How do I make a hot drink for someone who is ill?

The point of a drink for someone ill is fluid and comfort. Both are easier to achieve at a lower temperature and a smaller volume than you would normally serve.

Safety

What you'll need

• Honey, lemon and fresh ginger
• A small mug rather than a large one
• Peppermint or chamomile tea, if you have it

Step by step

1. Make it warm rather than hot.Comfortably drinkable straight away. A scalding drink irritates a sore throat, and someone unwell often will not wait for it to cool, so it goes untouched instead.
2. Use a small mug.A full mug is daunting when you feel unwell, and it goes cold before it is finished. Half a mug, refilled, gets far more fluid into someone.
3. Honey and lemon in warm water for a sore throat.A spoonful of honey and a squeeze of lemon. Honey genuinely coats and soothes, and it is what the NHS suggests before anything from a pharmacy for an ordinary cough.
4. Never give honey to a baby under one.Risk of infant botulism. This is an absolute — no honey at all below twelve months, in any drink or food.
5. Ginger or peppermint for nausea.Fresh ginger sliced into hot water and left to steep, or peppermint tea, both settle an unsettled stomach for many people. Weak and warm rather than strong.
6. Keep it weak.Strong tea, strong coffee and anything intensely flavoured is harder to face. Half-strength is more likely to be drunk, and being drunk is the whole point.
7. Go easy on caffeine and dairy.Caffeine works against fluid and against sleep, and some people find milk unpleasant when nauseous or congested. Weak black tea, herbal tea and warm water are safer choices.
8. Small sips, often, if a stomach is upset.A few sips every ten minutes stays down when a mugful does not. Rushing fluid into an unsettled stomach usually brings it straight back.
9. Use rehydration sachets for real fluid loss.With vomiting or diarrhoea, oral rehydration salts from a pharmacy replace salts as well as water, which plain drinks do not. That is the one case where a specific product is worth having in.
10. Offer something savoury too.Warm clear broth or a light stock is often more welcome than anything sweet, and it provides salt as well as fluid.
11. Put it within reach and say it is there.On a stable surface at the right height, with a straw if drinking upright is difficult. A drink someone has to get up for does not get drunk.
12. Refresh it rather than leaving it.Cold, half-drunk mugs accumulate and stop being appealing. Taking the old one away and bringing a fresh warm one is most of the job.
13. Check the medicine before adding anything.A few medicines interact with grapefruit juice specifically, and some should be taken with or away from food. The leaflet says which.

Tips

• Warm, not hot, and half a mug rather than a full one. Both get more fluid drunk.
• No honey under one year old, ever. This is the one hard rule here.
• Take the cold half-drunk mug away and bring a fresh one — that is most of what helps.

Common mistakes

• Making it too hot — It irritates a sore throat, it is often left to go cold and then abandoned, and it is a scald risk for someone drowsy or unsteady.
• Pushing large amounts on an unsettled stomach — A full mug drunk quickly is likely to come straight back up. Frequent small sips stay down and add up to more.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask