothe the urge to cough.

While the combination of honey and lemon does basically the same thing, Morice said chocolate likely has a “pharmacological activity, some sort of inhibitory effect on the nerve endings themselves.”

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