Make Your Own Medicine: Homemade Cough Drops by Rev. Carol A. Ingle AKA Raven

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

Make Your Own Medicine: Homemade Cough Drops

Find relief from that wracking cough with homemade cough remedies. This recipe for horehound candy cough drops will get you started.

Coughing spells can attack us when we least expect it. So if you don’t like the taste of store-bought cough drops, the bright color they leave your tongue and the extra additives found in most—or maybe you are just looking for a way to save money—try making your own homemade cough drops. With a few common household items and one standout herbal healer, it’s easy to get started.

Natural Cough Remedy
Horehound (Marrubium vulgare), a natural cough suppressant and expectorant, is one of the major ingredients in over-the-counter herbal cough drops such as Ricola. Although it has an old-fashioned-sounding name, and indeed, is probably the cough remedy with which our great-grandparents were most familiar, horehound has up-to-date value in fighting coughs, colds and catarrh (or mucus buildup). Horehound is in the mint family, so consider growing it in a container to keep the plant from taking over. It grows from seeds or starts. Sow seeds up to three weeks before the last frost and space plants about 10 inches apart. As with other mints, go easy on the water. Harvest the flowers and leaves for medicinal use.

According to the American Botanical Council, horehound has been in use as an expectorant cough remedy since ancient Egyptian times and has been an important herb in treating wheezing, chronic bronchitis and whooping cough. Commission E, a regulatory body that governs herbal remedies in Germany, also approves horehound for loss of appetite and for intestinal concerns such as bloating and flatulence. (Read more under “What Is the The German Commission E?” in Grow a Garden with Healing Herbs and Plants.) Native people throughout North America have used it for centuries as a cold remedy, attesting to its universal effectiveness. An aromatic perennial, horehound is hardy and can be grown and harvested readily.

If you want to make your own homemade cough drops, horehound is a great place to start. For a recipe, just look in Herb to Know: Horehound Cough Drops. It also uses honey, which has been used medicinally since ancient times. (Hippocrates recommended it for optimal health circa 400 b.c.) Note: Do not give honey to children younger than 2.

Tip: For easy relief, steep horehound for 15 minutes, strain and gargle frequently. Another option for cough relief is a little honey. The demulcent soothes irritated mucus membranes and has been shown to reduce coughs better than dextromethorphan (the common over-the-counter cough suppressant) or a placebo.

Horehound Cough Drops

Here is a simple recipe that will fill a sandwich bag with golden horehound cough drops. The honey covers the bitter taste of this aromatic herb. You can also substitute or combine with other herbs, such as mint or sage.

• 1 cup fresh horehound leaves
• 1 cup water
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 tablespoons honey
• Granulated or powdered sugar, to coat

1. Put horehound in a small nonreactive saucepan and add water. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Allow to cool, then remove horehound and squeeze out liquid. Add sugar and honey to pan, stir with a wooden spoon while bringing to a boil, then turn heat down to a gentle simmer. If bubbles threaten to overflow the pan, reduce heat slightly and stir.

2. Boil to hard-crack stage (330 degrees), but even if you use a candy thermometer, test often toward the end of cooking to get the hardness right. Keep a shallow cup of cold water nearby. Stir the liquid occasionally, and watch how it falls from the spoon. When it forms a thread, begin testing for hardness by allowing a drop of the mixture to fall into the cup of cold water. Don’t trust your fingers to examine the now-hardened drop in the cup: bite it. If it’s at all gooey or sticks to your teeth, keep cooking. When it’s hard enough to crack when you bite it, remove pan from heat immediately.

3. If the mixture crystallizes, just add a cup of water and an extra tablespoon of honey to the pan, scrape the crystalline chunks into it and begin again.

4. Lightly butter a candy mold, cookie sheet or other heatproof baking pan, and pour in the hot mixture. If you’re using a flat-bottomed pan, score the surface of the candy after it has cooled enough to become firm. This will help in breaking it apart, which should be done as soon as the candy can be handled.

5. After individual drops are formed, sift granulated or powdered sugar over them to keep homemade cough drops from sticking together. Store horehound cough drops in a moisture-proof container.

http://www.herbcompanion.com/grow/gardening/healing-herbs-and-plant...

http://abc.herbalgram.org/site/PageServer