How to Stop Coughing Problem Naturally

How to Stop Coughing Naturally

Fever and sore throat are private miseries, but coughing announces to the world not only that you're sick but that you're projecting your sickness into the air around you. Coughing makes you a sort of double agent in winter's war. When you start coughing you'll find out that even your best friends will wave good-bye as they cover their noses and mouths and walk away.

Actually, that cough may be your best friend. Uncomfortable and unsociable as it may be, it's probably serving a very useful purpose, that of clearing your air passages for breathing.

Unfortunately, many people — including doctors — don't recognize this and try to get rid of a cough. According to the British Medical Journal,

The fact that a patient has a cough does not indicate that he needs treatment for it. Enormous sums of money are wasted on cough medicines But in most cases of an acute cough, no medicine is needed. The doctor should explain that a cough serves a useful purpose in clearing the air passages so that it is unwise to suppress it. A cough is a necessary evil If any medicine is given for an acute cough it should at least be safe and cheap, for it is unlikely to achieve anything.

Herbal throat soothers

For instance, the safest way to treat a cough is not to try to eliminate it completely, but rather to soothe the throat. Many people rely on cough drops for that purpose. The Practical Encyclopedia of Natural Healing by Mark Bricklin (1983) says that :

The active ingredients in many commercial cough drops, suitable for common, uncomplicated coughs, are wholly or largely herbal. One English brand [Fisherman's Friend], for instance, which is quite powerful, contains eucalyptus oil, cube (an extract of the berries, I presume), tincture of capsicum (an extract of red pepper in alcohol), extract of glycyrrhiza (licorice), and menthol (the essential oil derived from peppermint). All this is put together in some kind of sugar base, although they don't specify what kind. Many cough drops use honey instead of sugar.

You can make your own herbal preparations for coughs colds and sore throats, too. Instead of gargling with some commercial mouthwash, make your own herbal gargle, starting with a strong brew of elder blossoms and sage leaves and tops. To this add some honey, a small amount of oil of sweet almonds, and five drops of oil of cloves for every 8 Fl. oz of gargle. A strong tea made from honeysuckle may help soothe mucous membranes. And kidney beans when brewed and boiled (for at least 10 minutes) with garlic, may go a long way towards relieving a persistent cough.

For a post-nasal drip-related cough that might keep you from sleeping, one source advises sleeping on your stomach.

Lots of fluids, such as fruit juices and chicken soup, work better than expectorants, others say. Vaporizers and humidifiers sometimes help a cough but adding aromatic jellies to the steam may lower the body's resistance to infection, according to one doctor we consulted.

Allergy as a cause

One often-overlooked but highly treatable cause of a cough that outstays a cold is the food allergy. Elmer Cranton, who specializes in preventive medicine and holistic therapies in Virginia, says he has recognized a 'post-flu milk-allergy syndrome'.

'A cough that hangs on after a cold is commonly an unsuspected food allergy,' Dr. Cranton told us. 'Some people might have been eating a lot of a certain food they were sensitive to, usually milk or wheat or a combination of foods, but didn't know it. And there were no symptoms of an allergy until after they caught a cold or the flu.'

To discover the guilty food, Dr. Cranton proceeds with an elimination diet — all suspect foods are removed from the diet for seven to ten days, then are re-introduced to the patient one by one until something provokes an allergic response. Dairy products, wheat products, yeast, eggs and citrus fruits are common allergens, he says. 'We've found that only six or seven days after elimination of the offender, the cough stops. Afterward, if they stay away from that food for a month or so, they can frequently begin eating it and slowly build up their tolerance to it again.

Other doctors have also found a link between coughing and allergy. Ernest K. Cotton, a lung expert at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, says that 'allergic skin testing may be important in some patients, ' and a British specialist says that 'most recurrent coughs, if not due to colds, are allergic in origin' (British Medical Journal).

Regarding over-the-counter cough medications, Dr. Cranton says, 'I tell my patients to use as little of them as they can get away with,' because they might mask a serious illness and because they contain suspicious chemicals. 'Nobody's tested them in combination,' he told us. 'Each one by itself might be harmless, but when you look at all of them together, they might do some harm.

'I think that one of the reasons we're seeing more and more allergies to good foods, like milk and wheat, is the great burden of foreign substances we're exposed to — in over-the-counter drugs, as well as food additives and pollution. The average American consumes five to six pounds of chemicals a year,' he says.