Honey won’t cure the flu, but it does meaningfully reduce some of the worst symptoms, particularly cough. A 2020 systematic review in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine analyzed multiple trials and found that honey improved cough frequency, cough severity, and overall symptom scores compared to usual care. So while honey isn’t an antiviral treatment, it’s one of the more effective home remedies for getting through the misery of a respiratory infection.
What Honey Actually Does for Flu Symptoms
The flu brings a package of symptoms: fever, body aches, fatigue, congestion, and often a persistent cough that disrupts sleep. Honey’s strongest evidence is for that cough. The BMJ meta-analysis found honey reduced cough frequency with a standardized effect size of -0.36 and cough severity by -0.44 compared to standard care. Those are modest but consistent effects across studies, and they translate to noticeably less coughing, especially at night.
Honey also appears to help through a few biological pathways. It naturally produces hydrogen peroxide, which lab studies have shown can inactivate influenza A and B viruses in cell cultures. Honey also raises the body’s production of nitric oxide, a molecule involved in immune signaling that may interfere with early stages of viral replication. These are laboratory findings, not proof that eating honey kills the flu virus in your body. But they suggest honey does more than just coat your throat.
How It Compares to Over-the-Counter Cough Medicine
This is where the case for honey gets interesting. In a well-known 2007 trial, honey outperformed honey-flavored dextromethorphan (the active ingredient in most OTC cough syrups) for cough frequency, cough severity, and sleep quality in children. A Cochrane review of two randomized controlled trials with 265 children found honey was better than no treatment, slightly better than diphenhydramine (the antihistamine in many nighttime cold medicines), and roughly equal to dextromethorphan overall.
What makes this especially notable is that both dextromethorphan and diphenhydramine have been found no better than placebo for nighttime cough relief in children. So honey isn’t just matching a strong competitor. It’s matching medications that themselves have weak evidence, while carrying far fewer side effects. In one study of 134 children, cough decreased by more than 50% from baseline in 80% of the honey group and 87% of the OTC medication group, a difference that wasn’t statistically significant.
How to Use Honey When You Have the Flu
Most clinical trials used about half a teaspoon (2.5 mL) for young children and up to two teaspoons for older children and adults, given as a single dose before bedtime. The timing matters: taking honey at night targets the period when cough is most disruptive and sleep loss compounds how terrible you feel.
You can take it straight, stir it into warm water, or mix it into herbal tea. There’s no strong evidence that any particular variety of honey works dramatically better than another for cough relief. Manuka honey gets a lot of marketing attention, but the major meta-analyses pooled results across different honey types and found consistent benefits regardless. Plain, unprocessed honey from a grocery store is fine.
Keep in mind that honey is a symptom treatment, not a substitute for antiviral medication. If you’re in a high-risk group for flu complications (very young, over 65, pregnant, or immunocompromised), prescription antivirals started within 48 hours of symptom onset can shorten the illness and reduce the risk of serious outcomes. Honey can sit alongside those treatments comfortably.
Who Should Avoid Honey
Children under 12 months should never be given honey, in any form. Honey can contain spores of the bacterium that causes infant botulism, a rare but severe form of food poisoning. This applies to honey mixed into food, water, formula, or applied to a pacifier. The CDC is clear on this cutoff: no honey before a child’s first birthday.
If you have diabetes, honey is a better option than table sugar but still raises blood glucose. Studies in diabetic patients show that honey causes a lower spike in blood sugar than dextrose and has a lower glycemic index than sucrose. That said, two teaspoons of honey still contain about 11 grams of sugar. If you’re managing blood glucose carefully, factor that in, especially if you’re taking multiple doses over several days of illness.
What Honey Can and Can’t Do
Honey reliably reduces how often and how severely you cough during a respiratory infection. It improves sleep quality during illness. It performs as well as, and sometimes better than, the most common OTC cough medications. A combined symptom score analysis found honey improved overall symptoms by nearly 4 points on a standardized scale compared to usual care, a meaningful difference when you’re lying in bed feeling awful.
What honey won’t do is shorten how long you have the flu, bring down a fever, or eliminate body aches. It’s best understood as one layer of symptom management alongside rest, fluids, and fever reducers if needed. But as home remedies go, honey has something most don’t: a real body of clinical evidence showing it works.