The largest study of people eating Sidr honey daily
1,000
people, followed for one year
The honey group reported results sooner than the syrup group, and reported fewer side effects.
What they did
Doctors in Saudi Arabia followed 1,000 adults for a year. Half took 20ml of Sidr honey daily, half took a standard pharmacy syrup, and the two groups were compared.
What they found
The honey group reported results sooner than the syrup group, and reported fewer side effects.
Almost every study of Sidr honey is done in a laboratory dish or in animals. This is the rare exception — real people, eating honey by the spoonful, over a long enough period to mean something.
Every participant tolerated the daily 20ml dose without difficulty, and 371 of the honey group reported a sustained result with no return of the problem over the year.
The size is what makes it unusual. A thousand people over twelve months is larger than almost anything else published on this honey.
What this study does not show
- Nobody was blinded. Patients and doctors both knew which group they were in, and when the result is something a patient reports themselves, that expectation shapes the answer.
- There was no placebo group. Honey is sweet and pleasant to take; the comparison syrup is not.
- It appeared in a journal devoted to bee-product therapy, where a result favourable to bee products faces a lower bar than it would in a general medical journal.
- One hospital, one team, never repeated independently.