sionakaren/flickr
Around ten percent of honey in the U.S. contains spores from the bacteria Clostridium botulinum. That's not really a problem because it's just the spores, not the botulinum toxin. In infants (humans less than 13 months old), though, those spores can turn into botulinum toxin in their intestines. Not the kind of toxin that throws off chakras or warrants a juice cleanse, but the sort that poisons nerve endings. They can get a full-blown case of botulism.
It is the same toxin that's commercially sold as BOTOX® to assuage muscle spasms and treat migraines and smile lines.
Infant botulism can mean anything from subtle changes in muscle tone to so-called "floppy baby" syndrome to "sudden, unexpected death." None of this is common, but it's well documented and established that infant botulism from honey happens. It's not common for kids to get eaten by alligators, either, but that doesn't mean you let your baby live with an alligator family. Unless you do.
Honey pacifier
A study last week in the journal Pediatrics found that of 397 parents of infants in the Houston area, 11 percent reported using honey-pacifiers with their infants. That means buying pacifiers that contain honey. Most of the parents (81 percent) at the clinic where this study took place were indigent Hispanics of Mexican descent. The parents said they use the honey pacifiers either out of tradition, because the infants seem to prefer them, and/or because they felt there were health benefits (e.g., "helps with constipation or colic").
The only research about botulism and honey-pacifiers specifically are case reports around dipping a pacifier in honey. You can still buy them in the United States. Some actually contain corn syrup instead of honey -- even if they're still sold as "honey pacifiers" but that too can contain botulinum spores. Even though the pacifiers don't drip honey, it is in the infant's mouth and kind of promotes a suboptimal babies-love-honey culture. It's potentially something of a gateway to, as the study's authors put it, "dipping the paciļ¬er in honey, or adding it to other foods or drinks."
There are obviously cultural traditions and folk wisdom about the benefits of honey-pacifiers to consider, of the sort that would not likely persist if there were no truth to them. That warrants research, but the first thing is to better spread word about botulism and honey. About 80 percent of the parents in this study said they did not know that honey was potentially dangerous in any way, much less the thing about sudden unexpected death.
No comments:
Post a Comment