[JanetCarol (OP)]

Janet Hamilton  asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Good Morning!

I was listening to an old podcast at work on traditional medicine.

Recently I've been catching cold rather often and my mom said I should start taking sulfur and honey for two weeks.

She told me, when we were young she would give us 1/8tsp sulfur with 1 tbsp raw honey for the first fourteen days of spring to prevent illness.

Apparently it's something my family has been doing for generations.

I tried to google the reasoning behind this and found nothing other than detox jibber jabber.

I remember reading at some point though, taking sulfur gave your immune system a boost.

Over all.... What would the science behind taking sulfur and honey be?

Thank you!

Janet Hamilton

What do you think?

[Pwee]

I don't know about sulfur, but honey has many uses as a therapeutic tool. They use it regularly in some countries to enhace wound healing (see this article for example).
Honey has well documented antibacterial proparties too (see this article for deetailed analisys). And it's a natural antioxidant too (see it here)

I didn't found any data on prevention, but study from Iran reports: "symptoms of the common cold decreased significantly with the use of honey." (I can't provide you a link to the publication, but you can find it if you have access to Elsevier articles. The citation: Pourahmad M, & Sobhanian S. (2009) Effect of Honey on the Common Cold. Archives of Medical Research 40(3), 224-225)