Hot Toddy

My dear girlfriend has a cold. To her credit she is suffering in relative silence (if you can ignore the sniffs and the sneezes) and is getting by burying herself nose-first in a box of tissues with industrial amounts of lemsip.

However being a caring sort of soul I decided to add my own remedy into the mix; well a family recipe that has been handed down to me from my parents. A traditional Scottish hot toddy to promote recovery and relieve symptoms.

First I will give you the recipe for it and then I will attempt to bring my background in bioscience to bear and explain the purpose of each of the ingredients. So here goes:

Ingredients:

300ml boiling water
1tbsp honey
2tbsp lemon juice
a wee sploosh of whisky (a wee sploosh is bigger than a nip but smaller than a dram and a lot smaller than a wee dram - whisky measures to be explained at a later date)

Method:

Mix all the ingredients together in a favourite mug and sip while feeling sorry for one's self.

Ok, now let me go through the ingredients and justify them a bit. The water is a good place to start. Having the cold puts one at risk of dehydration (and not just through snot production).Mounting any kind of immune response takes a lot of effort by your body and it can run itself down including dehydrating. This is worsened by the fact that one doesn't always feel like drinking when one has the cold which will limit the replacement of fluid used.

The honey serves three purposes. It provides energy to mount the immune response and give you a bit of a sugar rush to keep going while feeling dreadful. Thick honey can also coat the back of the throat which should gently relieve the dry, scratchy feeling of a sore throat. Finally, there is some evidence to suggest that honey also has anti-inflammatory properties so it will actively help the reduction of a sore throat.

Lemon juice is a simple one; it provides a hit of vitamin C to give the immune system a bit of a boost and help it work. Although the majority of research I've seen stresses it's beforehand that vitamin C does it's greatest good, enhancing one's consumption during a bout of the cold can help reduce it's duration.

The whisky one is harder to justify. I could try and argue that the alcohol will kill off all the nasties in your throat that is making it feel like you've been gargling sandpaper but I would be stretching the limits of possibility there. Instead I'm going to go with the fact that it adds a warming element to the drink and makes one feel generally better about the world. Not only that, it can be just enough to knock you out into a really nice, sound sleep.

There we have it; a basic hot toddy recipe. You can experiment and add other ingredients like cinnamon and cloves to improve the flavour and add health-giving properties depending on what you believe but this should keep you going in the mean time.

So with my kitchen cupboard pharmacy done for the night, I'm off for a prophylactic nip of whisky. Can't risk getting this myself can I?

TFB