Autumn has brought a high rate of respiratory infections, which have tripled a month after going back to school. Most of the common colds of these dates occur with a particularly annoying symptom: cough. Especially when it doesn’t let us rest at night.
Is there anything on the market to kill it? Popular wisdom is full of grandmother’s remedies: put a cut onion on the bedside table, gargle, put on a neck brace with alcohol, drink honey and lemon… But the reality is that none of these alleged ‘solutions’ have scientific evidence.
The first thing to understand is that a cough “is a lung defense mechanism«, explains to ABC Dr. Jesús Molina, coordinator of the Respiratory Diseases Working Group of the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (Semfyc). It is the lung itself that causes the cough to eliminate secretions at the bronchial level. »You don’t have to remove it all at once so that it can do its cleaning function. And this must be explained to patients“, says the expert.
The doctor recognizes that the cough is very difficult to remove and that it is almost also the last symptom that disappears in these viral pictures. “Colds last 7 days whether you treat them or not,” he says. Although any pain reliever can relieve the general symptoms of a cold, the cough can be persistent. And if it does not let us sleep, before taking medication, we must consult a specialist.
exist drugs with proven evidence to put an end to it, but their prescription will be at the doctor’s discretion, who will assess the benefits and risks of taking them, since they cancel the cough reflex, which is necessary to expectorate and avoid infections.
“Grandma’s remedies have no proven efficacy,” says Dr. Molina. In the case of honey, it can alleviate “something” at the pharyngeal level, softening the throat a little, but it will not remove the cough either.
What can we do then at home? To improve the situation, Dr. Molina recommends sleeping with the pillow higher than usual to reduce postnasal drip, which causes more coughing. With the same objective, nasal washes are recommended before going to bed to prevent mucus from starting to drip from behind and stimulate coughing.
Heating, which causes dryness at the pharyngeal level, worsens the situation, so it is advisable to seek a cooler and more humid environment. You should also avoid smoking or being in an environment with tobacco smoke.