Melora Manuka Honey to help you through this winters Coughs & Colds

Coughs are no picnic during summers, but the abysmal cold during winters can make them stay longer. Add a runny nose and a sore throat into the mix, you’re in it for a hell of a bad experience. Over-the-Counter medications can help, but their quick relief comes with baggage filled with side effects that can ruin your day further.

Thankfully, Melora has a few alternatives for you:

Manuka honey is a natural alternative. This traditional remedy for cough and cold has been a part of tradition for the last 2000 years. The monofloral honey extracted from Manuka bushes in New Zealand, Manuka honey has gained the scientific community's attention as a legitimate remedy for sore throat and soothing a cough, cold and more. Even the NHS- National Health Service has recommended this product.

But why is that? What are the properties that make it such a good Natural remedy for these debilitating issues? And if so, how to use this product in the best possible way to get immediate relief?

Manuka Honey Lozenges, Melora has the high grade Manuka lozenges which are perfect for on the go.

Lozenges combined with natural blackcurrant extract, vitamin C and Zinc, the menthol in the will open your airways to help relieve a blocked nose and the Manuka honey will help soothe sore throats. The Zinc and Vitamin C will help support the normal function of your immune system.

Squeezy Ginger Manuka Honey

Ginger and honey have been a great home remedy for coughs. A warm ginger and Manuka drink is perfect to reduce the irritation in the throat and lungs. Perfectly packaged in an easy to squeeze jar.

All Melora products are made with the finest Manuka honey from the east coast of New Zealand. To help you understand how Manuka honey can help this winter lets understand What is Manuka Honey?

To understand Manuka Honey's medicinal properties, let us first dive into what this product is and its origins.

Manuka Honey is a product native to New Zealand. It is created when bees pollinate Manuka Bush (Leptospermum Scoparium). Manuka can be a Monofloral or Multifloral honey. The stronger Manuka’s are Monofloral, this is above 100 MGO. That is, only a single type of plant is pollinated to produce this type of honey.

The first record of producing Manuka Honey came in the 1830s. Back then, people brought bees from England to pollinate Manuka bushes. But it was not until the 1980s that Manuka honey started to gain international attention as a remedy for colds, coughs, injuries, burns, and more.

Manuka Honey has a higher viscosity than traditional, runny honey. And when it comes to taste, it is less sweet and has a slightly bitter aftertaste. Therefore, it is often used as a sugar alternative in many households.

Essential Medicinal Properties of Manuka Honey

Here is the list of medicinal properties of Manuka honey.

1. Anti-bacterial properties: Manuka honey contains components such as methylglyoxal and total phenol. Both of these elements contribute to making it an anti-bacterial product.
2. Antioxidant Properties: Manuka honey is rich in flavonoids and Phenols, giving it antioxidant properties.
3. Anti-Inflammatory Properties: Manuka honey has rich anti-inflammatory properties. Scientists have hypothesized that it suppresses the release of neutrophil superoxide and, thus, limits the inflammatory nuclear factor.

A cough is a reflex in the throat to eliminate excess mucus or other irritants from the air pipe. If no fluid or phlegm comes up after coughing, it is a non-productive, dry cough. The cough is productive or wet when fluid comes up.

Wet coughs are caused by an access build-up of phlegm or mucus in the air passages. It makes you feel as if there is something stuck at the back of your throat.

Dry coughs are often caused due to inflammation and irritation of the respiratory tract. For instance, pollutants can tickle the nerves at the back of the throat – tickling it, and you react by having cough reflexes.

After it was found that reliance on over-the-counter medication can have adverse effects on children's health, medical practitioners around the globe started to look for substances with the same medicative properties but fewer side effects. Their search led to the discovery of many medicinal properties of Manuka honey that are still researched today.

1. Studies on Head and Neck Cancer patients: A study was conducted on recovering patients of head and neck cancer where the researchers administered Manuka Honey. They found that Manuka Honey killed off Streptococcus Mulan's, the bacteria that cause sore throat.
2. Studies on infants over one year: Researchers fed two tablespoons of honey to toddlers over one and found that they coughed less while they slept. Honey helped improve their sleep quality and fought off throat infections.

1. Cystic Fibrosis: Researchers are in the works of testing Manuka honey’s anti-inflammatory properties to help with tissue repair.

There are three reasons why Manuka honey has been attributed to be a great cure for sore throat and colds during winter.

1. High Concentration of MGO: MGO or Methylglyoxal gives Manuka honey much of its medicinal properties. It helps with destroying bacteria that can trigger throat reflexes.
2. Anti-Inflammatory Agent: Manuka honey, and any honey for that matter, is a demulcent, an inflammation reliever that coats the inner lining of the throat to remove inflammation and irritants causing cough.
3. Acts similarly to dextromethorphan: The study on infants discussed earlier showed that Manuka honey behaves like dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant found in non-prescription drugs.
4. Anti-Fungal agent: Studies show that Manuka honey has great non peroxide anti-fungal properties. It can kill fungus developed on the skin or the inner lining of the throat, helping reduce dry cough in the latter instance.

If you want to tap into the many benefits of Manuka honey, you need to learn how to use it right. In this section, you'll learn how to use Manuka honey to deal with a sinus infection – something that's getting increasingly common in kids and adults as winter rolls around.

Sinus infection is inflammation of the sinuses due to viral, fungal, or bacterial infection. It can also happen due to allergies. Over 31 million people in the United States suffer from this issue. And in many of those households, honey – especially Manuka honey, has been used for a long time. Dr. Joseph G Marsan did a study on Manuka honey in 2008 in which he wrote about how powerful it is in killing bacterial biofilms that coat the sinuses. Here is an excerpt from one of his recipes.

Step 1

Take one cup of distilled water, boil it, and during the process, add one teaspoon of Manuka honey and stir.

Step 2

Add a quarter of baking soda and a quarter of non-iodized sea salt into this honey–water mixture.

Step 3:

Take the mixture off the stove and let it cool for 15 minutes. Then pour it inside a sterile jar with a tight lid before storing it in the refrigerator.

Step 4

Take a sterile eye-dropper or a sinus irrigation device and extract a few drops of the mixture from that jar. Tilt your head back, squeeze the dropper slowly, and get 8 to 10 drops of manuka mixture in each nostril. The relief would be almost immediate. But it might be long-term. So, repeat the process the whole day as needed.

Step 5

Take one teaspoon of Manuka honey with breakfast every morning to avoid the common cold. It will also help you tap into the immunomodulatory effects of Manuka honey and save you from infections. Furthermore, Waikato University of New Zealand did a study on Manuka Honey. It found that Manuka may help destroy staph germs in common colds.

Step 6

Taking one teaspoon of Manuka honey orally five to six times per day will help reduce the symptoms of sinus infections.

Manuka honey will give you some relief from the symptoms. But do not consider it an alternative to the cure. If the cold and flu persist for longer, make sure to reach out to a general physician for treatment.

Getting hands on good quality honey is becoming increasingly difficult. Here at Melora, we source our honey straight from New Zealand. Our product goes through rigorous testing before it is put on the market and it’s quality and purity is checked by the UMF honey association in New Zealand.

Explore our wide range of manuka honey products today.