Choosing Between Medicine and Home Remedy
08:03Getting Rid of Mucus Cough
A mucus cough is chesty, tickly, and dry. It is also the hardest one to contend with. How to get rid of it is important to cut short the inconvenience that one often has to deal with when nursing one.
Most of the time coughs are caused by either the flu or cold. In many cases, they can clear up in a period of two to three weeks. However, if your cough is persistent and has a lot of build-up of mucus around your chest area, then it can have a much bigger impact on your day to day life. Knowing how to deal with it and to how to ease the inconveniences attached to having it is important.
The market offers a wide range of available cough medicines. Many of these products claim to aid in soothing the symptoms that different cough types bring about. However, not every single one of these medicines will be able to cure a chesty cough. The fact that they are not all made equal means that you will need to sift through your choices to find the one that will work for your cough.
Besides, there is little evidence to support that medicines for a chesty cough actually work. In many cases, they are only designed to address the symptoms. They are not designed to really cure a cough. You can expect a cough to still run its course, which is usually within the two to three weeks timeframe.
However, people are advised to speak to their pharmacists in order to assess their symptoms and give them advice about the best decongestant treatments. Ideally, taking over-the-counter medications should help. Paracetamol or ibuprofen may be taken, along with lots of rest and sleep. Keeping oneself hydrated is a must too when trying to get rid of a chesty cough.
For those that prefer to go or home remedies, experts suggest drinking water, lots of it. Using a steam bowl is a good idea too. Drinking lots of water is effective at getting the mucus build-up loosened. As a result, it becomes so much easier to cough up. Humidifiers can be such a huge relief too when inhaling too as they help get the chest area cleared. Some people were also able to relieve the symptoms by inhaling steam since it is effective in loosening the mucus build-up.
It is important to remember that while cough medicines may be able to ease the symptoms of a cough, they are really not able to get rid of it. If after all these self-medication the cough still persists after three weeks, then seeing a GP is the most practical step to do.
Watch the video below to learn more.
Learn more about how to deal with common ailments and illnesses by reading about Dr Toby Ikwueke online. You can also check out Dr Toby Ikwueke on his About.me page here.
1 comments
Thanks for the advice Dr Toby Ikwueke. I didn't know drinking water could help me so much with my mucus cough.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!