One of modern medicine’s most celebrated ‘miracle drugs’ are steroids, but a double-blind, randomized clinical trial found that honey plus coffee outperformed prednisolone in treating symptoms of post-infectious, persistent cough.  A remarkable study looking at natural alternatives to medications found that compared to a systemic steroid, a combination of honey and coffee was superior in reducing symptoms associated with a post-infectious cough (PPC). PPC is a cough that remains after a common cold or an upper respiratory tract infection for more than three weeks, and in some cases as long as several months. Conventional treatment may involve any number of powerful drugs, many of which have serious side effects, including codeine and dextromethorphan (so-called centrally acting antitussives), antihistamines, narcotics, and bronchodilators. The study, published in Primary Care Respiratory Journal, was conducted by researchers at Baqiyatallah University Hospital, Tehran, Iran from 2008 to 2011. 97 patients who had experienced PPC for more than three weeks were randomized in double-blinded fashion into …